HMS Eurydice

1878

Isle of Wight, snow squall, two minutes Location: off Dunnose, Isle of Wight, England · Coordinates: 50.58°N 1.20°W · Casualties: 317 · Survivors: 2 · Depth: 22 m · Cause: capsized · storm — Caught in a sudden snow squall off the Isle of Wight on the afternoon of 24 March 1878 while returning from the West Indies with a training cruise of young seamen. Her lower gun ports had been left open for airing. She heeled, took water, and was on her beam ends inside two minutes. · Fate: raised 1878 · broken up · Type: training frigate · sail · Tonnage: 921 tons · Crew: 319 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1843 Royal Navy training frigate, returning from the West Indies with a crew of young seamen. Caught in a sudden snow squall off the Isle of Wight on the afternoon of 24 March 1878: she heeled with gun ports open and was on her beam ends inside two minutes. 317 dead, two survivors. Raised four months later and then broken up, the Eurydice became the textbook case against sail-era training ships that should have been steam-powered by the time she went down. The Vessel HMS Eurydice was a British sailing frigate of the Royal Navy, built at the Portsmouth Dockyard between 1841 and 1843. She was 43 metres long, 921 tons displacement, and originally armed with 26 guns of mixed 32-pounder and 9-pounder calibre. Her design was the last generation of purely-sailing British frigates; at her commissioning in 1843, the Royal Navy had already begun the transition to steam propulsion, but a small number of sailing frigates were retained for specific training and station duties where the reliability and low operating costs of pure sail were preferred over the complexity and coal-dependency of early steam propulsion. By 1877, after 34 years of Royal Navy service, Eurydice had been converted to a dedicated sea-going training ship for ordinary seamen under training (OST). Her armament had been reduced from 26 guns to 4 training guns; her accommodation had been reconfigured for a complement of approximately 366 trainees plus 32 officers, petty officers, and instructors. The training mission was the full-immersion sea-going education of Royal Navy ordinary seamen: they lived, worked, and trained aboard Eurydice on extended sea deployments. Her master on her final voyage was Captain Marcus Augustus Stanley Hare, 40, an experienced officer with substantial training-ship command experience. Her embarked complement on the final voyage was 366 trainees (predominantly young men aged 16-22 from the British working class) plus 32 officers and instructors; the combin The Disaster At approximately 16:00 on 24 March 1878, a substantial cold-front squall struck the Isle of Wight coast with almost no prior warning. The squall was characterised by a rapid increase in wind velocity from approximately force 7 to force 10 within approximately two minutes, accompanied by heavy snow and hail that reduced visibility to less than 100 metres. The barometric drop was rapid and severe. Eurydice was caught in the squall with her single-reefed topsails still set. The wind pressure on her sailing rig exceeded any reasonable operational parameter for her sail configuration; she heeled sharply to starboard under the squall pressure. The heel rapidly exceeded her safe limit of approximately 20 degrees from the vertical. HMS Eurydice's gunports, which had been left open on her main deck to facilitate normal ventilation, were now below the waterline on her heeled starboard side. Water flooded into her main deck through the open gunports at a rate that her pumps could not possibly address; her stability was compromised within approximately 60 seconds of the initial squall impact. She capsized at approximately 16:02 on 24 March 1878, rolling over onto her starboard beam and taking on water rapidly through every opening in her compromised structure. She sank at approximately 16:10, approximately eight minutes after the squall struck, in approximately 12 metres of water at Dunnose Point, off the Isle of Wight. The capsize was so rapid, and the water temperature so low (approxim