Naval/Maritime History 27th of August - Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
20 November 1845 – Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata: Battle of Vuelta de Obligado.


The naval Battle of Vuelta de Obligado took place on the waters of the Paraná River on 20 November 1845, between the Argentine Confederation, under the leadership of Juan Manuel de Rosas, and a combined Anglo-French fleet. The action was part of the larger Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata. Although the attacking forces broke through the Argentine naval defenses and overran the land defenses, the battle proved that foreign ships could not safely navigate Argentine internal waters against its government's wishes. The battle also changed political feeling in South America, increasing support for Rosas and his government.


The Anglo-French armada forces its way through the Vuelta de Obligado

Background
During the 1830s and 1840s, the British and French governments were at odds with Rosas' leadership of the Argentine Confederation. Rosas' economic policies of requiring trade to pass through the Buenos Aires custom house – which was his method of imposing his will on the Littoral provinces – combined with his attempts to incorporate Paraguay and Uruguay to the Confederation, were in conflict with French and British economic interests in the region. During his government, Rosas had to face numerous problems with these foreign powers, which in some cases reached levels of open confrontation. These incidents included two naval blockades, the French blockade in 1838, and the Anglo-French of 1845.



With the development of steam-powered sailing (which mainly took place in Great Britain, France and the United States) in the third decade of the 19th century, large merchant and military ships became capable of sailing up rivers at a good speed and with a heavy load. This new technology allowed the British and French governments to avoid the custom house in Buenos Aires by sailing directly through the La Plata estuary and engaging in commerce directly with inland cities in Entre Ríos, Corientes, Uruguay and Paraguay. This avoided Buenos Aires' taxation, guaranteed special rights for the Europeans and allowed them to export their products cheaply.

Rosas' government tried to stop this practice by declaring the Argentine rivers closed to foreign countries, barring access to Paraguay and other ports in the process. The British and French governments did not acknowledge this declaration and decided to defy Rosas by sailing upstream with a joint fleet, setting the stage for the battle.

Battle
Order of battle


British and French boats assaulting the chain line at Obligado

The Anglo-French squadron that was sailing through the Paraná river in the first days of November was composed of eleven warships.

• British
  • Gorgon, paddle (6 guns, Capt. Charles Hotham)
  • Firebrand, paddle (6 guns, Capt. James Hope)
  • Philomel (8 guns, Commander Bartholomew James Sulivan)
  • Comus (18 guns, Commander Edward Augustus Inglefield (acting))
  • Dolphin (3 guns, Lieut. Reginald Thomas John Levinge)
  • Fanny, schooner (1 gun, Lieut. Astley Cooper Key)
• French
  • San Martin (8 guns, Capt. François Thomas Tréhouart)
  • Fulton, paddle (2 guns, Lieut. Louis Mazères (fr))
  • Expéditive (16 guns, Lieut. Miniac)
  • Pandour (10 guns, Lieut. Duparc)
  • Procida (4 guns, Lieut. de la Rivière)

These ships were among the most advanced military machinery of their time, and at least three — Fulton, HMS Firebrand and HMS Gorgon — were steamers, which initially stayed behind the sailing vessels.[8] They were partially armoured, and had rapid-fire guns and Congreve rockets.

The main Argentine redoubt was located on a cliff rising between 30 and 180 m over the banks at Vuelta de Obligado, where the river is 700 metres wide and a turn makes navigation difficult.

The Argentine general Lucio N. Mansilla set up three thick metal chains suspended from 24 boats completely across the river, to prevent the advance of the European fleet. This operation was under the charge of an Italian immigrant named Filipo Aliberti. Only three of these boats were naval vessels; the rest were requisitioned barges whose owners received a compensation in case of loss. Aliberti was the master of one of the boats, the Jacoba, sunk in the battle. At least 20 boats and barges were lost in the chain barrage at Obligado.


Chain links and ammunition used by the Argentine forces during the battle

On the right shore of the river the Argentines mounted four batteries with 30 cannons, many of them bronze 8, 10, 12 and 20-pounders. These were served by a division of 160 gaucho soldiers. There were also 2,000 men in trenches under the command of ColonelRamón Rodríguez (es), together with the brigantine Republicano (es) and two small gunboats, Restaurador and Lagos,[13][8] with the mission of guarding the chains across the river. Some sources increase the Argentine naval power to a third gunboat, the unarmed brigantine Vigilante, whose artillery had been dismounted and transferred to one of the batteries, eight armed launches and at least five armed barges.

Main action
The combat began at dawn, with intense cannon fire and rocket discharges over the Argentine batteries, which had less accurate and slower loading cannons. From the beginning the Argentines suffered many casualties — 150 dead, 90 wounded. Furthermore, the barges that held the chains were burnt down, and the Republicano was lost, blown up by its own commander when he was unable to defend it any longer. A number of armed launches were also sunk in battle. The gunboats Restaurador and Lagos disengaged successfully and withdrew up river, towards Tonelero pass. The third gunboat and the armed barges also survived the action, but the dismantled brigantine Vigilante was scuttled by her crew and the remaining launches were destroyed by the combined fleet on 28 November.

Shortly after, the French steamer Fulton sailed through a gap open in the chain's barrier. Disembarked troops overcame the last defenders of the bluff, and 21 cannons fell into hands of the allied forces.

The Europeans had won free passage at the cost of 28 dead and 95 wounded. However, the ships suffered severe damage, stranding them at Obligado for 40 days to make emergency repairs.

Secondary action
Meanwhile, 40 km to the north, a small Argentine naval force composed of the sloop Chacabuco, the gunboats Carmen, Arroyo Grande, Apremio and Buena Vista kept watch over a secondary branch of the Paraná whose control gives full access to the ports of Entre Ríos. Like at Obligado, a double chain held by seven barges was also deployed across the river. When news of the battle's outcome reached the squadron, the Chacabuco was scuttled and the remainder of the flotilla took shelter in the port of Victoria.

Upstream
Only 50 out of 92 merchantmen awaiting at Ibicuy Islands continued their upriver trip. The rest gave up and returned to Montevideo. The British and French ships that were able to sail past up river were again attacked on their way back at Paso del Tonelero and at Angostura del Quebracho on 4 June 1846. The combined fleet suffered the loss of six merchant ships during the later engagement.

Aftermath
The Anglo-French victory did not achieve their economic objectives. It proved to be practically impossible to sail Argentine rivers without the authorisation of Argentine authorities.

The battle had a great impact on the continent. Chile and Brazil changed their stance (until then they were against Rosas), and supported the Confederation. Even some Unitarian leaders, traditional enemies of the Argentine caudillo, were moved by the events, with General Martiniano Chilavert offering to join the Confederacy army.

France and the United Kingdom eventually lifted the blockade and dropped their attempts to bypass Buenos Aires' policies. They acknowledged the Argentine government's legal right over the Paraná and other internal rivers, and its authority to determine who had access to it, in exchange for the withdrawal of Rosas's army from Uruguay.

The Battle of Obligado is remembered in Argentina on 20 November, which was declared a "Day of National Sovereignty" in 1974, and became a national holiday in 2010. The French Paris Métro had a station named after this battle until 1947, when it was renamed Argentine, as a good-will gesture after the visit of Eva Perón to France.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-French_blockade_of_the_Río_de_la_Plata
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vuelta_de_Obligado

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
20 November 1861 – Launch of The second USS Oneida was a screw sloop-of-war in the United States Navy.


The second USS Oneida was a screw sloop-of-war in the United States Navy. During the Civil War, she destroyed the CSS Governor Moore and served in blockade operations. She was attached to the Asiatic Squadron from 1867–1870. She sank in 1870 outside Yokohama, Japan after collision with the British steamer Bombay. The Court of Inquiry found the officers of Oneida were responsible for the collision. Bombay's captain was blamed for not staying at the scene to render assistance - a decision that caused some controversy] Japanese fishing boats saved 61 sailors but 125 men lost their lives. The American government made no attempt to raise the wreck and sold it to a Japanese wrecking company. The company recovered many bones from the wreck and interred them at their own expense. The Japanese erected a memorial tablet on the grounds of Ikegami Temple in Tokyo and held a Buddhist ceremony in the sailor's memory in May 1889.




Library of Congress description: The sinking of the United States steamer Oneida off the port of Yokohama, Japan, Sunday, January 23


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Oneida_(1861)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
20 November 1861 – Launch of USS Housatonic, was a screw sloop-of-war of the United States Navy,


USS Housatonic was a screw sloop-of-war of the United States Navy, gaining its namesake from the Housatonic River of New England.

Housatonic was launched on 20 November 1861, by the Boston Navy Yard at Charlestown, Massachusetts, sponsored by Miss Jane Coffin Colby and Miss Susan Paters Hudson; and commissioned there on 29 August 1862, with Commander William Rogers Taylor in command. Housatonic was one of four sister ships which included USS Adirondack, USS Ossipee, and USS Juniata. Housatonic is recognized as being the first ship sunk in combat by a submarine when she was attacked and sunk by H.L. Hunley in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.



Service history
Blockading Charleston
Housatonic departed Boston on 11 September and arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, on 19 September to join the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. She took station outside the bar.

Capture of Princess Royal and Confederate counter-attack
On 29 January 1863, her boats, aided by those of USS Augusta, USS G. W. Blunt, and USS America, boarded and refloated the iron steamer Princess Royal. The gunboat Unadilla had driven the blockade runner ashore as she attempted to slip into Charleston from England with a cargo consisting of two marine engines destined for Confederate ironclads and a large quantity of ordnance and ammunition. These imports were of such great potential value to the South that they have been called "the war's most important single cargo of contraband."

It is possibly in the hope of recovering this invaluable prize that the Confederate ironclad rams CSS Chicora and CSS Palmetto State slipped out of the main ship channel of Charleston Harbor to attack the Union blockading fleet in the early morning fog two days later. They rammed Mercedita, forcing her to strike her colors "in a sinking and perfectly defenseless condition", and moved on to cripple Keystone State. Gunfire from the rams also damaged Quaker City and Augusta before the Confederate ships withdrew under fire from Housatonic to the protection of shore batteries.

