Age of Sail

Pre-1850. Carracks, galleons, East Indiamen. Wood-and-canvas ships lost to storm, gunfire, and gunports left open at the wrong moment. The era when a single carpenter's mistake could founder a king's flagship.

Part of Shipwrecks

24 moments in this segment.

1. Antikythera wreck. Roman merchantman, the Aegean, a computer Location: Off Point Glyphadia, Antikythera, Greece · Coordinates: 35.86°N 23.30°E · Casualties: unknown · Survivors: unknown · Depth: 50 m · Cause: foundered — Struck a cliff on the rocky north coast of Antikythera in a storm while sailing from the eastern Aegean toward Italy, likely with a luxury cargo destined for a Roman patron. She broke up and sank in approximately fifty metres of water. No surviving testimony; the wreck was lost for two millennia. · Fate: excavated · ongoing · Type: merchantman · Roman · Tonnage: ~300 tons (estimated) · Flag: Roman Republic Roman merchantman, returning from the eastern Aegean toward Italy. Struck a cliff on the north coast of Antikythera and sank in fifty metres of water. Rediscovered by sponge divers in 1900, the cargo yielded bronze masterpieces, marble statuary, and a single corroded lump of gears: the oldest surviving analog computer in human history, an astronomical calculator two millennia ahead of anything found since. The Vessel The Antikythera wreck is the preserved cargo of a Roman merchant galley that foundered on the north coast of the island of Antikythera, between Crete and Kythera, in the first century BC. Her hull is so poorly preserved that her precise dimensions cannot be reconstructed, but the scale of her cargo and the radiocarbon-dated hull timbers indicate a vessel of roughly 40 metres length and 300 tons cargo capacity. She was among the largest merchant ships operating in the eastern Mediterranean of her period. She was almost certainly a dedicated naves longae cargo carrier rather than a passenger-carrying liner: her hold was packed with the high-value luxury cargo characteristic of the Rhodian and Delian late-Hellenistic trade. The dating evidence from coin finds in her cargo places her final voyage at approximately 65 to 50 BC, with the modern consensus settling on 60 BC plus or minus ten years. Her captain and crew are entirely unknown; no personal items beyond anonymous bronze oil lamps and a cluster of amphora stoppers have been identified with individuals. The ship's port of origin has been reconstructed by archaeologists from her cargo as most probably Rhodes, with a ultimate destination of an Italian port, probably Ostia or Puteoli. The Rhodian-to-Italian trade was the principal artery of Roman luxury imports in the generation between the Mithridatic Wars and the Augustan settlement; the Antikythera was one more of the hundreds of ships that died in that trade. She is distinc The Disaster The wreck was discovered by a crew of Symi sponge divers working the Antikythera coast in April 1900. The master diver Elias Stadiatis, breathing from a surface-supplied suit at 45 metres, signalled to the surface that he had seen a heap of naked bodies and horses' heads. The captain, Dimitrios Kondos, descended himself and recovered a bronze arm. The divers' report was initially treated as a superstitious account until a bronze statuette was brought up in a basket that afternoon. Greek naval authorities reached the site within weeks. The 1900-1901 naval salvage, conducted with hard-hat divers from the warship Mykali under professor Alexander Oikonomos, recovered the majority of the cargo visible on the seabed: four life-size bronze statues (including the Antikythera Youth), thirty-seven marble sculptures, 150 amphorae, the coins of Pergamum, and approximately fifty corroded bronze lumps whose significance would not be understood for another century. Two divers died during the salvage from the bends; compressed-air diving protocols did not yet exist. The bronze lumps were inventoried and transferred to the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, where they were forgotten in a storage cabinet. In 1902 the archaeologist Valerios Stais was cataloguing the collection when he noticed a gear wheel visible inside the largest lump. The object contained gears. It was, impossibly for a Greek artefact of 60 BC, a mechanical computing device.
2. Kyrenia ship. Greek merchant, Cyprus, the pine-resin hull Location: off Kyrenia, northern Cyprus · Coordinates: 35.34°N 33.33°E · Casualties: unknown · Survivors: unknown · Depth: 30 m · Cause: unknown · possibly piracy — Sank approximately one nautical mile off the Cypriot coast in the late fourth century BC, carrying a commercial cargo from Rhodes and Samos. Evidence of the cargo having been cut loose and thrown overboard before sinking has led archaeologists to suspect a pirate attack. No trace of the crew was found. · Fate: excavated · preserved · Type: merchantman · Greek · Tonnage: ~25 tons · Crew: 4 · Flag: Hellenistic Greece Greek merchant ship, late fourth century BC, carrying 400 amphorae of Rhodian wine and a deck cargo of almonds. Rediscovered in 1965 by the Cypriot diver Andreas Cariolou and excavated through the late 1960s: the hull was 75 percent intact after two and a half thousand years, the best-preserved classical vessel ever recovered. Now displayed in Kyrenia Castle, her timbers still smelling faintly of pine resin. Thousands of millstones and iron spikes in the hold suggest she was carrying builders' supplies as well as wine. The Vessel The Kyrenia ship was a Greek merchant vessel of the late Classical period, built of Aleppo pine at a Mediterranean shipyard sometime around 389 BC and lost off the north coast of Cyprus approximately a century later, around 294 BC. She was approximately 14 metres in length and 4.3 metres in beam, a modest single-masted square-rigged trader of the kind that carried the everyday commerce of the Hellenistic eastern Mediterranean. Her hull was constructed by the shell-first method universal to Greek shipbuilding of the period: edge-joined planking assembled first with mortise-and-tenon joints, the internal framing inserted afterwards. By the time of her loss she had been sailing for close to eighty years, an extraordinarily long service life that had required her hull to be sheathed in lead plates to slow the progress of teredo worm and repeated re-caulking. Four separate lead-sheathing campaigns are identifiable in the archaeological record of her timbers. The ship was, in the terms of her final voyage, an old working boat, still profitable but past any reasonable expectation of further decades at sea. Her home port cannot be established with certainty. The ceramic typology of her cargo amphorae points to Rhodes, Samos, and the Cypriot coast as her regular trading circuit, and her captain on the final voyage was almost certainly operating out of Rhodes or a nearby Dodecanese port. Her crew on the last voyage numbered four, a standard complement for a Hellenistic coaster of her s The Disaster The specific cause of the Kyrenia ship's sinking is unresolved and has been the subject of sustained archaeological debate since her excavation in 1968-1969. Two theories have dominated the scholarship. The first theory, advanced by Michael Katzev, the American archaeologist who led the excavation, is that the ship was attacked by pirates. Katzev identified eight iron spearheads embedded in the hull timbers near the waterline, and noted the complete absence of personal valuables and ship's cash from the wreck site. The interpretation is that pirates boarded the Kyrenia ship off the Cypriot coast, killed or captured her crew, stripped the ship of valuables, and then scuttled the vessel. The second theory, favoured by subsequent researchers including the Cyprus Department of Antiquities, is that the ship was simply too old and foundered in a storm. The four successive lead-sheathing campaigns on her hull attest to progressive structural deterioration; an eighty-year-old wooden hull in the Mediterranean was, by any reasonable standard, approaching the end of its serviceable life. The iron spearheads may have been part of the crew's own defensive weapons rather than evidence of attack. The Kyrenia ship sank in approximately 30 metres of water off the north coast of Cyprus, about 1.5 kilometres off the harbour of Kyrenia, at some point around 294 BC. The four crewmen are presumed to have either drowned with the ship or been taken captive by pirates if the Katzev theory is correct.
