HMS Ramillies

1760

Bolt Tail mistaken for Ram Head, seven hundred lost Location: Bolt Tail, Bigbury Bay, Devon, England · Coordinates: 50.23°N 3.85°W · Casualties: ~700 · Survivors: 26 · Depth: 18 m · Cause: grounding · storm — Driven into Bigbury Bay in a February gale on 15 February 1760 after the navigators mistook Bolt Tail for the Ram Head and believed they had cleared Start Point. Struck the rocks and broke up inside a day. Part of Admiral Boscawen's Channel fleet. · Fate: broken up on rocks · anchor recovered · Type: warship · 90-gun second rate · Tonnage: 1,685 tons · Crew: 734 · Flag: Kingdom of Great Britain · Launched: 1664 Royal Navy second rate, 90 guns, formerly the Royal Katherine. In a February gale off Devon on 15 February 1760 her navigators mistook Bolt Tail for the Ram Head and drove her onto the rocks; the sea broke her up inside a day. Only twenty-six men of more than seven hundred survived. One of the costliest single-ship losses in Royal Navy history before steam, and remembered locally as the disaster that introduced the term 'Ramillies Cove' to the Devon coastline. The Vessel HMS Ramillies was a British second-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built at Woolwich Dockyard between 1742 and 1749 and originally named after the 1706 Duke of Marlborough's victory at the Battle of Ramillies. She was 52 metres long, 1,685 tons displacement, and armed with 90 guns on three full gun decks (thirty 32-pounders on the lower deck, thirty 18-pounders on the middle deck, and thirty 12-pounders on the upper deck). Her complement in wartime was 750 officers, marines, and ratings. Ramillies was, at the time of her commissioning in 1749, among the more modern and powerful units of the Royal Navy's Channel fleet. She had been designed under the 1745 Establishment, the standardised building programme that superseded the 1719 and 1733 Establishments and produced British ships of the line of more consistent proportions and armament. Her active service had been continuous: she had participated in the final operations of the War of the Austrian Succession (1749), multiple operations of the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), and the early operations of the American War of Independence (1778). Her master on her final voyage was Rear-Admiral Thomas Graves, who had hoisted his flag aboard Ramillies as commander of a British convoy escort operation in September 1782. Graves was a 57-year-old career naval officer, previously commander of British naval forces during the Battle of the Chesapeake in September 1781 (the naval engagement that had resulted in the French strategic vic The Disaster On 16 September 1782 the low-pressure system intensified into what was, by subsequent meteorological reconstruction, a Category 2 hurricane making its closing approach to the convoy's position in the western North Atlantic. The wind rose from force 7 to force 11 over approximately eight hours; the sea state developed into what contemporary accounts described as "mountainous" waves, with heights of 15-18 metres at the peak of the storm. The convoy was dispersed by the hurricane within a few hours. The 93 merchantmen became individually responsible for their own survival; many lowered their topmasts and ran before the wind under storm canvas. The escort warships, including Ramillies, attempted to remain in their escort stations but were unable to maintain formation in the hurricane conditions. By the morning of 17 September 1782, Ramillies had sustained substantial storm damage: her mainmast had carried away (collapsed and broken off), taking with it the main topmast and the foremast crosstrees; her rudder had sprung (the rudder attachment to the sternpost had partially failed); and her hull pumps were unable to keep pace with the water flooding into her hold through her storm-damaged upperworks. Graves ordered the ship's guns jettisoned and the foremast cut away, in an attempt to reduce weight aloft and buy time for the pumps. These measures were insufficient. By the evening of 17 September 1782, Ramillies was settling progressively into the water; Graves signalled the nearby