Capture of Georgiana
On 19 March 1863, Housatonic and Wissahickon, responding to signal flares sent up by America, chased the 407 ton iron-hulled blockade runner SS Georgiana ashore on Long Island, South Carolina. Georgiana's cargo of munitions, medicine and merchandise was then valued at over $1,000,000. Georgiana was described in contemporary dispatches and newspaper accounts as more powerful than the Confederate cruisers Alabama, Shenandoah, and Florida. This was a serious and very important blow to the Confederacy. The wreck of Georgiana was discovered by pioneer underwater archaeologist Lee Spence in 1965.

Further captures, and attacks on Charleston
Housatonic captured the sloop Neptune on 19 April as she attempted to run out of Charleston with a cargo of cotton and turpentine. She was credited with assisting in the capture of the steamer Seesh on 15 May. Howitzers mounted in Housatonic's boats joined in the attack on Fort Wagner on 10 July, which began the continuing bombardment of the Southern works at Charleston. In ensuing months her crew repeatedly manned boats which shelled the shoreline, patrolled close ashore gathering valuable information, and landed troops for raids against the outer defenses of Charleston.

Sunk in the first submarine attack
Main article: Sinking of USS Housatonic
At just before 9pm, 17 February 1864, Housatonic, commanded by Charles Pickering, was maintaining her station in the blockade outside the bar. Robert F. Flemming, Jr., a black landsman, first sighted an object in the water 100 yards off, approaching the ship. "It had the appearance of a plank moving in the water," Pickering later reported. Although the chain was slipped, the engine backed, and all hands were called to quarters, it was too late. Within two minutes of the first sighting, the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley rammed her spar torpedo into Housatonic's starboard side, forward of the mizzenmast, in history's first successful submarine attack on a warship. Before the rapidly sinking ship went down, the crew managed to lower two boats which took all the men they could hold; most others saved themselves by climbing into the rigging which remained above water after the stricken ship settled on the bottom. Two officers and three men in Housatonic died. The Confederate submarine escaped but was lost with all hands not long after this action; new evidence announced by archaeologists in 2013 indicates that the submarine may have been much closer to the point of detonation than previously realized, thus damaging the submarine as well. In 2017, researchers at Duke University further established through simulation that the Hunley's crew were most likely killed immediately at their posts by the blast's pressure wave damaging their lungs and brains.

The wreck of Housatonic was largely scrapped in the 1870s–1890s and her location was eventually removed from coastal navigation charts and lost to history. The anchor of Housatonic can be found at the office of Wild Dunes on the Isle of Palms.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Housatonic_(1861)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_USS_Housatonic

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
Other Events on 20 November


1683 – Launch of french Emporté, (ex-Trompeuse) 44 guns, at Dunkirk – condemned August 1705 and abandoned.

Solide class, designed by F. Hendrick with 20 x 12-pounder, 20 x 6-pounder and 4 x 4-pounder guns:
Sistership: Solide, (ex-Railleuse) 44 guns, launched 6 November 1683 at Dunkirk – wrecked August 1694 off Tortuga.


1683 – Launch of French Emporte 44 at Dunkirk – condemned 1705 and abandoned


1752 – Launch of Spanish África 74 at Cadiz - stricken 8 August 1806 and BU 1809


1793 - French prize Scipion (74) caught fire and destroyed in Leghorn roads.

Scipion was a Téméraire class 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy.

In 1792, Scipion took part in operations against Nice, Villefranche and Oneille. In December, she joined the division under Admiral Latouche Tréville, and assisted the damaged Languedoc during the storm of 21 to 23 of that month.

Captured by the British after the surrendering of Toulon by a Royalist cabale, she was commissioned with a crew of French rebels. On 28 November 1793, she caught fire by accident in the harbour of Livorno and exploded, killing 86 including her commanding officer, Captain Degoy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Scipion_(1790)


1806 - Boats of HMS Success (1781 - 32), Cptn. John Ayscough, captured privateer felucca Le Vengeur, in Hidden Port near Cumberland Harbour, Cuba but she was sunk by fire from the shore.

HMS Success was a 32-gun Amazon-class fifth-rate frigate of the British Royal Navy launched in 1781, which served during the American Revolutionary, French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The French captured her in the Mediterranean on 13 February 1801, but she was recaptured by the British on 2 September. She continued to serve in the Mediterranean until 1811, and in North America until hulked in 1814, then serving as a prison ship and powder hulk, before being broken up in 1820.


Success destroys the Santa Catalina, 16 March 1782

Early on 20 November 1806, while just east of Guantánamo Bay (known as Cumberland Harbour to the British), Ayscough observed a felucca running into Hidden Port. He sent the ship's barge and yawl in pursuit, but on reaching the shore they discovered that about 50 armed men had landed from the felucca, which was lashed to a tree, and had taken a position at the top of a small hill overlooking the beach, upon which they had mounted a single long gun. They fired grape and ball down on the British, killing the First Lieutenant, Mr. Duke, with their first volley. The British withstood the enemy fire for an hour and twenty minutes, suffering seven more men wounded, and having the barge shot through in several places before Lieutenant Spence, then in command, deemed any attempt on the hill a useless sacrifice, so ordered the enemy ship to be towed out, which was achieved under heavy fire. She proved to be the French privateer Vengeur, which had sailed from Santo Domingo on 1 October, but being badly damaged she sank while under tow.[

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Success_(1781)


1806 - Boats of HMS Orpheus (32), Cptn. Thomas Briggs, captured Spanish schooner Dolores (3) in Campeachy Bay

HMS Orpheus was a 32–gun fifth rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1780, and served for more than a quarter of a century, before she was wrecked in 1807

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Orpheus_(1780)


1823 – Launch of HMS Rainbow, a 28 gun Atholl-class corvette

Scale 1:48. Plan showing the body plan, sheer lines with some midship framing and longitudinal half breadth for Ranger (1820), Tweed (1823), Rainbow (1823), Rattlesnake (1822), Crocodile (1825),Success (1825), Talbot (1824) and with alterations for Alligator (1821), Samarang (1822), Herald (1822) - ex Termagant, and later for North Star (1820), Daphne (cancelled 1832), Porcupine (cancelled 1832), Nimrod (1828) – ex Andromache, Alarm (cancelled 1826), all 28-gun Sixth Rate Sloops. Signed Joseph Tucker and Robert Seppings (Surveyors of the Navy) Annotation at the top right: "Mem: The Head was altered agreeably to a sketch dated Nov 6th 1821." Annotation on the right: " 14th May 1823. The following ships were ordered to be built agreeably to the alterations in ticked lines in the fore body viz Alarm, Crocodile, Daphne, Porcupine and Sucess." "2nd June 1830. The main rails of the head of the Talbot was directed to be moved 8ins and the Birthing rails about fuurther from the side at the front of the supporters." Annoted in pencil at bottom right: "Memo ? ? lines for the Model."
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/83218.html#EkrIabhphuY5wdfB.99


Scale: 1:48. A contemporary half block model of HMS Rainbow (1823), a 28 gun sixth rate sloop. The hull is carved form a solid block of wood(?) and is painted a metallic copper colour below the main wales separated by a thin white line along the waterline. The topsides are painted black, with the main gundeck highlighted by a creamy white horizontal band. The gunports on the forecastle, main and quarter decks are let into the hull and painted black. The bow is fitted with head rails just aft of the three quarter length figurehead. The stern is complete with carved galleries, painted black, below which is the rudder fitted to a near vertical sternpost. The whole model is mounted on a rectangular wooden backboard which is painted a creamy white surrounded by a stained moulded edging. The number "(15)" is painted in white on the lower backboard edge amidships.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atholl-class_corvette


1856 - During the Second Opium War, 287 Marines and Sailors from U.S. Navy ships USS Levant, Portsmouth, and San Jacinto land at Canton, China under the command of Cmdr. Andrew Foote. This action opens up diplomatic relations with China and the U.S. gains neutrality.

The first USS Levant was a second-class sloop-of-war in the United States Navy.
Levant was launched on 28 December 1837 by New York Navy Yard; and commissioned on 17 March 1838, with Commander Hiram Paulding in command.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Levant_(1837)


1942 - Ending of Operation Stone Age (16–20 November 1942), an Allied convoy operation to the Mediterranean island of Malta in the Second World War.

Operation Stoneage or Operation Stone Age (16–20 November 1942) was an Allied convoy operation to the Mediterranean island of Malta in the Second World War. To disguise the destination of the ships, some took on their cargo at Port Sudan in the Red Sea. The four ships of Convoy MW 13 sailed from Alexandria on 16 September, escorted by cruisers, destroyers and round-the-clock air cover, from captured Axis airfields in Egypt and Cyrenaica (eastern Libya).

A complimentary convoy fromom Gibraltar was cancelled when the First Army, landed in Morocco and Algeria in Operation Torch (8–16 November) made less progress along the Algerian coast than expected. MW 13 sailed about 40 nmi (46 mi; 74 km) out from the African coast as far west as Benghazi, then turn north for Malta. The Axis retreat along the Libyan coast was monitored by the Bletchley Park code-breakers of the German Enigma coding machine, which revealed the inability of Panzerarmee Afrika to counter-attack the Allies.

At dusk on 18 November, another attack by Axis torpedo-bombers hit the cruiser 6 in (15 cm) cruiser HMS Arethusa forward of the bridge and killed 155 members of the crew. Arethusa made a slow voyage back to Alexandria, being towed backwards and then continuing backwards on one engine. MW 13 arrived at Malta at 1:30 a.m. on 20 November, which broke the Axis Siege of Malta (11 June 1940 – 20 November 1942).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Stone_Age

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
21 November 1742 - sloop HMS Drake (1741 - 14) and several other ships like two fine Xebecs belonging to the King, three ships with stores for the garrison and a large Settee storeship, besides several Portuguese vessels lost in a violent storm in Gibraltar Bay


HMS Drake was an 8-gun snow-rigged sloop of the Royal Navy, launched in 1741 as the first of three Drake class sloops constructed for convoy duty during the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear from 1739 to 1742. After limited service off the Channel Islands, she was sailed to Gibraltar where she was wrecked in 1742 while under the temporary command of her first lieutenant.