3. 0830 — Belitung shipwreck. Arab dhow, Java Sea, sixty thousand Tang treasures Location: Gelasa Strait, off Belitung Island, Indonesia · Coordinates: 2.80°S 107.70°E · Casualties: unknown · Survivors: unknown · Depth: 17 m · Cause: grounding — Wrecked on a reef in the Gelasa Strait in the early ninth century while en route home from Tang China to Abbasid Arabia. The sewn-plank dhow hull broke up but the cargo settled in shallow sand. Discovered by Indonesian fishermen in 1998. · Fate: commercially salvaged · cargo at Singapore ACM · Type: merchantman · Arab dhow · Tonnage: ~25 tons · Flag: Abbasid Caliphate Arab dhow, early ninth century, lost on the reefs of Belitung Island in the Java Sea. Sewn together with coconut fibre rather than iron nails, she was the first ancient Arab vessel ever recovered. Her cargo held 60,000 Tang dynasty ceramics plus a single gold cup, the largest Tang hoard ever found outside China and definitive proof of direct sea trade between Tang China and Abbasid Arabia. Discovered by Indonesian fishermen in 1998; the salvage remains controversial because the hold was emptied commercially rather than scientifically excavated. The Vessel The Belitung shipwreck was an Arabian dhow of the late Tang dynasty period, built in the Persian Gulf or along the Arabian coast sometime around 820 AD and lost in the Java Sea off the Indonesian island of Belitung around 830 AD. She was approximately 18 metres long and 6.4 metres in beam, a single-masted lateen-rigged merchant vessel of the kind that worked the Indian Ocean trade routes between the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, and the ports of southern China. Her hull construction identified her unambiguously as an Arabian vessel rather than a Chinese one. She was built by the sewn-plank technique characteristic of medieval Indian Ocean shipbuilding: the hull planks were lashed together with coconut-fibre cordage through drilled holes along the plank edges, rather than being joined by iron nails or wooden treenails. The caulking material between the planks was a mixture of lime, fish oil, and coconut-fibre fibre. No iron fastenings were used anywhere in her hull. Her home port was almost certainly Siraf, on the Persian Gulf coast of what is now Iran, the principal Arabian port for the China trade in the ninth century. Her captain and crew on the final voyage were Arab and Persian merchants operating under the commercial protections established by the Abbasid caliphate's diplomatic relationship with Tang China. The Belitung ship is the only documented archaeological example of a ninth-century Arabian dhow recovered anywhere in the world. The Disaster The specific cause of the Belitung ship's loss is not certain and cannot be fully reconstructed from the wreck site. She sank in shallow water (approximately 17 metres) on the Gaspar Strait between the Indonesian islands of Belitung and Bangka, a notorious shipping hazard known to medieval Arab and Chinese navigators as a site of numerous shipwrecks. The Gaspar Strait is characterised by a series of submerged coral reefs and strong tidal currents; a ship that drifted onto a reef in poor weather or at night could be holed and sunk very quickly. The archaeological evidence suggests that the Belitung ship struck a coral reef (a substantial area of reef damage is visible on the seabed adjacent to the wreck site) and sank without catastrophic destruction. The hull settled onto the shallow seabed substantially intact, with the cargo still in its original stowage arrangement. The stowage pattern, painstakingly recorded during the excavation, showed that the Changsha bowls had been packed inside large storage jars for transit, a standard medieval Chinese export technique; the larger elite ceramics had been stowed separately in the after hold. The Belitung ship sank in approximately 17 metres of water on the Gaspar Strait in or around 830 AD, on a voyage estimated to be 1,900 kilometres from Guangzhou with approximately 9,100 kilometres yet to run to Siraf. The fate of her Arab and Persian crew is unknown; they may have survived by reaching the nearby Indonesian coast, or they may hav
4. 1492 — Santa María. Columbus's flagship, Christmas Eve on the reef Location: off Cap-Haïtien, northern coast of Hispaniola · Coordinates: 19.79°N 72.21°W · Casualties: 0 · Survivors: all hands · Depth: broken up · Cause: grounding — Ran onto a coral reef off the north coast of Hispaniola on Christmas Eve 1492, during Columbus's first voyage to the New World. The watch had been left to a young ship's boy while the captain slept. The ship was lost but held together long enough to unload. · Fate: destroyed · timbers became La Navidad · Type: carrack · Spanish · Tonnage: ~150 tons · Crew: 40 · Flag: Crown of Castile · Launched: 1460 Christopher Columbus's flagship on the first voyage to the New World. Grounded on a reef off the north coast of Hispaniola on Christmas Eve 1492, no hands lost. Her timbers became La Navidad, the first European settlement in the Americas; a year later, returning, Columbus found the fort burned and the 39 men he had left behind dead. The wreck site has never been convincingly identified; a 2014 claim was rejected by UNESCO. The Vessel The Santa María, originally La Gallega (the Galician) after her port of build, was a Spanish carrack built at Pontevedra in Galicia around 1460. She was approximately 25 metres long, 150 tons, three-masted with square sails on the fore and main and a lateen on the mizzen, crewed by about forty men, and carried five small swivel guns for defence against corsairs. Her hull form was the standard Galician carrack of her generation: high fore- and sterncastles for fighting and shelter, a beamy midships for cargo, and a modest draft for shallow-water work. She had worked the Spanish domestic trade for thirty years before her charter to Christopher Columbus for the 1492 expedition. Her master and owner was Juan de la Cosa, a Basque navigator and cartographer who would later produce the first world map to show the Americas; she sailed from Palos de la Frontera as the flagship of Columbus's three-vessel expedition, with Pinta and Niña in company. She was the largest of the three and by virtue of that size the least manoeuvrable in the shallow Caribbean waters the expedition was about to enter. Columbus himself had reservations about the Santa María's suitability from the outset, preferring the lighter and more responsive caravel Niña. His journal, preserved in the later summary of Bartolomé de las Casas, records his assessment of the Santa María as "very clumsy and not suited for the work of discovery". He was right. The Disaster She grounded gently enough that no one aboard was injured. Columbus's immediate response, described in his journal with the bitter remark that la Cosa had fled the scene rather than help, was to send a boat to the Niña for assistance; she was nearby and came to Santa María's aid at dawn. The Taíno chief Guacanagarí on the shore sent his own people with canoes to help unload. They could not refloat her. Her keel had settled into soft sand and broken at a frame; the outgoing tide hung her higher on the reef. Columbus ordered her stripped: her timbers, mast, rigging, and most of her stores were transferred ashore over 25 and 26 December 1492. He then made a political decision that would shape the American story: rather than crowd all three crews onto Niña and Pinta for the return, he converted Santa María's salvaged timber into a fort on the Cap-Haïtien shore and left a garrison of 39 men under the command of Diego de Arana. He named the fort La Navidad (Christmas) for the day of the wreck. He provisioned it for a year from the expedition's remaining stores, armed it with the swivel guns from Santa María, and sailed for Spain on Niña on 4 January 1493. He reached Palos on 15 March 1493 to the reception that would change European history. He left 39 men at La Navidad to hold Europe's first colony in the Americas.
5. 1545 — Mary Rose. Henry VIII's flagship, sunk in the Solent Location: The Solent, Portsmouth, England · Coordinates: 50.79°N 1.10°W · Casualties: ~500 · Survivors: ~35 · Depth: 14 m · Cause: foundered — Capsized during a gun battle with the French fleet. Gun ports were open for firing when she heeled; the lower ports took water; she went down in minutes. · Fate: raised 1982 · Type: warship · Tonnage: 700 tons · Crew: 415 · Flag: Kingdom of England · Launched: 1511 Capsized in battle against the French fleet in sight of Henry VIII watching from Southsea Castle. The king reportedly heard the screaming of men trapped below decks. Raised in 1982 in the largest archaeological recovery in maritime history. Now the centerpiece of a museum built around her. The Vessel The Mary Rose was built at Portsmouth between 1509 and 1511 for King Henry VIII, one of the first ships of the new Royal Navy the young king was assembling at his accession. She was named, in the careful theology of the court, for the king's favourite sister Mary Tudor and for the rose that was her house's symbol. 500 tons at launch, rebuilt to perhaps 700 by the late 1530s, she carried between 78 and 91 guns in her prime and about 400 men at muster. She was a carrack of the early Tudor transition, built for both boarding and stand-off artillery, caught in the middle of a century-long change in the way European ships fought. Her lower gun ports, cut through the hull below the weather deck, were one of the innovations of her refit: they let her mount heavy bronze guns on the lowest deck, where their weight would not raise her centre of gravity, and fire through broadside rather than over the rail. The invention would transform naval warfare inside fifty years. It would also be her undoing. She fought in Henry's French war of 1512-1514 under Sir Edward Howard, carried the flag at the Battle of Saint-Mathieu, and survived the rest of her reign in and out of action. By July 1545 she was Vice-Admiral George Carew's flagship, moored at Portsmouth to meet a French invasion fleet of 200 ships and 30,000 men bearing down on the Solent. The Disaster The king reportedly heard the screaming of men trapped below decks, a detail preserved in the French account and repeated by English chroniclers the following generation. George Carew went down with his ship; Roger Grenville, captain, went with him. Around thirty-five men climbed out of the rigging or swam clear. Of the 415 aboard, 380 died in a ship that sank inside her own harbour, in a battle her navy was winning. The French ambassador wrote to Francis I that evening describing the sinking as providential; the English Privy Council wrote to Henry that it was inexplicable. Contemporary chroniclers settled on the heeling-and-gunports explanation within weeks. Modern forensic analysis of the recovered hull confirms the sequence but cannot resolve whether the triggering cause was a gust of wind, a badly stored weight of stone shot, or a helm misjudged by a steersman who had never sailed her with the new refit. Salvage began the next morning. Masts and guns were marked with buoys. Sir Peter Carew, brother of the admiral, was still trying to raise her through August. The Venetian engineer Piero Paolo Corsi, hired by the king, proposed passing cables under her and lifting her on the tide; several of her upper guns were recovered by this method. The lower hull resisted every attempt. In the winter of 1545 she sank further into the Solent mud and the salvors gave up.