No Scale. Plan showing the body plan, sheer lines with inboard detail, and longitudinal half-breadth of Drake (1741), Hawke (1741), and Swift (1741), all 8-gun Sloops.
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/84513.html#3ZtM68zqp6JH45zD.99

Construction
Drake was the first of three small, fast vessels designed by Surveyor of the Navy Jacob Acworth to guard merchant convoys in British home waters after the declaration of war against Spain in 1739. She was ordered in June 1740, to be constructed by shipwright Thomas West in the civilian dockyard at Deptford. Her dimensions were in keeping with other vessels of her class with an overall length of 85 ft 1.5 in (25.9 m), a beam of 23 ft 9.25 in (7.2 m) and measuring 206 43⁄94 tonnes burthen.

Class and type: 8-gun Drake-class snow sloop
Tons burthen: 206 43⁄94 (bm)
Length:

• 85 ft 1.5 in (25.9 m) (overall)
• 68 ft 8.6 in (20.9 m) (keel)

Beam: 23 ft 9.25 in (7.2 m)
Draught: 9 ft 6 in (2.9 m)
Sail plan: Snow-rigged sloop
Complement: 80
Armament:

• 8 × 4pdrs
• 12 × 1/2pdr swivels

She had two masts, square-rigged and supported by a trysail mast aft of the main mast. Although fitted with seven pairs of gunports along her upper deck, she was armed with only eight four-pounder cannons with the remaining ports left unused. Twelve lightweight half-pounder swivel guns were also mounted on the deck, and her complement was 80 men.

Active service
Drake was commissioned in February 1741 under Commander Frederick Rogers. She assisted convoys in waters surrounding the Channel Islands for the remainder of that year, then sailed for Gibraltar in December. There the captaincy was transferred to Commander John Pitman, and six months later to Commander John Stringer who continued her convoy duties in the Channel and off Gibraltar itself.

Wreck
On 22 November 1742, Drake was under the temporary command of Lieutenant Nathaniel Stephens when she was wrecked in Gibraltar harbour and left in an unsalvageable condition. The wreck lay abandoned on the Gibraltar shore for several years; it was finally sold out of service on 13 October 1748.


No Scale. Plan showing basic fittings of upper deck, and fore and aft platforms for Drake (1741) and Hawke (1741), both 8-gun Sloops.
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/84514.html#hkSZhWeH1r8WKElD.99



The Snow is a vessel with two masts, fore and main, both of which are fully square-rigged. stepped immediately behind the mainmast is the so-called snow-mast on which a trysail with a boom is carried.


Two views of a naval snow, by Charles Brooking (1759)


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Drake_(1741)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
21 November 1779 - HMS Hussar (1763 - 28), Cptn. Elliott Salter, took Nostra Senora del Buen Confegio (26).


HMS Hussar was a sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, built in England in 1761-63. She was a 28-gun ship of the Mermaid class, designed by Sir Thomas Slade. She was wrecked at New York in 1780.

In early 2013, a cannon from Hussar was discovered stored in a building in New York's Central Park still loaded with live gunpowder and shot


Scale 1:48. Plan showing the body plan, sheer lines and longitudinal half breadth for building Hussar (1763), a 28-gun, Fifth Rate Frigate, at Rotherithe by Robert Inswood. Signed Thomas Slade (Surveyor of the Navy 1755-71)
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/83106.html#jACbTpilmWVw7kb9.99

Class and type: Mermaid-class frigate
Tonnage: 627 64⁄94 (bm)
Length:

• 124 ft 4 in (37.9 m) (gundeck)
• 103 ft 8 1⁄2 in (31.6 m) (keel)

Beam: 33 ft 10 3⁄8 in (10.3 m)
Sail plan: Full-rigged ship
Complement: 200
Armament:

• Upper deck: 24 × 9 pounder (4 kg) cannon,
• QD: 4 × 3 pounder (1.4 kg) cannon + 12 swivel guns.

Career
Hussar was commissioned in August 1763 under Captain James Smith, and sent for her commission cruising in the vicinity of Cape Clear. By 1767 she was commanded by Captain Hyde Parker. She continued to serve off North America between 1768 and 1771, before paying off into ordinary in March 1771. After being repaired and refitted at Woolwich from 1774 to 1777, she recommissioned in July 1777 under Captain Elliott Salter. In later life, she was part of the British fleet in North America. During the American Revolution, Hussar carried dispatches on the North American station.

Hussar captured the Spanish ship of the line Nuestra Señora del Buen Confeso (armed en flute), on 20 November 1779.

By mid-1780, the British position in New York was precarious as a French army had joined forces with General George Washington's troops north of the city.

Loss
When Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney took his twenty ships of the line south in November, it was decided that the army's payroll be moved to the anchorage at Gardiners Bay on eastern Long Island. On 23 November 1780, against his pilot's better judgment, Hussar's captain, Charles Pole, decided to sail from the East River through the treacherous waters of Hell Gate between Randall's Island and Astoria, Queens (on Long Island). Just before reaching Long Island Sound, Hussar was swept onto Pot Rock and began sinking. Pole was unable to run her aground and she sank in 16 fathoms (29 m) of water. The minutes of the Royal Navy's court martial into the loss of the frigate (record held at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich), make no mention of any payroll money or other special cargo aboard. The document appears to be little more than an administrative formality. It suggests that whatever valuables were aboard the Hussar had been off-loaded by the time of her accident.

Salvage attempts
Although the British immediately denied there was any gold aboard the ship, and despite the difficulty of diving in the waters of Hell Gate, reports of $2 to $4 million in gold were the catalyst that prompted many salvage efforts over the next 150 years. This continued even after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers eased the passage through the East River by blowing "the worst features of Hell Gate straight back to hell" with 56,000 pounds (25 t) of dynamite in 1876. Hussar's remains, if any survive, are now believed to lie beneath landfill in the Bronx.

On January 11, 2013, preservationists with the Central Park Conservancy in New York were removing rust from a cannon from Hussar when they discovered it still contained gunpowder, wadding, and a cannonball. Police were called and bomb disposal staff eventually removed about 1.8 pounds of active black gunpowder from the cannon, which they disposed of at a gun range. “We silenced British cannon fire in 1776 and we don’t want to hear it again in Central Park,” the New York Police Department said in a statement.

In popular culture
In Kim Stanley Robinson's 2017 science fiction novel New York 2140, a sub-plot centers on an attempt to recover two chests with gold from the wreck of the HMS Hussar that lies buried under a submerged parking lot in the former Bronx.


The Mermaid-class frigates were a group of six 28-gun sailing frigates of the sixth rate designed in 1760 by Sir Thomas Slade, based on the scaled-down lines of HMS Aurora (originally a French prize, L'Abénaquise, which had been captured in 1757).


Scale: 1:48. Plan showing the body plan, stempost and rudder elevation, and bow and head elevation for Aurora (captured 1757), a captured French Frigate. The plan is headed under the common misspelling of her French name, and suggests that it is dated before 22 June 1758, when she was renamed Aurora, and then fitted as 38-gun Fifth Rate Frigate at Portsmouth Dockyard. The plan includes an undated typed set of notes relating to the ship's name Sellotaped to the front of the plan.
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/82443.html#HZEdXXqwylUvWd3v.99

The contract for the prototype was agreed on 12 May 1760, for a ship to be launched within twelve months, and her name was assigned as Mermaid on 28 October 1760. The contract for the second ship was agreed on 10 March 1762, for a ship to be launched within thirteen months, and the contract for the third ship was agreed on 2 April 1762, for a ship to be launched within fourteen months; both names were assigned on 30 April 1763.

Some ten years after the design was first produced, it was re-used for a second batch of three ships which were ordered on Christmas Day, 1770. While the design differences from the first batch were minor (the keel was a few inches longer), the second batch were normally designated the Modified Mermaid class.


Scale 1:48. Plan showing the body plan, sheer lines and longitudinal half breadth as proposed and approved for Mermaid (1761), a 28-gun, Fifth Rate Frigate, for building at Hull by Mr Blaydes, and later for Hussar (1763) and Soleby (1763), also 28-gun, Fifth Rate Frigates, similar to the French Aurora (Abienakise 1757). The sheer was altered for these two ships. Annotation on the reverse: "A copy of this Draught was given to Messers Hugh & Beris Blaydes for building a ship agreeable there to May 1760 Named the Mermaid. Another Copy of this Body & Lines with the sheer part agreeable to another Draught a little alter'd there to 20th March 1762 - Nam'd the Hussar. Another of the same as above was given to Mr Thos Airey & Co for Building the ship agreeable there to at Newcastle upon Tyne 10th April 1762 - Named the - Solebay."
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/83099.html#W4eg8OHEXf5FCxGX.99

Tons burthen:

• 612 72/94 (first batch as designed)
• 617 22/94 (second batch as designed)

Length:

• 124 ft 0 in (38 m) (gundeck)
• 102 ft 8.125 in (31 m) (keel - first batch)
• 103 ft 4.75 in (32 m) (keel - second batch)

Beam: 33 ft 6 in (10 m)
Draught: 11 ft (3 m)
Sail plan :Full-rigged ship
Complement:200
Armament:

• UD: 24 × 9-pounder guns
• QD: 4 × 3-pounder guns
• From 1780
• UD: 24 × 9-pounder guns
• QD 4 × 6-pounder guns and 18-pounder carronades
• FC: 2 × 18-pounder carronades

Ships in class
First batch

• Mermaid
  • Ordered: 24 April 1760
  • Built by: Hugh Blaydes, Hull.
  • Keel laid: 27 May 1760
  • Launched: 6 May 1761
  • Completed: September 1761 at the builder's yard.
  • Fate: Run ashore to avoid capture by the French 8 July 1778.
• Hussar
  • Ordered: 30 January 1762
  • Built by: Thomas Inwood, Rotherhithe.
  • Keel laid: 1 April 1762
  • Launched: 26 August 1763
  • Completed: 7 November 1763 at Deptford Dockyard.
  • Fate: Wrecked in Hell's Gate passage, New York, on 24 November 1779.
• Solebay
  • Ordered 30 January 1762
  • Built by: Thomas Airey & Company, Newcastle.
  • Keel laid: 10 May 1762
  • Launched: 9 September 1763
  • Completed: December 1763 at the builder's yard, then 2 January to 15 March 1764 at Sheerness Dockyard.
  • Fate: Wrecked off Nevis Island and burnt to avoid capture 25 January 1782.