6. 1588 — Girona. Spanish Armada galleass, the Giant's Causeway Location: Lacada Point, Giant's Causeway, County Antrim, Northern Ireland · Coordinates: 55.24°N 6.48°W · Casualties: ~1,300 · Survivors: 5 · Depth: 20 m · Cause: grounding · storm — Struck the rocks at Lacada Point on the north Antrim coast on the night of 26 October 1588, during the retreat of the Spanish Armada around Scotland and Ireland. She was overloaded with survivors from two earlier Armada wrecks. Broke up in minutes against the basalt cliffs of the Giant's Causeway. · Fate: excavated 1967-69 · Ulster Museum · Type: galleass · Neapolitan · Tonnage: ~700 tons · Crew: 550 · Flag: Spanish Empire · Launched: 1586 Neapolitan-built galleass of the Spanish Armada, hybrid of oars and sail. Limping home around Scotland after the Armada's defeat, she took aboard the survivors of two earlier wrecks and struck the rocks at Lacada Point on the Giant's Causeway on 26 October 1588. ~1,300 died. Five survived. Rediscovered in 1967 by the Belgian diver Robert Sténuit, her gold crosses and Neapolitan jewellery now sit in the Ulster Museum in Belfast. The Vessel The Girona was a galleass of the Spanish Armada, a hybrid sail-and-oar warship of the characteristic Neapolitan type, built at Naples in 1587 under Spanish administration of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. She was approximately 55 metres long, 650 tons, and was designed to combine the firepower and capacity of a galleon with the oared manoeuvrability of a Mediterranean war galley. The four Neapolitan galleasses of 1588 were the most advanced hybrid warships in European service. Her complement at her assignment to the Armada included 122 sailors, 300 rowers (mostly Spanish, Italian, and North African conscripts and prisoners), 197 soldiers, and a command staff of Neapolitan nobles and Spanish officers. She carried 50 heavy bronze cannon on three decks, a heavier main battery than any English ship of the Armada campaign. Her commander was Fabrizio Spinola, scion of the Genoese banking house, with overall galleass command under Don Hugo de Moncada. The Spanish Armada's four galleasses were, on paper, the most formidable ships of the invasion fleet. They sailed from Lisbon in May 1588 with the overall fleet of 130 vessels under the Duke of Medina Sidonia, reached the English Channel in July, and fought at the running engagements of Eddystone, Portland Bill, Isle of Wight, and Gravelines between 31 July and 8 August. The galleasses' heavy guns were effective in those actions; their rowed manoeuvrability less so in the open Channel. The Disaster She lost her steerage on the night of 26-27 October 1588 in a full westerly gale off the Antrim coast of what is now Northern Ireland. Driven eastward by the wind, she struck the rocks of Lacada Point on the Giant's Causeway some time before midnight on 26 October. The Giant's Causeway basalt is characteristic north Antrim coastline: a forty-metre cliff face rising from deep water, fronted by hexagonal basalt columns that form a natural serration at the waterline. She broke up in minutes. The galleass design, with its high upperworks for the oar banks and its narrow waist, was particularly vulnerable to basalt serration; her hull was destroyed before most of those aboard could reach the weather decks. Of the approximately 1,300 aboard, five made the shore alive; the rest drowned in the surf or were crushed on the rocks. She is, by casualty count, one of the worst losses of the entire Armada campaign. Survivors of the wreck who reached land were, under the standing orders of the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir William Fitzwilliam, to be executed as Spanish invaders. Five of the Girona's survivors apparently escaped this fate through the protection of the O'Neill and O'Cahan Irish Gaelic chieftains, whose Counter-Reformation sympathies with Catholic Spain ran stronger than their fear of English reprisal; they were smuggled eventually to Scotland and from there to the Spanish Netherlands. The 1,295 dead went into the North Antrim surf; some of their bodies were recovered over the fo
7. 1622 — Nuestra Señora de Atocha. Spanish galleon, Marquesas Keys, forty tonnes of silver Location: off Marquesas Keys, Florida · Coordinates: 24.52°N 82.02°W · Casualties: 260 · Survivors: 5 · Depth: 17 m · Cause: hurricane — Caught by a hurricane off the Florida Keys on 6 September 1622, the day after she departed Havana with the Tierra Firme treasure fleet. Driven onto the reef of Cayos del Marques. Sank in fifty-five feet of water with her cargo of silver, gold, and Colombian emeralds. · Fate: recovered 1985 · Mel Fisher · Type: galleon · Tierra Firme Fleet · Tonnage: 550 tons · Crew: 265 · Flag: Spanish Empire · Launched: 1620 Spanish treasure galleon, outbound from Havana with silver and emeralds for the crown. Caught by a hurricane off the Florida Keys on 6 September 1622 and driven onto the reef. 260 dead, five survivors found clinging to the mizzenmast. Mel Fisher located her in 1985 after a sixteen-year search, recovering what was then the most valuable shipwreck treasure ever raised: forty tonnes of silver, 125 gold bars, and 32 kilograms of Colombian emeralds. The Vessel Nuestra Señora de Atocha was a Spanish galleon built at Havana in the early 1620s for the Carrera de Indias, the annual silver-convoy run between the Spanish American viceroyalties and the Royal Mint at Seville. She was 34 metres on the keel, approximately 550 tons burden, built of West Indian hardwood to a Portuguese-Spanish hybrid design that combined deep holds for bullion with a fighting platform capable of carrying twenty guns. She sailed as the almiranta of the 1622 Tierra Firme fleet, the rear-guard command responsible for the safety of the squadron after the capitana (the fleet flagship) had peeled off to the eastern approaches. Her captain was Bartolomé García de Nodal, a veteran of the Strait of Magellan surveys and a senior officer in the colonial navy. Her cargo, loaded at Cartagena and Portobello between June and August 1622, included 24 tons of silver bullion, 180,000 silver pesos, 582 copper ingots, 125 gold bars and discs, 350 indigo chests, 525 bales of tobacco, and the private property of some 265 passengers, many returning to Spain after terms of colonial service. The registered value of her cargo, declared to the Spanish Crown for the 20 per cent royal fifth, was 1 million pesos; the actual value, including smuggled contraband, has been estimated at twice that figure. Her crew and passengers numbered 265 on her final voyage. The Tierra Firme fleet of 1622 was the largest silver convoy Spain had yet dispatched, reflecting both the intensified colonial extra The Disaster The Spanish Crown's salvage response was immediate and proportional to the loss. The Marquis of Cadereyta, still afloat, sent a salvage party from Havana under Captain Francisco Núñez Melián within three weeks; the operation continued until the mid-1630s. Native Indian divers from the Bahama Channel settlements recovered the Santa Margarita's upper cargo at depths of six to twelve metres; they were unable to reach the Atocha, which lay in deeper water. Melián located the Santa Margarita with a 680-kilo brass bell-lift apparatus and a diver on an umbilical in 1626. By the time he retired from the work in 1631 he had recovered approximately 350,000 pesos of silver from the Santa Margarita and had exhausted his credit with the Havana-based Casa de Contratación. Atocha herself he never found. The Spanish search was abandoned in 1635 when the Council of the Indies calculated that further salvage costs exceeded the expected recovery. The wreck lay undisturbed for 341 years. Her general location was known from the surviving court testimony, but the Marquesas Keys in the seventeenth century had been a featureless low archipelago five nautical miles west-southwest of Key West, and the 1622 hurricane had reshaped the archipelago itself. No chart accurately preserved where Atocha had sunk.
8. 1628 — Vasa. The most magnificent warship never to fight Location: Stockholm harbor, Sweden · Coordinates: 59.33°N 18.09°E · Casualties: ~30 · Survivors: ~120 · Depth: 32 m · Cause: design flaw — Top-heavy design with too many cannon above the waterline. A gust of wind 1,300 meters into her maiden voyage heeled her over; water entered through open gun ports; she sank in 32 meters. · Fate: raised 1961 · Type: warship · Tonnage: 1,200 tons · Crew: 145 · Flag: Kingdom of Sweden · Launched: 1627 Gustavus Adolphus's triumph of Swedish naval engineering capsized 1,300 meters into her maiden voyage in Stockholm harbor. Too top-heavy, too many cannon, too much royal ego. The Baltic's low salinity preserved her almost perfectly for 333 years. Now the most-visited museum in Scandinavia. The Vessel The Vasa was built in Stockholm between 1626 and 1628 for King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, then at the height of his military ambition in the Thirty Years' War. Her builder, Henrik Hybertsson, was a Dutch master shipwright working to a specification that changed through the build: the king had expanded her armament from a single to a double gun deck while she was already framed, and had ordered her lengthened to accommodate the extra weight. At launch she was the most heavily armed warship in the world, carrying 64 bronze guns firing a broadside of 267 kilos. She was 69 metres long from beakhead to taffrail, 1,200 tons displacement, and ornamented with more than five hundred carved figures in oak and pine, gilded and painted in the style of the late Dutch Baroque. She was the visible argument for Swedish naval power at the moment Sweden was becoming a European great power. She was also top-heavy. The double gun deck had been added above a hull designed for a single one; her ballast, 121 tons of stone, was insufficient to counter the weight of the upper guns and ornament. The navy's own captain, Söfring Hansson, had conducted a stability test before her voyage in which thirty men ran back and forth across her decks; she had rolled dangerously after three passes. The admiral overseeing the trial had stopped it before she rolled over and had written to the king with his concerns. The king was on campaign in Poland and did not reply. The Disaster She capsized and sank 1,300 metres into her maiden voyage, in front of the city of Stockholm, in front of the foreign diplomatic corps, in front of the families of her crew. The water at her final position was 32 metres deep. Of the perhaps 150 aboard, approximately 30 drowned, most of them civilian family members who had been below decks when she rolled. The inquiry that followed was constrained by the political sensitivity of the king's personal role in the design. The captain, Söfring Hansson, was arrested on the foredeck as the ship settled. His examination before the Riksråd focused on whether the crew had behaved drunkenly at the saluting guns or whether the ballast had shifted. He testified that the ballast had not moved, that the crew had been sober, that the stability had been tested and found wanting, and that the responsibility lay with the specification and not with his handling. The Riksråd accepted this and released him. No one else was ever charged. The admiralty commissioned a salvage expedition within weeks. Fifty of her guns were recovered between 1664 and 1665 by divers working from a bell. The rest of the wreck was considered unrecoverable and forgotten. She lay in the anaerobic Baltic mud for three hundred and thirty-three years, colonised by anaerobic bacteria that do not digest ship timbers; the teredo navalis worm that consumes wooden wrecks in warmer waters cannot survive the Baltic's low salinity.
9. 1629 — Batavia. Dutch East Indiaman, Australian coral reef, massacre Location: Houtman Abrolhos, Western Australia · Coordinates: 28.43°S 113.78°E · Casualties: ~125 · Survivors: ~165 · Depth: 5 m · Cause: grounding — Struck Morning Reef in the Houtman Abrolhos archipelago at night. The captain took the longboat to seek help in Batavia (Jakarta), leaving ~250 survivors marooned on nearby islands. · Fate: recovered 1970s · Type: merchant · East Indiaman · Tonnage: 1,200 tons · Crew: 341 · Flag: Dutch Republic · VOC · Launched: 1628 Struck Morning Reef off Western Australia. The captain sailed for help. In his absence, a conspiracy led by merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz seized control of the marooned survivors and murdered at least 115 men, women, and children over the following weeks. One of the darkest stories in the history of the sea. The Vessel The Batavia was a three-masted East Indiaman built at the Dutch East India Company's Peperwerf yard in Amsterdam in 1628. She was 45 metres long on the keel, 650 tons displacement, and carried 24 cast-iron guns for defence against Portuguese and English interlopers on the Cape-Batavia route. Her holds could carry 1,200 tons of cargo; her passenger decks were fitted for 340 souls. She was built for the Company's most profitable trade, the carriage of silver bullion and trade goods out to Batavia (Jakarta) and the return of nutmeg, clove, pepper, and cinnamon to the Amsterdam market. The VOC dispatched her on her maiden voyage in October 1628 under a senior captain, Ariaen Jacobszoon, and the Company's commercial supervisor François Pelsaert, who held the rank of upper-merchant and outranked the ship's master on all Company business. The third senior figure aboard was a 30-year-old Dutch apothecary named Jeronimus Cornelisz, rated as under-merchant, who had fled Amsterdam ahead of a heresy investigation into the Anabaptist prophet Torrentius and a bankruptcy. He had bought his VOC commission to get out of the Netherlands. Pelsaert and Jacobszoon did not know him. Cornelisz spent the passage cultivating a circle of disaffected young sailors, the core of what would become, before the voyage was over, a mutiny. The Disaster Pelsaert and Jacobszoon, once they had established that the ship was beyond saving, organised the transfer of as many survivors as possible to two small coral cays, Beacon Island and Traitor's Island, and to a nearby third cay they named "High Island". Most of the survivors, some 250 people, were landed on Beacon Island with what food and water could be salvaged. The drinking water supply of the islands was negligible; the party could survive perhaps ten days before thirst began to kill them. Pelsaert, Jacobszoon, a handful of officers, and about forty crew and passengers departed on 8 June 1629 in the ship's longboat for Batavia, 3,200 kilometres to the north, to seek rescue. They took with them most of the remaining water. The voyage, which Pelsaert's journal later described in exacting detail, took 33 days of open-boat sailing in what are among the worst conditions ever documented; they reached Batavia on 7 July and were rushed by the Dutch governor-general Jan Coen onto the VOC yacht Sardam with orders to return immediately to the Abrolhos. In the 90 days between Pelsaert's departure and the Sardam's arrival at the wreck on 16 September, Cornelisz took control of the stranded population. He confiscated the remaining weapons and stores. He reduced the drinking-water ration for everyone except his own inner circle. He then began, with a faction of approximately twenty men, to murder those islanders he judged unreliable, drowning them in the lagoon, killing them at close qua
10. 1676 — Kronan. Swedish flagship, the Battle of Öland, the magazine Location: south of Öland, Baltic Sea · Coordinates: 56.67°N 16.53°E · Casualties: ~800 · Survivors: ~50 · Depth: 26 m · Cause: capsized · magazine explosion — Heeled sharply during a tactical turn at the Battle of Öland on 1 June 1676 against a combined Danish-Dutch fleet. Her gun ports were open. The powder magazine ignited and she blew apart. She sank in under an hour. · Fate: excavated from 1980 · Kalmar Läns Museum · Type: warship · first rate · Tonnage: 2,140 tons · Crew: 850 · Flag: Kingdom of Sweden · Launched: 1668 Flagship of the Swedish navy, 124 guns, the largest warship in the world when she launched. At the Battle of Öland on 1 June 1676, a sudden turn with gun ports open pitched her over; the magazine ignited and she exploded in minutes. ~800 dead, ~50 survived. Discovered in 1980 by Anders Franzén, the same man who located the Vasa; her site has been excavated continuously for more than forty years. The Vessel The Kronan (Swedish: "the Crown") was a Swedish first-rate ship of the line, built at Stockholm between 1668 and 1672 under the direction of the English shipwright Francis Sheldon. At 2,140 tons displacement, 53 metres in length, and armed with 124 bronze guns, she was the largest warship in the world at the time of her commissioning and remained among the five largest for the decade of her active service. Her construction cost, approximately 326,000 riksdaler, represented the equivalent of roughly 10 per cent of the annual Swedish state budget of the 1670s. Kronan was the flagship of the Swedish navy and the personal prestige ship of King Karl XI. She embodied the naval ambitions of Sweden at the peak of its seventeenth-century imperial phase, when Swedish territorial possessions extended across the Baltic to include Finland, Estonia, Livonia, and parts of northern Germany. Her design drew on English and Dutch naval architectural precedent (Sheldon had previously worked at Chatham Dockyard), but her armament and decorative scheme were distinctly Swedish: extensive gilded carvings across her stern and quarterdeck depicted scenes from Swedish mythology and the iconography of the Vasa dynasty. Her complement in wartime was approximately 850: 500 sailors and gunners, 300 soldiers of the marine infantry embarked for boarding actions, and 50 officers. Her master on her final voyage was Vice Admiral Lorentz Creutz, a 60-year-old career naval officer who had been appointed commander The Disaster At approximately 14:00 on 1 June 1676, Kronan executed a turning manoeuvre to bring her broadside to bear on the approaching Danish fleet. The manoeuvre was a standard line-of-battle tactical turn, but it was executed in conditions that were marginal for a ship of her size: strong southwesterly wind, heavy swell, and insufficient reefing of her topsails. As Kronan heeled into the turn, her hull angle exceeded approximately 35 degrees from the vertical. At this angle, water flooded into her lower gunports, which had been left open for action; the lower gun deck began to flood progressively. The heeling increased. Within less than two minutes of the initial heel, the ship was beyond the point of recovery: she heeled further, the loose gun carriages on her lower deck ran to leeward, and the concentration of 40-plus tonnes of bronze guns shifted to her downward side. Then, at approximately 14:05 on 1 June 1676, Kronan's powder magazine exploded. The explosion tore the forward third of the ship apart; the detonation was heard on Öland five kilometres away and was clearly audible from the bridge of the Danish flagship Christianus Quintus. The forward section of the ship disintegrated; the stern section, still intact, capsized and sank within approximately four minutes of the explosion. Of the 850 aboard, only 42 survived, rescued by boats from the nearby Swedish ship Svärdet. The 808 dead included Vice Admiral Creutz and all the senior officers of the Swedish flagship. The immediat
11. 1707 — HMS Association. Scilly, longitude miscalculated, four ships in an hour Location: Gilstone Ledge, Isles of Scilly, Cornwall · Coordinates: 49.89°N 6.39°W · Casualties: ~800 (Association) · ~2,000 total · Survivors: 0 (Association) · Depth: 30 m · Cause: grounding — Struck Gilstone Ledge in thick weather on the night of 22 October 1707 while returning from the Mediterranean with Admiral Cloudesley Shovell's squadron. Longitude miscalculation placed the fleet well north of where the navigators believed. HMS Eagle, HMS Romney, and HMS Firebrand were lost in the same disaster. · Fate: located 1967 · protected · Type: warship · 90-gun second rate · Tonnage: 1,459 tons · Crew: 800 · Flag: Kingdom of Great Britain · Launched: 1697 Flagship of Admiral Cloudesley Shovell, returning with the Mediterranean squadron on the night of 22 October 1707. Shovell's navigators miscalculated their longitude in thick weather and put the fleet onto the rocks of the Isles of Scilly; four ships went down inside an hour. Between 1,400 and 2,000 dead, the worst peacetime naval disaster in British history. The catastrophe was the direct spur to the Longitude Act of 1714 and the search for an accurate marine chronometer. The Vessel HMS Association was a 90-gun second-rate ship of the line, the flagship of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell of the Royal Navy Mediterranean Squadron. She had been laid down at Portsmouth Dockyard in 1696, launched in 1697, and was considered by her contemporaries one of the finest English capital ships of her generation. She was 50 metres long on the gun deck, 1,459 tons, and manned at her final voyage by 800 men. Her main armament of twenty-six 32-pound lower-tier guns was the heaviest metal afloat under an English flag. She was the product of the Royal Navy's late seventeenth-century professionalisation under William III, the moment at which the English navy surpassed both the French and Dutch fleets in tonnage, training, and operational organisation. Her career under Shovell between 1704 and 1707 had been one of the highest-profile flag assignments in the service: she had been present at the capture of Gibraltar in August 1704, at the Battle of Vélez-Málaga that same month, and at the failed allied attempt on Toulon in the summer of 1707. Her return from the Toulon campaign in autumn 1707 was to be Shovell's triumphal homecoming. The Mediterranean Squadron, 21 ships in all, was under orders to return to Portsmouth by the end of October 1707. The weather through that autumn had been severe across the western Channel approaches. On 21 October 1707 Shovell's fleet was approximately 1,000 kilometres west of Brest, running east-northeast on a course toward Plymouth under topsails The Disaster At approximately 20:00 on the evening of 22 October 1707, the lookout aboard Association sighted breaking water directly ahead. The alarm was given; the ship was already too close to the rocks to clear them. Association struck the outer reef of Gilstone Ledge off the Bishop Rock at 20:02. Her hull opened below the waterline and she sank inside four minutes. Of her 800 crew, none survived the initial impact. Admiral Shovell, his two stepsons Henry and James Narborough, his flag captain Edmund Loades, and the 796 other men aboard Association drowned within sight of the Scilly coast. Shovell's body washed ashore at Porthellick Cove on St Mary's the following morning; local tradition records that he was still alive when he reached the beach and was murdered for the ring on his finger by a local woman who was subsequently remembered in Scilly folklore. His body was preserved for autopsy and eventually buried at Westminster Abbey with full state honours. Three other Royal Navy ships of the squadron were lost in the same sequence of events: HMS Eagle (70 guns, 380 dead, wrecked at Crim Rocks that night), HMS Romney (48 guns, 300 dead, wrecked at Bishop Rock), and HMS Firebrand (fireship, 24 dead, wrecked at St Agnes). Two other ships of the squadron, HMS Phoenix and HMS La Valeur, ran aground but were refloated with heavy casualties. The total death toll was between 1,400 and 2,000 English sailors in a single night, the worst peacetime naval disaster in British history at the time a