Second batch

• Greyhound
  • Ordered: 25 December 1770
  • Built by: Henry Adams, Bucklers Hard.
  • Keel laid: February 1771
  • Launched: 20 July 1773
  • Completed: October 1775 to 9 January 1776 at Portsmouth Dockyard.
  • Fate: Wrecked off Deal 16 August 1781.
• Triton
  • Ordered: 25 December 1770
  • Built by: Henry Adams, Bucklers Hard.
  • Keel laid: February 1771
  • Launched: 1 October 1773
  • Completed: 15 October 1773 to 4 November 1775 at Portsmouth Dockyard.
  • Fate: Taken to pieces at Deptford Dockyard in January 1796.
• Boreas
  • Ordered: 25 December 1770
  • Built by: Hugh Blaydes & Hodgson, Hull.
  • Keel laid: May 1771
  • Launched: 23 August 1774
  • Completed: 13 September 1774 to 23 October 1775 at Chatham Dockyard.
  • Fate: Sold at Sheerness Dockyard May 1802

Abénaquise (or Abenakise) was a 36-gun ship of the French Navy of the Ancien Régime, designed by René-Nicholas Lavasseur and launched on 8 July 1757. She was commanded by captain Gabriel Pellegrin. In 1757 she crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 38 days. This was one of the fastest crossings from Brest to Petite ferme on the La Côte-de-Beaupré with pilot Pellegrin, port captain of Quebec, who was on his forty-second crossing.

Captured by the Royal Navy in 1757, she was renamed HMS Aurora and saw active service in the latter half of the Seven Years' War. She was broken up for timber at Plymouth Dockyard in 1763.

Class and type:38-gun fifth-rate
Tons burthen: 946 374⁄94 (bm)
Length:

• 144 ft 0 in (43.89 m) (gundeck)
• 118 ft 9 in (36.20 m) (keel)

Beam: 38 ft 8.5 in (11.798 m)
Sail plan: Full-rigged ship
Complement: 250
Armament:

• 38 guns comprising
• Upper deck: 28 × 12-pounder cannons
• Lower deck: 8 × 18-pounder cannons
• Quarterdeck 2 × 6-pounder cannons

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hussar_(1763)
http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collec...el-320029;browseBy=vessel;vesselFacetLetter=H
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abénaquise

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
21 November 1808 - HMS Dedaigneuse (1797 - 36), Cptn. William Beauchamp Proctor, engaged French frigate Semillante (1791 - 32) off Mauritius.


The Dédaigneuse was a 40-gun Coquille-class frigate of the French Navy, launched in 1797. The Royal Navy captured her in 1801 and took her into service as HMS Dedaigneuse. She was hulked as a receiving ship in 1812 and sold in 1823.


lines & profile NMM, Progress Book, volume 5, folio 743, states that 'Dedaigneuse' (1801) arrived at Plymouth Dockyard on 20 February 1801, was docked on 29 July 1801 and her copper was replaced. She was undocked on 24 August, and sailed on 9 November 1801 having been fitted.
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/82545.html#AbwLcMiteQkXHSEx.99

Class and type: Coquille-class frigate
Displacement: 1,180 tons (French)
Tons burthen: 897 3⁄94 (bm)
Length: 42.8 m (140 ft 5 in)
Beam: 11.4 m (37 ft 5 in)
Draught: 5.3 m (17 ft 5 in)
Depth of hold: 3.6 m (11 ft 10 in)
Sail plan: Full-rigged ship
Armament:

• UD: 28 × 12-pounder long guns
• SD: 12 × 8-pounder long guns

French service
On 30 December 1800, as she was taking political prisoners at Cayenne to bring them back to France under Captain Prevost Lacroix, she spotted Tamar.

Capture
On Monday, 26 January 1801, at 8.00 a.m., at 45°N 12°W, Oiseau, under Captain Samuel Hood Linzee, fell in with and chased Dédaigneuse, which was bound from Cayenne to Rochefort with despatches. By noon the following day, with Cape Finisterre in sight, Captain Linzee signalled Sirius and Amethyst who were in sight to join the pursuit. Dédaigneuse maintained her advantage until 2.00 a.m. on the 28th when the Oiseaux and Sirius were within musket-shot of Dédaigneuse. In a desperate attempt to shake her pursuers she opened fire from her stern-chasers, which fire the two British ships immediately returned. After a running fight of 45 minutes, Dédaigneuse was two miles off shore near Cape Bellem with her running rigging and sails cut to pieces, mainly due to the steady and well-directed fire from Sirius. Aboard Dédaigneuse casualties were heavy with several men killed, including her Captain and fifth Lieutenant, and 17 wounded; she was therefore forced to strike her colours . Amethyst, due to unfavourable winds, was unable to get up until after Dédaigneuse had struck. Although Sirius was the only British ship damaged (rigging, sails, main-yard and bowsprit) in the encounter, there were no fatalities on the English side. Captain Linzee declared the encounter a long and anxious chase of 42 hours and acknowledged a gallant resistance on the part of Dédaigneuse. Linzee also described her as "a perfect new Frigate, Copper fastened and sails well...". He sent her into Plymouth with a prize crew under the command of his first lieutenant, H. Lloyd. Dédaigneuse was afterwards added to Royal Navy under the same name HMS Dedaigneuse.

British service
In July 1805 Commander William Beauchamp-Proctor was given acting-command of Dedaigneuse. He was not confirmed in his post-rank until 5 September 1806.

On 21 November 1808, at sunset, Dédaigneuse was stationed off the Isle de France when she encountered the French 36-gun frigate Sémillante returning from a cruise in the Indian Ocean. Dédaigneuse gave chase and by midnight the two ships were no more than half a mile apart. Dédaigneuse fired two or three shots from her bow-chasers, and then a full broadside, as Sémillante tacked. Dédaigneuse followed suit, but because of the lightness of the wind, the ship would not come round. A boat was lowered down to tow her round, and she was finally able to pursue the Frenchman, now some distance ahead. Unfortunately, Dédaigneuse had lost a great deal of copper, being very foul, and at best a bad working ship, so gradually dropped further astern. Beauchamp-Proctor eventually abandoned the chase at about 5 p.m, and soon afterwards Sémillante anchored in Port Louis. Dédaigneuse continued to patrol the waters off the Isle de France until her water and provisions were almost expended, before sailing to Madagascar to reprovision, and then sailed to Bombay. When the commander-in-chief expressed himself dissatisfied with his conduct, Captain Beauchamp-Proctor requested a court-martial, which was held aboard Culloden in Bombay harbour on 27 March 1809. Every officer of his ship gave strong evidence in the captain's favour, and the court acquitted him of all blame, laying responsibility squarely on the poor sailing qualities of Dédaigneuse.

Fate
Dedaigneuse was eventually sold in April 1823.

Patriote (Coquille) class, (40-gun design by Raymond-Antoine Haran, with 28 x 12-pounder and 12 x 6-pounder guns).

• Patriote (launched October 1794 at Bayonne) – renamed Coquille on 30 May 1795.
• Fidèle (launched 1795 at Bayonne) – renamed Sirène on 30 May 1795.
• Franchise, (launched 17 October 1797 at Bayonne) - taken into British Navy on 28 May 1803 as HMS Franchise.
• Dédaigneuse, (launched December 1797 at Bayonne) - taken by the British on 28 January 1801, keeping her name.
• Thémis, (launched 13 August 1799 at Bayonne).

The Sémillante (French: "Shiny" or "Sparkling") was a 32-gun frigate of the French Navy, lead ship of her class. She was involved in a number of multi-vessel actions against the Royal Navy, particularly in the Indian Ocean. She captured a number of East Indiamen before she became so damaged that the French disarmed her and turned her into a merchant vessel. The British captured her and broke her up in 1809.


Defence of the Centurion in Vizagapatam Road, Septr. 15th 1804, Engraving by Thomas Sutherland after a painting by Sir James Lind

Class and type: Sémillante-class frigate
Displacement: 600 tons (French)
Length: 45.5 m (149 ft)Beam:11.5 m (38 ft)
Draught :5.5 m (18 ft)
Sail plan: Full-rigged ship
Armament: 26 × 12-pounder long guns + 6 × 6-pounder guns

Sémillante class, (32-gun design by Pierre-Joseph Pénétreau, with 26 x 12-pounder and 6 x 6-pounder guns).

• Sémillante, 32 guns (launched 25 November 1791 at Lorient) – sold in September 1808 for commercial use.
• Insurgente, 32 guns (launched 27 April 1793 at Lorient – captured by American Navy in February 1799, becoming USS Insurgent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_frigate_Dédaigneuse_(1797)
https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=3837
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_frigate_Sémillante_(1792)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
21 November 1839 – Launch of French Inflexible, a 90-gun Suffren-class Ship of the line of the French Navy


The Inflexible was a 90-gun Suffren-class Ship of the line of the French Navy.