12. 1717 — Whydah Gally. Black Sam Bellamy, Cape Cod, the pirate wreck Location: off Wellfleet, Cape Cod, Massachusetts · Coordinates: 41.93°N 70.00°W · Casualties: 144 · Survivors: 2 · 9 captured · Depth: 9 m · Cause: storm · grounding — Caught in a violent nor'easter off Cape Cod on the night of 26 April 1717 while commanded by the pirate Samuel 'Black Sam' Bellamy. Blown onto the sandbar off Wellfleet stern-first in darkness. Broke apart in minutes and sank in shallow water. · Fate: located 1984 · Whydah Pirate Museum · Type: galley · pirate flagship (former slaver) · Tonnage: 300 tons · Crew: 146 · Flag: pirate · Jolly Roger · Launched: 1715 Former slave ship, galley-built, captured in February 1717 by the pirate Sam Bellamy off the Windward Passage. Caught in a nor'easter off Cape Cod two months later, she struck the sandbar at Wellfleet in the night. Bellamy and 142 of his crew died; two men made shore alive, nine more were captured and hanged in Boston the same year. Discovered in 1984 by Barry Clifford, the first authenticated pirate shipwreck ever excavated. The Vessel The Whydah Gally was a three-masted galley built at Ratcliffe on the Thames in 1715 for the London merchant Sir Humphrey Morice, one of the largest investors in the English slave trade of the early eighteenth century. She was 31 metres long on the keel, approximately 300 tons burden, pierced for 18 guns, and fitted with both conventional square-rig sail and with the sweep-oar ports characteristic of the galley subtype that gave her her class name. She was designed for the triangular trade: manufactured goods from London to the West African coast, human cargo from the Slave Coast to the Caribbean, sugar and tobacco from the Caribbean back to London. She was named after the Kingdom of Whydah, the small but powerful West African polity on the coast of what is now Benin, which was in the early eighteenth century one of the two principal entrepôts of the European slave trade (alongside Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast). Whydah's port, Ouidah, was where the Whydah Gally was intended to load her human cargo. Her first trading voyage, from London in early 1716, included a call at Whydah where she embarked 367 enslaved Africans, most of them Fon, Ewe, and Yoruba captives taken in the wars between Dahomey and the Oyo Empire. She delivered them to the English colony of Jamaica in autumn 1716 in what had been, by the standards of the trade, an unusually short Middle Passage with relatively low mortality. She departed Jamaica in February 1717 carrying sugar, indigo, ivory, and silver b The Disaster Whydah Gally reached the approaches to Cape Cod on the evening of 26 April 1717. The weather that night deteriorated into what eighteenth-century meteorological records identify as a severe spring nor'easter, one of the worst recorded on the Massachusetts coast in the decade. The storm was accompanied by thick fog and a falling barometer. Bellamy had caught a small pink, the Mary Anne, earlier that afternoon and had placed a prize crew aboard her to sail her in company into Provincetown Harbor. The Mary Anne's prize crew got separated from the Whydah in the thickening weather at about 22:00. The Whydah continued under reduced sail toward Cape Cod with Bellamy's own company aboard: his pirate crew, the 25 volunteers from Whydah, and a handful of prisoners he had not yet released. Between 23:00 and 00:00 on the night of 26-27 April 1717, the Whydah Gally struck the sandbar at Wellfleet, on the Outer Cape of Massachusetts, in a northeasterly gale and a strong onshore swell. She struck stern-first and was driven onto the bar. The waves tore her apart within minutes. She capsized, her masts snapped, her hull broke in two, and her cargo of silver and gold was scattered across the bottom of a forty-foot-deep kettle hole forty-five metres offshore. Bellamy went down with his ship. Of the approximately 146 people aboard her, two survived by clinging to floating wreckage and reaching the Wellfleet beach alive: John Julian, a Native American pirate from the Miskito coast of Honduras, an
13. 1741 — HMS Wager. Patagonia, mutiny, David Grann's book Location: Gulf of Penas, Patagonia, Chile · Coordinates: 47.70°S 75.05°W · Casualties: ~140 (incl. island deaths) · Survivors: ~36 · Depth: 10 m · Cause: grounding · storm — Detached from Commodore George Anson's Pacific squadron in a gale rounding Cape Horn. Struck uncharted rocks in the Gulf of Penas on 14 May 1741. Some of the crew reached a small island; the survival crisis that followed produced one of the most famous mutinies in Royal Navy history. · Fate: confirmed 2006 · hull fragments recovered · Type: warship · sixth rate · Tonnage: 559 tons · Crew: 180 · Flag: Kingdom of Great Britain · Launched: 1734 Royal Navy sixth-rate, detached from Commodore Anson's Pacific squadron in a gale at Cape Horn. Wrecked on the uncharted rocks of the Gulf of Penas, Patagonia, on 14 May 1741. ~120 men went ashore; around 36 came home, two years and a mutiny later. The survivors' rival accounts of the island ordeal, including Captain Cheap's authority and the shooting that split the crew, became the first naval court-martial conducted in print in the English language, and were fixed for the modern reader by David Grann's 2023 book. The Vessel HMS Wager was a British sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, originally constructed in 1734 as an East Indiaman for the British East India Company and converted to naval service in 1739. She was 37 metres long, 500 tons displacement, and armed with 28 guns of mixed 9- and 6-pounder calibre. She was, for a converted East Indiaman, a lightly-built ship: her hull timbers were thinner than a purpose-built naval frigate of her rate, and her accommodation arrangements, designed for a Company trading voyage, were indifferently suited to long naval deployment. She was purchased by the Royal Navy in 1739 at the outbreak of the War of Jenkins' Ear between Britain and Spain. Her conversion to naval service at Deptford Dockyard included the installation of her 28 guns, the reorganisation of her accommodation for a naval crew of 160 officers and ratings, and the strengthening of her deck planking for the weight of her armament. The conversion was completed in April 1740. Her master on her final voyage was Captain Dandy Kidd, who was appointed to her on her commissioning into naval service. Kidd died of fever in November 1740 during the South Atlantic crossing; command then passed to Captain David Cheap, a 40-year-old Scottish officer who had previously served under Admiral George Anson in the Mediterranean. The Disaster On the morning of 14 May 1741, Wager was sailing northwest along what her officers believed was the open Chilean coast, at approximately 100 kilometres offshore. In reality, due to the accumulated dead-reckoning error, she was within 15 kilometres of the coastal archipelago of the Guayaneco Islands, at approximately 47 degrees south latitude. At approximately 04:30 on 14 May 1741, Wager struck a submerged rock off the western coast of what is now Wager Island, in the Guayaneco archipelago. The impact holed her bow below the waterline; she began to flood immediately and drove onto the coastal rocks. Within approximately two hours, HMS Wager was wedged on the rocks with her hull broken amidships and her masts collapsed across her foredeck. Of the 160 aboard, 140 survived the initial grounding and made it to the desolate shore of Wager Island: a cold, mountainous, and almost uninhabited piece of land on the western Patagonian coast. The survival situation was among the worst documented in eighteenth-century naval history. The island was effectively uninhabited apart from occasional Kawésqar indigenous fishing parties; the climate was continuously cold, wet, and stormy; the food resources were limited to shellfish, seabirds, and seaweed. Over the subsequent 14 months, the Wager survivors divided into factions, mutinied against Captain Cheap, separated into smaller parties attempting independent escape, and suffered progressive attrition from starvation, exposure, drowning in atte
14. 1760 — HMS Ramillies. 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
15. 1782 — HMS Royal George. Spithead, heeled too far, at anchor Location: Spithead, Portsmouth, England · Coordinates: 50.78°N 1.10°W · Casualties: ~800-900 · Survivors: ~300 · Depth: 20 m · Cause: capsized — Heeled deliberately at anchor at Spithead on 29 August 1782 to repair a leaking water cock below the waterline. The heel was carried too far; water entered the lower gun ports and she rolled onto her beam ends. Sank in twenty metres in minutes, with almost everyone aboard trapped below. · Fate: cleared as hazard 1839-1843 · Type: warship · 100-gun first rate · Tonnage: 2,047 tons · Crew: 867 · Flag: Kingdom of Great Britain · Launched: 1756 Royal Navy first rate, 100 guns, Admiral Kempenfelt's flagship. Heeled intentionally at Spithead on 29 August 1782 to repair a leak below her waterline; the heel was carried too far, water entered the open gun ports, and she capsized at her anchor. Between 800 and 900 dead, including the admiral and several hundred wives, children, and merchants visiting the ship in harbour. Cowper's poem 'Loss of the Royal George' preserved the catastrophe in English literature. The Vessel HMS Royal George was a British first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built at Woolwich Dockyard between 1746 and 1756. She was 54 metres long, 2,047 tons displacement, and armed with 100 guns on three full gun decks (twenty-eight 42-pounders on the lower deck, twenty-eight 24-pounders on the middle deck, twenty-eight 12-pounders on the upper deck, and sixteen 6-pounders on the quarterdeck and forecastle). At her commissioning she was, along with HMS Victory launched nine years later, among the most heavily armed ships in the world. She had served as the flagship of Admiral Sir Edward Hawke at the Battle of Quiberon Bay on 20 November 1759, the decisive British naval victory of the Seven Years' War. Her subsequent service had been continuous through the Seven Years' War and the American War of Independence; by 1782 she was 26 years old, substantially worn, and in need of comprehensive dockyard refit. Her master in August 1782 was Rear-Admiral Richard Kempenfelt, aged 