Commissioned in Rochefort in 1840, Inflexible was appointed to the Mediterranean squadron, where she served from 1841 under Captain Guérin des Essarts.
From 1860, she was used as a boys' school in Brest, and was eventually broken up in 1875


Inflexible as a boys' school

Class and type: Suffren class ship of the line
Displacement: 4 070 tonnes
Length: 60.50 m (198.5 ft)
Beam: 16.28 m (53.4 ft)
Draught: 7.40 m (24.3 ft)
Propulsion: 3114 m² of sails
Complement: 810 to 846 men
Armament:

• 1824-1839:
• 30 × 30-pounder long guns on lower deck
• 32 × 30-pounder short guns on middle deck
• 24 × 30-pounder carronades and 4 × 18-pounders on upper decks
• 1839-1840
• 26 × 30-pounder long guns and 4 × 22cm Paixhans guns on lower deck
• 32 × 30-pounder short guns on middle deck
• 24 × 30-pounder carronades and 4 × 16 cm Paixhans guns on upper decks

Armour: 6.97 cm of timber


The Suffren class was a late type of 90-gun ships of the line of the French Navy.

The design was selected on 30 January 1824 by the Commission de Paris, an appointed Commission comprising Jean-Marguerite Tupinier, Jacques-Noël Sané, Pierre Rolland, Pierre Lair and Jean Lamorinière. Intended as successors of the 80-gun Bucentaure class and as the third of four ranks of ships of the line, they introduced the innovation of having straight walls, instead of the tumblehome design that had prevailed until then; this tended to heighten the ships' centre of gravity, but provided much more room for equipment in the upper decks. Stability issues were fixed with underwater stabilisers.

Only the first two, Suffren and Inflexible, retain the original design all through their career; the others were converted to steam and sail during their construction.

90-gun ships ("vaisseaux de 90") of the Restoration
Suffren class, of the Commission de Paris

• Suffren 90 (launched 27 August 1829 at Cherbourg)
• Inflexible 90 (launched 21 November 1839 at Rochefort)

Straight walls of an arsenal model of Suffren, with the lower long 30-pounder battery, the upper short 30-pounder battery, and the 30-pounder carronades on the deck








https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Inflexible_(1839)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffren-class_ship_of_the_line

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
21 November 1910 – Sailors on board Brazil's warships including the Minas Geraes, São Paulo, and Bahia, violently rebel in what is now known as the Revolta da Chibata (Revolt of the Lash).


The Revolt of the Lash (Portuguese: Revolta da Chibata) was a naval mutiny in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in late November 1910. It was the direct result of the use of whips ("lashes") by white naval officers when punishing Afro-Brazilian and mulatto enlisted sailors.


The leader of the Revolt of the Lash, João Cândido Felisberto (front row, directly to the left of the man in the dark suit), with reporters, officers and sailors on board Minas Geraes on 26 November 1910.

In 1888, Brazil became the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery. The move was opposed by Brazilian elites, and they led a successful coup d'état in 1889. The resulting instability contributed to several revolts and rebellions, but at the beginning of the new century rising demand for coffee and rubber enabled Brazilian politicians to begin plotting the country's transformation into an international power. A key part of this would come from modernizing the Brazilian Navy, which had been neglected since the revolution, by purchasing battleships of the new "dreadnought" type. While enormously expensive, these two dreadnoughts garnered much international attention before their delivery in 1910.

Social conditions in the Brazilian Navy, however, were not keeping pace with the new technology. Elite white officers were in charge of mostly black and mulatto crews, many of whom had been forced into the navy on long-term contracts. These officers frequently utilized corporal punishment on their crewmen for even minor offenses, something that had been banned in most other countries and in the rest of Brazil. In response, sailors used the new warships for a carefully planned and executed mutiny on 22 November 1910. They took control of both new dreadnoughts, one of the cruisers and an older warship—a total that gave the mutineers the kind of firepower that dwarfed the rest of the Brazilian Navy. Led by João Cândido Felisberto, the mutineers sent a letter to the government that demanded an end to what they called the "slavery" being practiced by the navy.

While the executive branch of the Brazilian government plotted to retake or sink the rebelling warships, they were hampered by personnel distrust and equipment problems; historians have since cast doubt on their chances of successfully accomplishing either. At the same time, Congress—led by Rui Barbosa, a senator—pursued a route of amnesty, appointing a former navy captain as their liaison to the rebels. This latter route was successful, and a bill granting amnesty to all involved and ending the use of corporal punishment passed the lower house by a veto-proof margin. However, many of the sailors were quickly discharged from the navy, and after an unrelated second rebellion took place a few weeks later, many of the original mutineers were rounded up and thrown into jail or sent to work camps on the rubber plantations to the north.


Minas Geraes, spelled Minas Gerais in some sources, was a dreadnought battleship of the Brazilian Navy. Named in honor of the state of Minas Gerais, the ship was laid down in April 1907 as the lead ship of its class, making the country the third to have a dreadnought under construction and igniting a naval arms race between Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.


Minas Gerais sailing soon after her commissioning. Photo was taken too early to be of Sao Paulo, which is a common identification in sources.

Two months after its completion in January 1910, Minas Geraes was featured in Scientific American, which described it as "the last word in heavy battleship design and the ... most powerfully armed warship afloat".[8] In November 1910, Minas Geraeswas the focal point of the Revolt of the Lash. The mutiny spread from Minas Geraes to other ships in the Navy, including its sister São Paulo, the elderly coastal defense ship Deodoro, and the recently commissioned cruiser Bahia. Led by the "Black Admiral" João Cândido Felisberto, the mutineers threatened to bombard the Brazilian capital of Rio de Janeiro if their demands were not met. As it was not possible to end the situation militarily—the only loyal troops nearby being small torpedo boatsand army troops confined to land—the National Congress of Brazil gave in and the rebels disbanded.

When Brazil entered the First World War in 1917, Britain's Royal Navy declined Brazil's offer of Minas Geraes for duty with the Grand Fleet because the ship was outdated; it had not been refitted since entering service, so range-finders and a fire-control system had not been added. São Paulo underwent modernization in the United States in 1920; in 1921, Minas Geraes received the same treatment. A year later, Minas Geraes sailed to counter the first of the Tenente revolts. São Paulo shelled the rebels' fort, and they surrendered shortly thereafter; Minas Geraes did not fire its guns. In 1924, mutineers seized São Paulo and attempted to persuade the crews of Minas Geraes and several other ships to join them, but were unsuccessful.

Minas Geraes was modernized at the Rio de Janeiro Naval Yard in the 1930s, and underwent further refitting from 1939 to 1943. During the Second World War, the ship was anchored in Salvador as the main defense of the port, as it was too old to play an active part in the war. For the last nine years of its service life, Minas Geraes remained largely inactive, and was towed to Italy for scrapping in March 1954.

Revolt of the Lash
Main article: Revolt of the Lash
The initial spark was provided on 16 November 1910 when Afro-Brazilian sailor Marcelino Rodrigues Menezes was brutally flogged 250 times for insubordination. The sailor's back was later described by José Carlos de Carvalho, a retired navy captain assigned to be the Brazilian government's representative to the mutineers, as "a mullet sliced open for salting." Many Afro-Brazilian sailors were sons of former slaves, or were former slaves freed under the Lei Áurea (abolition) but forced to enter the navy. They had been planning a revolt for some time, and Menezes became the catalyst. The revolt began aboard Minas Geraes at around 10 pm on 22 November; the ship's commander and several loyal crewmen were murdered in the process. Soon after, São Paulo, the new cruiser Bahia, the coast-defense ship Deodoro, the minelayer República, the training ship Benjamin Constant, and the torpedo boats Tamoio and Timbira all revolted with relatively little violence. The first four ships represented the newest and strongest ships in the navy; Minas Geraes, São Paulo, and Bahia had been completed and commissioned only months before. Deodoro was twelve years old and had recently undergone a refit. The crews of the smaller warships made up only two percent of the mutineers, and some moved to the largest ships after the revolt began.


Afro-Brazilian and pardo sailors pose for a photographer on board Minas Geraes, probably during the ship's visit to the United States in early 1913.



The ships were well-supplied with foodstuffs, ammunition, and coal, and the only demand of mutineers—led by João Cândido Felisberto—was the abolition of what they called slavery: they objected to low pay, long hours, inadequate training, and punishments including bolo (being struck on the hand with a ferrule) and the use of whips or lashes (chibata), which eventually became a symbol of the revolt. By the 23rd, the National Congress had begun discussing the possibility of a general amnesty for the sailors. Senator Ruy Barbosa, long an opponent of slavery, lent a large amount of support, and the measure unanimously passed the Federal Senate on 24 November. The measure was then sent to the Chamber of Deputies.

Humiliated by the revolt, naval officers and the president of Brazil were staunchly opposed to amnesty, so they quickly began planning to assault the rebel ships. The officers believed such an action was necessary to restore the service's honor. The rebels, believing an attack was imminent, sailed their ships out of Guanabara Bay and spent the night of 23–24 November at sea, only returning during daylight. Late on the 24th, the President ordered the naval officers to attack the mutineers. Officers crewed some smaller warships and the cruiser Rio Grande do Sul, Bahia's sister ship with ten 4.7-inch guns. They planned to attack on the morning of the 25th, when the government expected the mutineers would return to Guanabara Bay. When they did not return and the amnesty measure neared passage in the Chamber of Deputies, the order was rescinded. After the bill passed 125–23 and the president signed it into law, the mutineers stood down on the 26th.

During the revolt, the ships were noted by many observers to be well handled, despite a previous belief that the Brazilian Navy was incapable of effectively operating the ships even before being split by a rebellion. João Cândido Felisberto ordered all liquor thrown overboard, and discipline on the ships was recognized as exemplary. The 4.7-inch guns were often used for shots over the city, but the 12-inch guns were not, which led to a suspicion among the naval officers that the rebels were incapable of using the weapons. Later research and interviews indicate that Minas Geraes' guns were fully operational, and while São Paulo's could not be turned after salt water contaminated the hydraulic system, British engineers still on board the ship after the voyage from the United Kingdom were working on the problem. Still, historians have never ascertained how well the mutineers could handle the ships.

The crews of the torpedo boats remained loyal to the government, and army troops moved to the presidential palace and the coastline, but neither group could stop the mutineers; a major problem for the authorities was that many of the men who manned Rio de Janeiro's harbor defenses were sympathetic to the mutineers' cause. The additional possibility of the capital being bombarded forced the National Congress of Brazil to give in to the rebels' demands. The demands included the abolition of flogging, improved living conditions, and the granting of amnesty to all mutineers. The government also issued official pardons and a statement of regret. Its submission resulted in the rebellion's end on 26 November, when control of the four ships was handed back to the navy.

In 1913, Minas Geraes took the Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lauro Müller, to the United States, reciprocating the visit U.S. Secretary of State Elihu Root had paid to Brazil seven years earlier.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Lash
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_battleship_Minas_Geraes

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
21 November 1912 – Launch of Japanese battleship Hiei, a Kongo-class battleship


Hiei (比叡) was a warship of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War I and World War II. Designed by British naval architect George Thurston, she was the second launched of four Kongō-class battlecruisers, among the most heavily armed ships in any navy when built. Laid down in 1911 at the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal, Hiei was formally commissioned in 1914. She patrolled off the Chinese coast on several occasions during World War I, and helped with rescue efforts following the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake.


Hiei in her 1942 configuration

Starting in 1929, Hiei was converted to a gunnery training ship to avoid being scrapped under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty. She served as Emperor Hirohito's transport in the mid-1930s. Starting in 1937, she underwent a full-scale reconstruction that completely rebuilt her superstructure, upgraded her powerplant, and equipped her with launch catapults for floatplanes. Now fast enough to accompany Japan's growing fleet of aircraft carriers, she was reclassified as a fast battleship. On the eve of the US entry into World War II, she sailed as part of Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo's Combined Fleet, escorting the six carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.



As part of the Third Battleship Division, Hiei participated in many of the Imperial Japanese Navy's early actions in 1942, providing support for the invasion of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) as well as the Indian Ocean raid of April 1942. During the Battle of Midway, she sailed in the Invasion Force under Admiral Nobutake Kondō, before being redeployed to the Solomon Islands during the Battle of Guadalcanal. She escorted Japanese carrier forces during the battles of the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz Islands, before sailing as part of a bombardment force under Admiral Kondō during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. On the evening of 13 November 1942, Hiei engaged American cruisers and destroyers alongside her sister ship Kirishima. After inflicting heavy damage on American cruisers and destroyers, Hiei was crippled by enemy vessels. Subjected to continuous air attack, she sank on the evening of 14 November 1942.

Design and construction
Hiei was the second of the Imperial Japanese Navy's Kongō-class battlecruisers, a line of capital ships designed by the British naval architect George Thurston. The class was ordered in 1910 in the Japanese Emergency Naval Expansion Bill after the commissioning of HMS Invincible in 1908.[3] The four battlecruisers of the Kongō class were designed to match the naval capabilities of the other major powers at the time; they have been called the battlecruiser versions of the British (formerly Turkish) battleship HMS Erin. With their heavy armament and armor protection (the latter of which made up 23.3% of their approximately 30,000 ton displacement), Hiei and her sister ships were vastly superior to any other Japanese capital ship afloat at the time.


Hiei's fitting out in Yokosuka, September 1913

The keel of Hiei was laid down at Yokosuka Naval Arsenal on 4 November 1911, with most of the parts used in her construction manufactured in Britain. She was launched on 21 November 1912, and fitting-out began in December 1913. On 15 December 1913, Captain Shichitaro Takagi was assigned as her chief equipping officer. She was completed on 4 August 1914.

Armament
Hiei's main battery consisted of eight 14-inch (36 cm) heavy-caliber main guns in four twin turrets, two forward and two aft. The turrets were noted by the US Office of Naval Intelligence to be "similar to the British 15-inch turrets", with improvements made in flash-tightness in the gun chambers. Each of her main guns could fire high-explosive or armor-piercing shells 38,770 yards (19.14 nmi; 35.45 km) at a rate of two shells per minute. In keeping with the Japanese doctrine of deploying more powerful vessels than their opponents, Hiei and her sister ships were the first vessels in the world equipped with 14-inch (36 cm) guns. The main guns carried ammunition for ninety shots and had an approximate gun-life of 250–280 shots. In 1941, dyes were introduced for the armor-piercing shells of the four Kongo-class battleships to assist their gunners in distinguishing the hits from a distance, with Hiei's armor-piercing shells using black dye.

Her secondary battery was originally sixteen 6-inch (15 cm) 50-caliber medium guns in single casemates (all located amidships), eight 3-inch (7.6 cm) guns and eight submerged 21-inch (53 cm) torpedo tubes. The sixteen 6-inch/50 caliber guns were capable of firing between 5 and 6 rounds per minute, with a barrel life of 500 rounds. The 6-inch/50 caliber gun was capable of firing both antiaircraft and antiship shells, though the positioning of the guns on Hiei made antiaircraft firing impractical. The eight 5-inch/40 caliber guns added later could fire between 8 and 14 rounds per minute, with a barrel life of 800–1500 rounds. These guns had the widest variety of shot type of Hiei's guns, being designed to fire antiaircraft, antiship, and illumination shells. Hiei was also armed with a large number of 1-inch (2.5 cm) Type 96 antiaircraft autocannons



The Kongō-class battlecruiser (金剛型巡洋戦艦 Kongō-gata jun'yōsenkan) was a class of four battlecruisers built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) immediately before World War I. Designed by British naval architect George Thurston, the lead ship of the class, Kongō, was the last Japanese capital ship constructed outside Japan, by Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness.[1] Her sister ships Haruna, Kirishima and Hiei were all completed in Japan.

During the late 1920s, all but Hiei were reconstructed and reclassified as battleships. After the signing of the London Naval Treaty in 1930, Hiei was reconfigured as a training ship to avoid being scrapped. Following Japan's withdrawal from the London Naval Treaty, all four underwent a massive second reconstruction in the late 1930s. Following the completion of these modifications, which increased top speeds to over 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph), all four were reclassified as fast battleships.

The Kongō-class battleships were the most active capital ships of the Japanese Navy during World War II, participating in most major engagements of the war. Hiei and Kirishima acted as escorts during the attack on Pearl Harbor, while Kongō and Haruna supported the invasion of Singapore. All four participated in the battles of Midway and Guadalcanal. Hiei and Kirishima were both lost during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942, while Haruna and Kongō jointly bombarded the American Henderson Field airbase on Guadalcanal. The two remaining Kongō-class battleships spent most of 1943 shuttling between Japanese naval bases before participating in the major naval campaigns of 1944. Haruna and Kongō engaged American surface vessels during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Kongō was torpedoed and sunk by the submarine USS Sealion in November 1944, while Haruna was sunk at her moorings by an air attack in Kure Naval Base in late July 1945, but later raised and scrapped in 1946


Due to a lack of available slipways, the latter two were the first Japanese warships to be built by Japanese private shipyards. Completed by 1915, they were considered the first modern battlecruisers of the Imperial Japanese Navy.[1] According to naval historian Robert Jackson, they "outclassed all other contemporary [capital] ships". The design was so successful that the construction of the fourth battlecruiser of the Lion-class—HMS Tiger—was halted so that design features of the Kongō class could be added.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Hiei
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kongō-class_battlecruiser

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
21 November 1916 – Mines from SM U-73 sink the HMHS Britannic, the largest ship lost in the First World War.


HMHS Britannic (/brɪˈtænɪk/) was the third and final vessel of the White Star Line's Olympic class of steamships and the second to bear the name "Britannic." She was the fleet mate of both the RMS Olympic and the RMS Titanic and was intended to enter service as a transatlantic passenger liner.

Britannic was launched just before the start of the First World War. She was designed to be the safest and most luxurious of the three ships, drawing lessons from the sinking of the Titanic. She was laid up at her builders, Harland and Wolff, in Belfast for many months before being put to use as a hospital ship in 1915. In 1915 and 1916 she served between the United Kingdom and the Dardanelles. On the morning of 21 November 1916 she was shaken by an explosion caused by a naval mine near the Greek island of Kea and foundered 55 minutes later, killing 30 people.


HMHS Britannic seen during World War I

There were 1,065 people on board; the 1,035 survivors were rescued from the water and lifeboats. Britannic was the largest ship lost in the First World War. The loss of the ship was compensated by the award of SS Bismarck to the White Star Line as part of post-war reparations; she became the RMS Majestic.

The wreck was located and explored by Jacques-Yves Cousteau in 1975. The vessel is the largest passenger ship on the sea floor, followed by Titanic

Last voyage

The location of Kea in the Cycladesarchipelago in the Aegean Sea


The channel between Kea (left) and Makronisos; Britannic sank closer to Kea

After completing five successful voyages to the Middle Eastern theatre and back to the United Kingdom transporting the sick and wounded, Britannic departed Southampton for Lemnos at 14:23 on 12 November 1916, her sixth voyage to the Mediterranean Sea.[28]Britannic passed Gibraltar around midnight on 15 November and arrived at Naples on the morning of 17 November, for her usual coalling and water refuelling stop, completing the first stage of her mission.

A storm kept the ship at Naples until Sunday afternoon, when Captain Bartlett decided to take advantage of a brief break in the weather and continue. The seas rose once again just as Britannic left the port. By next morning, the storms died and the ship passed the Strait of Messina without problems. Cape Matapan was rounded in the first hours of 21 November. By the morning, Britannic was steaming at full speed into the Kea Channel, between Cape Sounion (the southernmost point of Attica, the prefecture that includes Athens) and the island of Kea.

There were 1,065 people on board: 673 crew, 315 Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) and 77 nurses.