64, a distinguished career officer of Swedish-Scottish parentage who had developed the Royal Navy's signal-flag code system (the Kempenfelt signal book, adopted fleet-wide in 1779) and who was one of the most respected tactical officers of his generation. Her captain was Martin Waghorn; her complement at Portsmouth in August 1782 was approximately 867 naval personnel, plus an additional approximately 300 civilian visitors (primarily the families of the crew, traders, and Portsmouth dock workers) aboard wh The Disaster At approximately 09:20 on 29 August 1782, during the heeling operation, the structural condition of Royal George's 26-year-old lower hull timbers failed catastrophically. The specific failure mechanism, subsequently reconstructed by the Admiralty inquiry, was a combination of rotten hull frames along the ship's port quarter and the concentrated weight of the heeled ship exceeding the structural capacity of the deteriorated timbers. The port lower deck gunports, which had been opened to facilitate the heeling operation, were now below the waterline due to the heel angle. As the port hull frames failed, the hull lost its lateral stability; the ship's heel increased from 8 degrees to approximately 20 degrees within approximately 30 seconds; water began pouring into the open lower gunports at a rate that the ship's pumps could not possibly address. HMS Royal George capsized at her anchorage in approximately 90 seconds from the onset of the structural failure. She rolled onto her port beam; her masts touched the water; water poured into the ship through every opening in her port side. The concentration of the heeled armament on the port side, which had been the purpose of the heeling operation, now accelerated the capsize by providing approximately 600 tonnes of concentrated weight on the downward side. The loss of life was catastrophic and specifically concentrated among those below decks who had no warning of the capsize. Of the approximately 1,170 aboard (867 naval personnel pl
16. 1800 — HMS Queen Charlotte. Livorno, hay on a match tub, the magazine Location: off Livorno, Tyrrhenian Sea · Coordinates: 43.60°N 10.33°E · Casualties: 673 · Survivors: ~160 · Depth: destroyed · Cause: fire · magazine explosion — Caught fire at anchor off Livorno on the morning of 17 March 1800, reportedly when loose hay ignited on a lit match tub in the cable tier. The crew fought the fire for hours but could not reach the magazine before the flames did. She exploded at eleven. · Fate: destroyed · Type: warship · 100-gun first rate · Tonnage: 2,286 tons · Crew: 850 · Flag: Kingdom of Great Britain · Launched: 1790 Royal Navy first rate, 100 guns, Lord Keith's Mediterranean flagship (her admiral ashore). At anchor off Livorno on the morning of 17 March 1800, loose hay caught on a lit match tub in the cable tier and ignited; the crew could not contain it. She burned four hours before the magazine went up at eleven. 673 dead, nearly every man aboard. The flag captain, Andrew Todd, died with the ship. The Vessel HMS Queen Charlotte was a British first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built at Chatham Dockyard between 1785 and 1790 and named after Queen Charlotte, the consort of King George III. She was 57 metres long, 2,286 tons displacement, and armed with 100 guns on three full gun decks: thirty 32-pounders on the lower deck, twenty-eight 24-pounders on the middle deck, thirty 12-pounders on the upper deck, and twelve 6-pounder chase guns. She was, at her commissioning in 1790, the newest first-rate in the Royal Navy. Her most celebrated service was as Admiral Lord Howe's flagship at the Battle of the Glorious First of June (1 June 1794), the first major naval battle of the French Revolutionary Wars. At that engagement, Queen Charlotte had led the British line through the French formation in the tactical manoeuvre that destroyed the French fleet's cohesion; Lord Howe's tactical innovation of "breaking the line" was conducted from Queen Charlotte's quarterdeck. The battle produced British casualties of approximately 290 killed and 858 wounded; Queen Charlotte herself had suffered approximately 35 dead and 100 wounded during the engagement. Her subsequent service through 1800 had been continuous through the French Revolutionary Wars. Her master in March 1800 was Rear-Admiral George Keith Elphinstone, Lord Keith, commander-in-chief of the British Mediterranean fleet. Her captain was Andrew Todd, 42, a career officer of long Mediterranean service. Her complement in March 1800 w The Disaster The fire-fighting efforts failed to contain the fire. The specific failure mechanism was the continuous supply of oxygen to the fire from the ship's natural ventilation arrangements, combined with the tarred rope and rigging near the upper deck, which ignited within approximately 15 minutes of the initial fire. By 06:30 on 17 March 1800, Queen Charlotte's upper deck was substantially engulfed in flame. The fire spread rapidly down through the ship's hatches to the middle gun deck and the lower gun deck. By 07:00, the middle deck was in flame; the lower gun deck, where her 32-pounder guns were stationed along with approximately 200 barrels of salted provisions, was compromised. The ship's gunpowder magazine, located below the lower gun deck, was now at imminent risk of igniting. Captain Todd's response was immediate: he ordered the gunpowder magazine flooded with seawater at approximately 07:15, which prevented the magazine detonating but did not arrest the main fire. The ship's boats were launched, and evacuation of the crew commenced; however, the fire had spread so rapidly that substantial portions of the ship's company were trapped below decks by the burning upper deck and the collapsing companion ladders. HMS Queen Charlotte burned for approximately 11 hours before the fire reached her powder magazines despite the flooding attempt. The magazine detonation occurred at approximately 17:00 on 17 March 1800, destroying the forward third of the ship. The remaining aft section
17. 1845 — HMS Erebus & Terror. The Franklin Expedition, swallowed by the Arctic Location: King William Island, Nunavut, Canada · Coordinates: 68.9°N 98.8°W (approximate) · Casualties: 129 · Survivors: 0 · Depth: 11 m (Erebus) · 24 m (Terror) · Cause: ice · starvation — Beset by pack ice in Victoria Strait from September 1846. Abandoned April 1848 after the deaths of Franklin and 23 others. The remaining 105 men marched south; all died from exposure, starvation, lead poisoning, and in the final stages, cannibalism. · Fate: found 2014 · 2016 · Type: exploration · Royal Navy bomb vessels · Tonnage: 372 tons (Erebus) · 325 tons (Terror) · Crew: 129 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1826 (Erebus) · 1813 (Terror) Sir John Franklin's expedition to find the Northwest Passage vanished with all hands. Inuit testimony of cannibalism among the final survivors was dismissed by Victorian society and vindicated by 20th-century forensic archaeology. The ships themselves were not found until the 2010s, exactly where the Inuit had always said they were. The Vessel HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were Hecla-class bomb vessels of the Royal Navy, small three-masted ships built originally in the Napoleonic era to carry mortars for shore bombardment. Terror was laid down at Topsham in 1813; Erebus at Pembroke Dockyard in 1826. Their mortars had been removed in the 1830s and their hulls strengthened for polar work: their bows were reinforced with iron plating, their internal frames doubled, their keels braced against ice pressure. They had been built thickly enough in the first place to absorb the recoil of twelve-inch mortars, which made them some of the strongest small ships the Royal Navy had ever built. Both ships had circumnavigated Antarctica under James Clark Ross between 1839 and 1843 and had proved their ice-worthiness in conditions harder than any they were likely to see in the Arctic. On their refit for the 1845 Arctic expedition, they were fitted with 20-horsepower steam engines adapted from London and Greenwich Railway locomotives, coupled to screw propellers that could be lifted clear of the ice. Each ship carried three years of provisions, tinned meat from the contractor Stephan Goldner, and the finest ice-capable hulls the Royal Navy had produced. The expedition was to be commanded by Sir John Franklin, 59 years old, a veteran of Trafalgar and of two previous Arctic expeditions, recently returned from a six-year governorship of Van Diemen's Land. His second-in-command was Francis Crozier in Terror; his first officer in Erebus was J The Disaster The details of the march and deaths of Franklin's 105 were reconstructed piecewise across 150 years from Inuit oral testimony, scattered skeletal remains, the 1854 report of the Hudson's Bay surveyor John Rae, and the forensic archaeology of the late twentieth century. The party walked south for perhaps 300 kilometres before it broke apart, leaving small groups to die on the island and on the mainland opposite. Lead poisoning from the solder of Goldner's tinned provisions, scurvy from insufficient vitamin C, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and exposure were the principal causes. Inuit witnesses reported to Rae in 1854 that the final survivors had been reduced to cannibalism. Rae's report was attacked by Dickens and the Royal Navy establishment as slander; modern forensic analysis of cut marks on recovered bones has vindicated Rae. Lady Franklin, her husband's widow, funded a decade of search expeditions between 1847 and 1857 that mapped most of the Canadian Arctic in the process of failing to recover her husband's body. Her 1857 Fox expedition under Leopold McClintock found the Point Victory cairn with its 1848 note, Franklin's death record, and the tracks of the southward march. The expedition became the model and the recruiting device for most of the great polar explorations of the next half-century. The ships themselves, abandoned on the ice, drifted south with the pack. Inuit witnesses reported to McClintock, Charles Francis Hall, and Frederick Schwatka between 1857 and 1880 tha