At 08:12 on 21 November 1916, a loud explosion shook the ship. The cause, whether it was a torpedo from an enemy submarine or a mine, was not apparent. It would later be revealed that the mines were planted in the Kea Channel on 21 October 1916 by SM U-73 under the command of Gustav Sieß. The reaction in the dining room was immediate; doctors and nurses left instantly for their posts but not everybody reacted the same way, as further aft, the power of the explosion was less felt and many thought the ship had hit a smaller boat. Captain Bartlett and Chief Officer Hume were on the bridge at the time and the gravity of the situation was soon evident. The explosion was on the starboard side, between holds two and three. The force of the explosion damaged the watertight bulkhead between hold one and the forepeak. The first four watertight compartments were filling rapidly with water, the boiler-man's tunnel connecting the firemen's quarters in the bow with boiler room six was seriously damaged, and water was flowing into that boiler room.

Bartlett ordered the watertight doors closed, sent a distress signal, and ordered the crew to prepare the lifeboats. An SOS signal was immediately sent out and was received by several other ships in the area, among them were HMS Scourge and HMS Heroic, but Britannic heard nothing in reply; unknown to either Bartlett or the ship's wireless operator, the force of the first explosion had caused the antenna wires slung between the ship's masts to snap. This meant that although the ship could still send out transmissions by radio, she could no longer receive them.

Along with the damaged watertight door of the firemen's tunnel, the watertight door between boiler rooms six and five failed to close properly. Water was flowing further aft into boiler room five. Britannic had reached her flooding limit. She could stay afloat (motionless) with her first six watertight compartments flooded. There were five watertight bulkheads rising all the way up to B Deck. Those measures had been taken after the Titanic disaster (Titanic could float with her first four compartments flooded). The next crucial bulkhead between boiler rooms five and four and its door were undamaged and should have guaranteed the ship's survival. There were open portholes along the front lower decks, which tilted underwater within minutes of the explosion. The nurses had opened most of those portholes to ventilate the wards, against standing orders. As the ship's angle of list increased, water reached this level and began entering aft from the bulkhead between boiler rooms five and four. With more than six compartments flooded, Britannic could not stay afloat.

Evacuation
On the bridge, Captain Bartlett was already considering efforts to save the ship, despite its increasingly dire condition. Only two minutes after the blast, boiler rooms five and six had to be evacuated. In about ten minutes, Britannic was roughly in the same condition Titanic had been in one hour after the collision with the iceberg. Fifteen minutes after the ship was struck, the open portholes on E Deck were underwater. With water also entering the ship's aft section from the bulkhead between boiler rooms four and five, Britannic quickly developed a serious list to starboard due to the weight of the water flooding into the starboard side. With the shores of the Greek island Kea to the right, Bartlett gave the order to navigate the ship towards the island in attempt to beach the vessel. The effect of the ship's starboard list and the weight of the rudder made attempts to navigate the ship under its own power difficult, and the steering gear was knocked out by the explosion, which eliminated steering by the rudder. The captain ordered the port shaft driven at a higher speed than the starboard side, which helped the ship move towards the island.

At the same time, the hospital staff prepared to evacuate. Bartlett had given the order to prepare the lifeboats, but he did not allow them to be lowered into the water. Everyone took their most valuable belongings with them before they evacuated. The chaplain of the ship recovered his Bible. The few patients and nurses on board were assembled. Major Harold Priestley gathered his detachments from the Royal Army Medical Corps to the back of the A deck and inspected the cabins to ensure no one was left behind.

While Bartlett continued his desperate manoeuvre, the ship listed more and more. The other crew members began to fear that the list would become too large, and so they decided to put the first lifeboat onto the water without waiting for the order to do so. Bartlett then decided to stop the ship and her engine. Before he could do so, two lifeboats were put onto the water on the port side. The still-turning partly-surfaced propeller sucked the two lifeboats into it, mincing them, along with their passengers. Bartlett was then finally able to stop the propellers before they could suck in another lifeboat.

Final moments

HMHS Britannic sinking

By 08:45, the list was so great that even the gantry davits were now inoperable. At this point, Bartlett concluded that the rate at which Britannic was sinking had slowed so he called a halt to the evacuation and ordered the engines restarted in the hope that he might still be able to beach the ship. At 09:00 Bartlett was informed that the rate of flooding had increased due to the ship's forward motion and that the flooding had reached D-deck. Realising that there was now no hope of reaching land in time, Bartlett gave the final order to stop the engines and sounded two final long blasts of the whistle, the signal to abandon ship.[50] As water had already reached the bridge, he and Assistant Commander Dyke walked off onto the deck and entered the water, swimming to a collapsible boat from which they continued to co-ordinate the rescue operations.

Britannic rolled over onto her starboard side and the funnels collapsed one by one as it rapidly sank. By the time the stern was out of the water, the bow had already slammed into the sea floor, causing major structural damage to it, before completely slipping beneath the waves at 09:07.[50] Violet Jessop (who was also one of the survivors of Britannic's sister-ship Titanic, and had even been on the third sister, Olympic, when she collided with HMS Hawke) described the last seconds;

"She dipped her head a little, then a little lower and still lower. All the deck machinery fell into the sea like a child's toys. Then she took a fearful plunge, her stern rearing hundreds of feet into the air until with a final roar, she disappeared into the depths, the noise of her going resounding through the water with undreamt-of violence...."
It was 09:07, only 55 minutes after the explosion. Britannic was the largest ship lost in the First World War.

Rescue

Survivors of the Britannic on board a destroyer


Captain John Cropper of the RAMC, lost in the sinking

Compared to Titanic, the rescue of Britannic was facilitated by three factors: the temperature was higher (21 °C (70 °F) compared to −2 °C (28 °F) for Titanic), more lifeboats were available (35 were launched and stayed afloat compared to Titanic's 20[57]) and help was closer (arrived less than two hours after first distress call[56] compared to three and a half hours for Titanic.)

The first to arrive on the scene were fishermen from Kea on their caïque, who picked many men from the water.[59] At 10:00, HMS Scourge sighted the first lifeboats and 10 minutes later stopped and picked up 339 survivors. Armed boarding steamer HMS Heroichad arrived some minutes earlier and picked up 494. Some 150 had made it to Korissia, Kea, where surviving doctors and nurses from Britannic were trying to save the injured, using aprons and pieces of lifebelts to make dressings. A little barren quayside served as their operating room.

Scourge and Heroic had no deck space for more survivors, and they left for Piraeus signalling the presence of those left at Korissia. HMS Foxhound arrived at 11:45 and, after sweeping the area, anchored in the small port at 13:00 to offer medical assistance and take on board the remaining survivors. At 14:00 the light cruiser HMS Foresight arrived. Foxhound departed for Piraeus at 14:15 while Foresight remained to arrange the burial on Kea of RAMC Sergeant William Sharpe, who had died of his injuries. Another two men died on the Heroic and one on the French tug Goliath. The three were buried with military honours in the Piraeus Naval and Consular Cemetery. The last fatality was G. Honeycott, who died at the Russian Hospital at Piraeus shortly after the funerals.

In total, 1,035 people survived the sinking. Thirty men lost their lives in the disaster but only five were buried; others were not recovered and are honoured on memorials in Thessaloniki (the Mikra Memorial) and London. Another 38 men were injured (18 crew, 20 RAMC).[62] Survivors were accommodated in the warships that were anchored at the port of Piraeus while nurses and officers were hosted in separate hotels at Phaleron. Many Greek citizens and officials attended the funerals. Survivors were sent home and few arrived in the United Kingdom before Christmas.

In November 2006, Britannic researcher Michail Michailakis discovered that one of the 45 unidentified graves in the New British Cemetery in the town of Hermoupolis on the island of Syros contained the remains of a soldier collected from the church of Ag. Trias at Livadi (the former name of Korissia). Maritime historian Simon Mills contacted the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Further research established that this soldier was a Britannic casualty and his remains had been registered in October 1919 as belonging to a certain "Corporal Stevens". When the remains were moved to the new cemetery at Syros in June 1921, it was found that there was no record relating this name with the loss of the ship, and the grave was registered as unidentified. Mills provided evidence that this man could be Sergeant Sharpe and the case was considered by the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency. A new headstone for Sharpe was erected and the CWGC has updated its database.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMHS_Britannic
http://hmhsbritannic.weebly.com/

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
21 November 1921 - The Carrier Dove was a 4-masted schooner built by the Hall Brothers in Port Blakely in 1890 wrecked


The Carrier Dove was a 4-masted schooner built by the Hall Brothers in Port Blakely in 1890. She worked in the West coast lumber trade and in fishing



Career of 1890 schooner Carrier Dove
In 1893, Carrier Dove was active in the foreign lumber trade out of British Columbia. The Alaska Packers Association also described Carrier Dove as a "salmon vessel" which had sustained a partial loss at sea amounting to $11,500, in 1893. In 1894, she loaded lumber at Nanaimo under Capt. Brandt. She was used for fishing between 1902-1907. On Nov. 19, 1903, while at sea in the vicinity of Juneau, AK, a seaman named John Macas jumped overboard. "A boat was launched and man picked up, but died soon afterwards."

The Seattle-Alaska Fish Co. began business in Seattle in 1902, using for its home station the old West Seattle plant of the Oceanic Packing Co. The first year the schooner Carrier Dove was the only vessel outfitted, but in 1903 the schooner Nellie Colman was added. In 1906 the latter vessel was sold, her place being taken by the schooner Maid of Orleans. Only the Carrier Dove was outfitted in 1907, but in 1908 she was sold and the Maid of Orleans outfitted. In 1910 the company was absorbed by the King & Winge Codfish Co., of Seattle.​

Carrier Dove took a load of lumber from Masset Inlet, B.C. to Port Adelaide in 1919-1920.

On 27 February 1920, Carrier Dove ran aground on a reef at Levuka, Fiji. She was refloated, repaired, and returned to service.


1912 - San Pedro, CA - 4 masted schooner Carrier Dove, dockside, unloading her wares

1921 shipwreck
Schooner Carrier Dove was wrecked after striking a reef near the Hawaiian island of Molokai on 21 November 1921. She had become "waterlogged and unmanageable while on a voyage from Tonga Island for San Francisco with copra." The Pacific Marine Review reported that the loss of the "Moore schooner Carrier Dove" was estimated at "$77,000 cargo, no hull."