18. 1852 — HMS Birkenhead. Danger Point, the Birkenhead drill Location: Danger Point, Gansbaai, South Africa · Coordinates: 34.63°S 19.30°E · Casualties: ~450 · Survivors: 193 · Depth: 30 m · Cause: grounding — Struck a submerged rock off Danger Point on the south coast of the Cape Colony at 02:00 on 26 February 1852 while ferrying reinforcements to the Cape Frontier War. The bow section tore open and flooded the forward troop compartments. She broke in half within twenty minutes. · Fate: broken up · protected · Type: troopship · paddle-steam frigate · Tonnage: 1,400 tons · Crew: 138 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1845 British troopship, one of the first iron-hulled naval vessels, ferrying reinforcements for the Cape Frontier War. Struck an uncharted rock off Danger Point at two in the morning on 26 February 1852. The senior officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Seton, ordered his soldiers to stand fast on deck so the three boats could take the women and children first. Of 445 aboard, 193 survived. The protocol she accidentally invented, the 'Birkenhead drill', became custom through the age of steam. The Vessel HMS Birkenhead was a British paddle-wheel iron troopship of the Royal Navy, built at the John Laird yard at Birkenhead on the Mersey between 1844 and 1846. She had originally been laid down as an iron-hulled steam frigate, but the Royal Navy's reassessment of iron warship construction during her building (specifically, the 1845 trials at Portsmouth which demonstrated that iron hull plates shattered catastrophically under solid shot impact) led to her completion as an unarmed troopship rather than a warship. She was 64 metres long, 1,405 tons displacement, and propelled by two paddle wheels driven by a 564-horsepower twin-cylinder steam engine. Her conversion to troopship role meant that her primary function was the transport of British Army personnel to imperial garrisons, predominantly along the eastern Atlantic and Indian Ocean trooping circuits. Her accommodation had been configured for approximately 620 embarked troops plus a crew of 125; the troop accommodation was located on her main deck with basic berthing arrangements, whilst the ship's officers and the senior army officers were quartered in the stern cabins. Her master on her final voyage was Captain Robert Salmond, 43, an experienced Royal Navy officer who had commanded Birkenhead since 1850. Her senior embarked army officer on the final voyage was Colonel Alexander Seton of the 74th Regiment of Foot, who commanded the embarked reinforcement draft of officers and enlisted men bound for the Eighth Xhosa War in south The Disaster At approximately 01:55 on 26 February 1852, HMS Birkenhead struck a previously uncharted submerged rock near Danger Point, approximately 2.5 kilometres offshore. The impact holed her hull below the waterline on the port side; her forward watertight compartment began flooding immediately. The second compartment breached within approximately 90 seconds of the initial impact. She began to settle by the bow. Captain Salmond's assessment, made within approximately three minutes of the impact, was that the ship could not be saved. The seas were moderate, the air temperature was approximately 18 degrees Celsius, the water temperature was approximately 15 degrees Celsius, and the shore lay approximately 2.5 kilometres to the north. The ship carried three serviceable lifeboats; together they had capacity for approximately 120 people, far fewer than the 630 aboard. The specific response that made Birkenhead historically significant was the conduct of her embarked army officers and ranks. Colonel Seton, commanding the embarked troops, assessed the situation and ordered his soldiers to assemble on the upper deck in parade formation. The standing orders given to the troops were explicit: the lifeboats would be loaded exclusively with the women and children aboard, followed by such sailors as were required to man the boats; the soldiers would remain in parade formation on the sinking ship until the boats had cleared. The soldiers obeyed the order. All 25 civilian women and children were su
19. 1862 — USS Cumberland. Hampton Roads, the ironclad, the ram Location: Hampton Roads, Newport News, Virginia · Coordinates: 36.98°N 76.30°W · Casualties: 121 · Survivors: 255 · Depth: 18 m · Cause: naval ramming — Rammed by the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia (ex-USS Merrimack) at Hampton Roads at 14:00 on 8 March 1862. The ram punched a seven-foot hole in her starboard bow below the waterline. She returned fire as she heeled over and sank bow-first, flag still flying. · Fate: protected war grave · partly salvaged · Type: sloop-of-war · 24-gun sail frigate · Tonnage: 1,726 tons · Crew: 376 · Flag: United States · Union · Launched: 1842 Union Navy sloop, flagship of the Hampton Roads blockade squadron. Rammed and sunk by the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia on 8 March 1862, one day before USS Monitor arrived. 121 dead; her flag stayed flying as she went down. Her destruction proved that wooden-hulled warships could no longer survive the age of steam and armor, and sent the Union's untested Monitor hurrying south overnight to meet the same adversary. The Vessel USS Cumberland was an American sailing frigate of the United States Navy, built at the Boston Navy Yard between 1825 and 1842 and launched on 24 May 1842. She was 53 metres long, 1,726 tons displacement, and originally armed with 54 guns of mixed 32-pounder and 9-pounder calibre. Her design reflected the final generation of American sailing frigate construction; at her commissioning in 1843, she was among the most advanced purely-sailing warships in the United States Navy. Her service history was substantial. She had been Commodore Matthew C. Perry's flagship during the Mexican-American War blockade of Veracruz (1846-1847); she had served as flagship of the US African Squadron conducting anti-slavery patrols off the West African coast (1850-1851); she had participated in the US Mediterranean Squadron operations of the 1850s. By 1856, she was substantially outdated by the Royal Navy's and French Navy's contemporary steam-powered ships; she was reduced from frigate to sloop-of-war rating in 1856 and re-armed with 22 of the heavier 9-inch Dahlgren smoothbore shell guns plus two pivot guns. By early 1862, she was assigned to the Union blockade of the Confederate ports of the Chesapeake Bay region. Her master on 8 March 1862 was Lieutenant George Upham Morris, aged 32, commanding in the absence of her commanding officer Captain William Radford (who was ashore on the day of the engagement). Her complement was 376 officers and ratings. The Disaster At approximately 14:00 on 8 March 1862, CSS Virginia closed with USS Cumberland to approximately 90 metres range and opened fire with her bow pivot gun. The 7-inch Brooke shell struck Cumberland's starboard side at approximately the waterline and penetrated her wooden hull; the shell detonated in the berth deck, killing approximately 30 men in a single burst. Cumberland returned fire with her full starboard broadside of 11 heavy guns. The Union shells struck Virginia's iron armour at point-blank range; the armour held. The Confederate ironclad was impervious to the heaviest weapons that a conventional wooden warship could bring to bear. Virginia then closed to ramming range. She had been equipped with a 680-kilogram cast-iron ram on her bow, specifically designed to destroy wooden ships at close quarters. At approximately 14:20 on 8 March 1862, Virginia struck Cumberland on her starboard bow and drove the iron ram into the wooden hull at approximately 4 knots impact speed. The ram punched a breach approximately 2 metres wide in Cumberland's starboard hull below the waterline. The impact was so severe that Virginia's ram sheared off and remained embedded in Cumberland's hull; Virginia reversed engines and pulled away, leaving Cumberland to sink. Water poured into the breached starboard hull at a rate that the ship's pumps could not possibly address; Cumberland began to settle by the bow. Lieutenant Morris's decision was not to abandon ship. The gun crews continued to fire the
20. 1862 — USS Monitor. Cape Hatteras, the ironclad that ended sail Location: off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina · Coordinates: 35.00°N 75.40°W · Casualties: 16 · Survivors: 47 · Depth: 70 m · Cause: storm · foundered — Foundered under tow on the night of 31 December 1862 in a Cape Hatteras gale while en route from Hampton Roads to Beaufort. The low-freeboard turret ship took on water through her ventilators and rolled over. Sank in seventy metres. · Fate: turret raised 2002 · Mariners' Museum · Type: ironclad · turret warship · Tonnage: 987 tons · Crew: 63 · Flag: United States · Union · Launched: 1862 Union Navy ironclad, revolutionary low-freeboard turret ship (a cheesebox on a raft, as her detractors called her). Fought CSS Virginia to a draw at Hampton Roads in March 1862 and ended the age of wooden-hulled naval warfare in a single afternoon. Foundered in a storm off Cape Hatteras on New Year's Eve 1862: 16 dead, 47 rescued by USS Rhode Island. Discovered in 1973 and her turret raised in 2002, now on display at the Mariners' Museum in Virginia. The Vessel USS Monitor was the first ironclad warship commissioned by the United States Navy, designed by the Swedish-American engineer John Ericsson and built by the Continental Iron Works at Greenpoint, Brooklyn, between October 1861 and February 1862. She was 53 metres long, 987 tons displacement, with a low-freeboard armoured hull protecting an 18-inch iron-plated cylindrical revolving gun turret mounting two 11-inch Dahlgren smoothbore guns. Her design was the most radical warship concept of the nineteenth century. Ericsson's hull sat so low in the water that her main deck was only 45 centimetres above the waterline; her superstructure consisted of the turret and a small armoured pilothouse forward. She had no masts, no sails, no sides above the waterline to speak of. Her critics called her "a cheesebox on a raft". Her construction was funded under a Congressional emergency appropriation with the specific mission of countering the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimack), which was known to be under conversion at Portsmouth, Virginia. She was commissioned under Lieutenant John Lorimer Worden on 25 February 1862, crewed by 58 Union Navy volunteers, and despatched south to Hampton Roads under tow by the steam tug Seth Low on 6 March 1862. She had not been sea trialled. Her crew had not trained in her turret mechanism. She was, as Worden described her in his letter to his wife, "the oddest ship in creation, and likely to go down in any weather at all". The Disaster Her end came in the winter. On 29 December 1862 she was ordered south from Hampton Roads to Beaufort, North Carolina, to support a Union amphibious operation against Wilmington. She was taken in tow by the sidewheel steamer USS Rhode Island and departed Fort Monroe that morning. The weather forecast was clear; the meteorology of 1862 did not yet identify rapidly-developing southeastern storms. By the afternoon of 30 December the weather had developed into a severe Cape Hatteras storm. Monitor was pitching heavily in 5-metre head seas; her ventilator caps were being periodically overtopped, and her pump belt failed in the early evening. Worden's successor as her commanding officer, Commander John P. Bankhead, ordered the signal rockets fired from her turret to request assistance from the Rhode Island. Rhode Island launched her boats. The Monitor foundered at approximately 01:30 on 31 December 1862, twenty nautical miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Her low-freeboard hull had been unable to maintain the seakeeping margin required by Hatteras's weather; she filled through the ventilators, the engine-room hatch, and eventually the turret itself, and settled in 70 metres of water. Sixteen of her 63-man crew went down with her; the Rhode Island's boats pulled forty-seven out of the storm.
21. 1864 — CSS Alabama. Cherbourg, Kearsarge, the Manet painting Location: English Channel, off Cherbourg, France · Coordinates: 49.65°N 1.62°W · Casualties: 9 · Survivors: ~170 (incl. 42 rescued by Deerhound) · Depth: 58 m · Cause: naval gunfire — Brought to battle by USS Kearsarge (John Winslow, commanding) off Cherbourg on 19 June 1864. After a 65-minute gun duel the Kearsarge's chain-armored hull shrugged off shell after shell while Alabama's own shells mostly failed to explode. She sank stern-first at 12:24. Captain Raphael Semmes and several officers were rescued by the British yacht Deerhound and escaped to England. · Fate: located 1984 · continental shelf · Type: commerce raider · screw sloop · Tonnage: 1,050 tons · Crew: 145 · Flag: Confederate States · Launched: 1862 Confederate commerce raider, built clandestinely in Liverpool. Took or destroyed 65 Union merchant ships across two oceans in two years. Brought to battle by USS Kearsarge off Cherbourg on 19 June 1864 and sunk in an hour in the only major Civil War engagement fought in European waters. Édouard Manet painted the duel two weeks later from sketches made at the scene; the wreck was located by the French Navy in 1984. The Vessel CSS Alabama was a Confederate commerce raider of the Confederate States Navy, built secretly at the John Laird Sons & Company yard at Birkenhead, England, between 1861 and 1862 under the cover designation "Enrica". She was 67 metres long, 1,050 tons displacement, and powered by a combination of full sail rig (barque configuration) and a 300-horsepower single-cylinder steam engine driving a retractable screw propeller. Her armament comprised six 32-pounder smoothbore guns on the broadside, plus one 110-pounder Armstrong rifled pivot gun forward and one 68-pounder smoothbore pivot gun aft. Her construction at a British shipyard was a sustained breach of British neutrality law during the American Civil War. The British Neutrality Laws of 1819 prohibited the construction in Britain of ships intended for the service of belligerents; the Confederate agents at Birkenhead had disguised the ship's intended purpose through the "Enrica" cover name and the use of a commercial contract with the fictitious Spanish merchant firm "Bravay & Co.". The British government, under sustained US diplomatic pressure, attempted to prevent her departure in July 1862; her departure on 29 July 1862 (for ostensible sea trials) was arranged to precede the formal British order to detain her by approximately 12 hours. Her master from August 1862 onwards was Captain Raphael Semmes, 53, a career naval officer who had resigned from the United States Navy in February 1861 to accept Confederate commission. Her co The Disaster The appearance of Alabama at Cherbourg was reported by the US consular service within hours of her arrival. The Union Navy's sloop-of-war USS Kearsarge, commanded by Captain John A. Winslow and anchored at Flushing in the Netherlands, received the intelligence on 12 June 1864 and immediately sailed for Cherbourg. Kearsarge arrived off Cherbourg on 14 June 1864 and anchored in the outer harbour to await Alabama's emergence; under French neutrality law, the French authorities prohibited Kearsarge from entering the inner harbour or conducting any action within French territorial waters. Captain Semmes's decision, made after three days of deliberation with his officers, was to accept the offered engagement. The tactical calculation was complex: Alabama was substantially worn and fouled, Kearsarge was a faster and slightly better-armed ship, and the engagement would be fought without any strategic necessity. But the alternative - an extended stay at Cherbourg - would have produced intolerable political pressure on the French government, which would have been forced eventually to intern Alabama under the French neutrality interpretation of Confederate naval status. CSS Alabama departed Cherbourg at 10:30 on 19 June 1864 and engaged USS Kearsarge in international waters approximately 11 kilometres north of Cherbourg. The engagement lasted approximately one hour, from 10:57 to 12:05. Both ships manoeuvred in a tightening circle at a range of approximately 500-900 metres; both deliver
22. 1870 — HMS Captain. Biscay squall, the designer aboard, five minutes Location: Bay of Biscay, off Cape Finisterre · Coordinates: 43.50°N 10.50°W · Casualties: 482 · Survivors: 18 · Depth: 600 m (approximate) · Cause: capsized · design flaw — Capsized in a squall in the Bay of Biscay in the early hours of 7 September 1870. Her low freeboard and the combined weight of her heavy masts, rigging, and gun turrets left her dynamically unstable beyond modest angles of heel. She rolled over and sank in under five minutes. · Fate: abyssal · not located · Type: warship · turret ironclad · Tonnage: 7,767 tons · Crew: 500 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1869 Royal Navy experimental turret ship, designed by Captain Cowper Coles against the warnings of the Admiralty's constructors; her freeboard was too low and her top-hamper too heavy. In a Biscay squall on 7 September 1870 she capsized in under five minutes. 482 dead, including Coles himself. The scandal reshaped how the Royal Navy reviewed warship design for a generation. The Vessel HMS Captain was a British ironclad turret ship of the Royal Navy, built at the Cammell Laird yard at Birkenhead between 1867 and 1870 and commissioned on 30 April 1870. She was 97 metres long, 7,767 tons displacement, and powered by twin-screw 900-horsepower compound steam engines; she was additionally rigged as a full three-masted barque with a total sail area of approximately 3,625 square metres. Her armament comprised four 12-inch muzzle-loading rifled guns mounted in two twin-gun turrets on her main deck, plus two 7-inch muzzle-loading rifled guns on the upper deck as auxiliary armament. Her design was a specific project of Captain Cowper Phipps Coles, Royal Navy, the principal British advocate of the turret ship concept. Coles had publicly argued since 1859 that the future of naval architecture was the combination of steam propulsion, iron armour, and rotating gun turrets, and he had persistently criticised the Royal Navy's existing ironclad designs as insufficiently revolutionary. His specific vision for HMS Captain was a ship combining turret armament with full sailing rig, thus providing both the tactical capabilities of a modern turret ship and the strategic range of a sailing vessel. The design was substantially controversial within the Royal Navy. The Admiralty's Chief Constructor, Sir Edward Reed, had persistently opposed the Captain design on the technical grounds that the combination of turret armament (which required a low freeboard to minimise target profile) The Disaster At approximately 00:15 on 7 September 1870, HMS Captain was hit by a gust of wind approximately 10 kilometres per hour above the ambient force 7 wind speed. The ship, sailing under single-reefed topsails, heeled to approximately 18 degrees under the gust pressure. The 18-degree heel was catastrophic for Captain's marginal stability. Her design had been calculated for a maximum stable heel angle of approximately 20 degrees; the subsequent stability calculations, prepared after the loss by Sir Edward Reed for the Admiralty inquiry, established that her actual maximum stable heel angle was approximately 14 degrees due to discrepancies between the design specifications and the as-built ship. At 18 degrees heel, Captain was beyond the point of recoverable stability. The ship's lee main deck submerged. Water flooded into her deck hatches, which had been left partially open for ventilation during the watch. Her heel progressed rapidly from 18 to approximately 25 degrees, at which point the water pouring into her lee side exceeded any residual righting moment. HMS Captain capsized at approximately 00:20 on 7 September 1870 in approximately 1,200 metres of water off Cape Finisterre. The capsize was catastrophic and rapid: the ship rolled completely upside down within approximately 30 seconds of the loss of stability. Her four turret guns, which weighed approximately 92 tonnes combined, fell through her inverted structure as she rolled, causing substantial structural damage that accele
23. 1874 — Cospatrick. South Atlantic, the emigrant ship, cannibalism Location: South Atlantic, ~400 nmi SW of Cape Agulhas · Coordinates: 37.25°S 12.40°E · Casualties: ~470 · Survivors: 3 · Depth: destroyed · Cause: fire — Fire broke out in the forward hold in the early hours of 17 November 1874, probably from a lantern overturned among packing oil and oakum. The flames spread through the tinder-dry wooden hull within minutes. Most of the 477 aboard were trapped below before the boats could be launched. · Fate: destroyed · Type: emigrant clipper · Shaw, Savill & Co. · Tonnage: 1,220 tons · Crew: 44 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1856 British emigrant clipper, London to Auckland with 429 settlers and their provisions. Fire broke out in the forward hold in the early hours of 17 November 1874 in the South Atlantic. Two lifeboats got away with 62 of the 477 aboard; nine days later, three men were still alive, kept so by the flesh of their dead shipmates. Three survived of 477, and every British emigrant ship thereafter sailed with full lifeboat capacity. The Vessel The Cospatrick was a British wooden-hulled three-masted full-rigged ship, built at the Alexander Stephen & Sons yard at Dundee in 1856 and originally employed in the British India trade. She was 58 metres long, 1,220 gross tons, and had a carrying capacity of approximately 420 assisted-emigrant passengers. Her hull was built of teak and oak, following the standard British merchant practice for deep-water trading ships of the 1850s; she had been substantially rebuilt at Dundee in 1872 for emigrant-trade service. By 1874 she was owned by the Shaw, Savill & Company emigrant line and operated on the New Zealand emigrant route, which had been substantially expanded by the New Zealand government's 1872-1876 assisted-immigration programme. The New Zealand immigration programme had funded the passage of approximately 80,000 assisted emigrants from Britain to New Zealand over the five-year period; Cospatrick was one of approximately 40 emigrant ships engaged in the programme, and had completed two previous emigrant passages to New Zealand without substantial incident. Her master on her final voyage was Captain Alexander Elmslie, 42, a career merchant mariner of Scottish origin. Her complement on the final voyage was 42 crew and 430 assisted emigrants (predominantly British working-class emigrants from rural English and Scottish counties), a total of 472 aboard. The Disaster At approximately 00:30 on 17 November 1874, a fire was detected in the forward hold of Cospatrick by the watch on deck. The specific source of the ignition is unknown and was subsequently estimated by the Board of Trade inquiry to have been either a lamp left improperly trimmed, a spark from the ship's galley chimney, or spontaneous combustion of the oakum due to the combination of heat and moisture in the forward hold. The fire spread rapidly through the oakum and then to the paraffin barrels. Within approximately 20 minutes of the initial detection, the forward hold was fully engulfed in flame; the paraffin burned with extreme intensity, generating temperatures estimated at over 1,000 degrees Celsius that progressively compromised the ship's forward structure. The passengers, who had been asleep in the emigrant quarters amidships, were awakened by the shouts of the crew and by the smoke pouring aft from the forward hold. Captain Elmslie's response was standard: the ship's boats were launched, the passengers were mustered on the upper deck, and fire-fighting efforts were initiated. However, the fire was beyond the ship's fire-fighting capability within approximately 30 minutes; the pumps could not deliver sufficient water to the forward hold, and the paraffin-fuelled fire was spreading aft faster than the crew could contain it. Cospatrick had only five lifeboats aboard, for a complement of 472; the total lifeboat capacity was approximately 140 people. Three of the five lifeb
24. 1878 — HMS Eurydice. 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