The American schooner Carrier Dove, wrecked on the Island of Molokai, Hawaii, November 2, was "lost" twice before, once in September, 1903, on the China coast, and again in February, 1920, during a hurricane that cast her on a reef of Fiji. She was salved both times. No salvage of the latest wreck is possible.​

"Two tons of copra from the wreck were gathered up four days later on the Kai-lua beach on Oahu." The wreck was still "visible on the ocean bottom" as of 2002.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_Dove_(schooner)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
21 November 1944 – World War II: American submarine USS Sealion (SS 315) sinks the Japanese battleship Kongō and Japanese destroyer Urakaze in the Formosa Strait.


USS Sealion (SS/SSP/ASSP/APSS/LPSS-315), a Balao-class submarine, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for the sea lion, any of several large, eared seals native to the Pacific. She is sometimes referred to as Sealion II, because her first skipper, Lieutenant Commander Eli Thomas Reich, was a veteran of the first Sealion, serving on her when she was lost at the beginning of World War II.



Her keel was laid down on 25 February 1943 by the Electric Boat Company of Groton, Connecticut. She was launched on 31 October 1943 sponsored by Mrs. Emory S. Land, and commissioned on 8 March 1944.

Sinking of Kongō and Urakaze
At 0020 on 21 November, she made radar contact with an enemy formation moving through the Taiwan Strait at about 16 knots (30 km/h) and not zig-zagging.

By 0048, the pips were made out to be two cruisers and two battleships. At 0146, three additional ships, escorts—one on either beam of the formation and one on the starboard quarter—became visible. Sealion had in fact intercepted a powerful surface fleet consisting of the battleships Yamato, Nagato, and Kongō, the cruiser Yahagi, and the destroyers Hamakaze, Isokaze, Urakaze, Yukikaze, Kiri, and Ume.

At 0245, Sealion, ahead of the task force, turned in and slowed for the attack. Eleven minutes later, she fired six torpedoes at the second ship in line, Kongō. At 0259, she fired three at Nagato. At 0300, her crew saw and heard three hits from the first salvo, flooding two of Kongō's boiler rooms and giving her a list to port. Nagato, alerted by the explosions, turned hard and the Sealion's second salvo missed ahead, running on to hit and sink Urakaze; the destroyer's magazines were hit by the torpedo. She blew up and sank quickly with the loss of all hands on board, including ComDesDiv 17 Yokota Yasuteru.

Sealion opened to the westward. The Japanese searched to the east. By 0310, the submarine had reloaded and began tracking again with the thought that the torpedoes had only dented the battleship's armor belt.

The Japanese formation, however, had begun zig-zagging and the sea and wind had increased. At 0450, the enemy formation split into two groups. Sealion began tracking the slower group consisting of Kongō, Isokaze and Hamakaze. At 0524, a tremendous explosion lit the area and Kongō disappeared.

It was customary in American submarines to mark a name on the head of each torpedo as it was loaded into the tube nest. They usually bore the names of the torpedo crews' wives or best girls. Some carried the names of the factory employee who had sold the most war bonds during a given period. That night, however, four of Sealion's fish, as they raced out of their tubes, carried the names Foster, O'Connell, Paul and Ogilvie—the men who had been killed in the bombing of Sealion I three years earlier.

It was not customary for the crews of American submarines to make audio recordings of their attacks. However, the Sealion crew had obtained a sound recorder left behind by a CBS war correspondent who had debarked at Midway, and when ordered to battle stations after encountering the Japanese battle group, one sailor positioned the microphone by an intercom in the conning tower. That recording,[9] along with a similar recording[9] of an attack on a Japanese oiler during the Sealion's fifth patrol, were then preserved by the Naval Underwater Sound Laboratory, and are thought to be the only surviving sound recordings of World War II submarine attacks.


Kongō (金剛, "Indestructible Diamond", named for Mount Kongō) was a warship of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War I and World War II. She was the first battlecruiser of the Kongō class, among the most heavily armed ships in any navy when built. Her designer was the British naval engineer George Thurston, and she was laid down in 1911 at Barrow-in-Furness in Britain by Vickers Shipbuilding Company. Kongō was the last Japanese capital ship constructed outside Japan. She was formally commissioned in 1913, and patrolled off the Chinese coast during World War I.



Kongō underwent two major reconstructions. Beginning in 1929, the Imperial Japanese Navy rebuilt her as a battleship, strengthening her armor and improving her speed and power capabilities. In 1935, her superstructure was completely rebuilt, her speed was increased, and she was equipped with launch catapults for floatplanes. Now fast enough to accompany Japan's growing carrier fleet, Kongō was reclassified as a fast battleship. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Kongō operated off the coast of mainland China before being redeployed to the Third Battleship Division in 1941. In 1942, she sailed as part of the Southern Force in preparation for the Battle of Singapore.



Kongō fought in a large number of major naval actions of the Pacific War during World War II. She covered the Japanese Army's amphibious landings in British Malaya (part of present-day Malaysia) and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in 1942, before engaging American forces at the Battle of Midway and during the Guadalcanal Campaign. Throughout 1943, Kongō primarily remained at Truk Lagoon in the Caroline Islands, Kure Naval Base (near Hiroshima), Sasebo Naval Base (near Nagasaki), and Lingga Roads, and deployed several times in response to American aircraft carrier air raids on Japanese island bases scattered across the Pacific. Kongō participated in the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944 (22–23 October), engaging and sinking American vessels in the latter. Kongō was torpedoed and sunk by the submarine USS Sealion while transiting the Formosa Strait on 21 November 1944. She was the only Japanese battleship sunk by submarine in the Second World War.

1944: Combat and loss


Kongō under attack during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, 20 June 1944

In January 1944, Kongō was dry-docked for a reconfiguration of her anti-aircraft suite. Four 6-inch guns and a pair of twin 25 mm mounts were removed and replaced with four 5-inch guns and four triple 25 mm mounts. The Third Battleship Division departed Kure on 8 March 1944. Arriving at Lingga on 14 March 1944, the division remained for training until 11 May 1944. On 11 May 1944, Kongō and Admiral Ozawa's Mobile Fleet departed Lingga for Tawitawi, where they were joined by Vice-Admiral Takeo Kurita's "Force C". On 13 June, Ozawa's Mobile Fleet departed Tawitawi for the Mariana Islands. During the Battle of the Philippine Sea, Kongō escorted Japanese fast carriers, and remained undamaged in counterattacks from US carrier aircraft on 20 June. When she returned to Japan, 13 triple and 40 single 25-mm mounts were added to her anti-aircraft armament, for a total of over 100 mounts. In August, two more 6-inch guns were removed and another eighteen single mounts installed.

In October 1944, Kongō departed Lingga in preparation for "Operation Sho-1", Japan's counterattack during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval engagement in history. On 24 October, Kongō was undamaged by several near misses from American carrier aircraft in the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea. On 25 October, during the Battle off Samar, Kongō—as part of Admiral Kurita's Centre Force—engaged the US 7th Fleet's "Taffy 3", a battlegroup of escort carriers and destroyers. She succeeded in scoring numerous hits on the escort carrier Gambier Bay as well as the destroyers Hoel and Heermann. At 09:12, she sank the destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts. After a fierce defensive action by the American ships, which sank three Japanese heavy cruisers, Admiral Kurita elected to withdraw, ending the battle. While retreating, Kongō suffered damage from five near misses from attacking aircraft. The fleet arrived at Brunei on 28 October.

On 16 November, following a US air raid on Brunei, Kongō along with Yamato, Nagato and the rest of the First Fleet, departed Brunei for Kure in preparation for a major reorganization of the fleet and battle repairs. On 20 November, they entered the Formosa Strait. Shortly after midnight on 21 November, the submarine USS Sealion made radar contact with the fleet at 44,000 yards (40,000 m). Maneuvering into position at 02:45, Sealion fired six bow torpedoes at Kongō followed by three stern torpedoes at Nagato fifteen minutes later. One minute after the first salvo was launched, two of the torpedoes were seen to hit Kongō on the port side, while a third sank the destroyer Urakaze with all hands. The torpedoes flooded two of Kongō's boiler rooms, but she was still able to make 16 kn (30 km/h; 18 mph). By 05:00, she had slowed to 11 kn (20 km/h; 13 mph) and was given permission to break off from the fleet and head to the port of Keelung in Formosa along with the destroyers Hamakaze and Isokaze as escort.

Within fifteen minutes of detaching from the main force, Kongō was listing 45 degrees and flooding uncontrollably. At 5:18 the ship lost all power and the order was given to abandon ship. At 5:24, while the evacuation was under way, the forward 14-inch magazine exploded and the broken ship sank quickly with the loss of over 1,200 of her crew including the commander of the Third Battleship Division and her captain. The escort destroyers Hamakaze and Isokaze rescued 237 survivors.

Kongō is believed to have sunk in 350 feet (110 m) of water approximately 55 nautical miles (102 km; 63 mi) northwest of Keelung. She was one of only three British-built battleships sunk by submarine attack during World War II. The other two were the British Revenge-class battleship HMS Royal Oak and the Queen Elizabeth-class battleship HMS Barham.


Urakaze (浦風, "Wind on the Sea") was one of 19 Kagerō-class destroyers built for the Imperial Japanese Navy during the 1930s.



On 21 November 1944, Urakaze was torpedoed and sunk with all hands - including Commander Destroyer Division 17 (Captain Tamotsu Tanii) - by the submarine USS Sealion, 65 miles (105 km) north-northwest of Keelung, Formosa(26°09′N 121°23′E). The torpedo that sank her was one out of three launched by the submarine that sank her and the battleship Kongō.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Kongō
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Sealion_(SS-315)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_destroyer_Urakaze_(1940)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
Other Events on 21 November


1620 – Plymouth Colony settlers sign the Mayflower Compact (November 11, O.S.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower_Compact


1673 – Launch of French Indien, (ex-Anonyme) 40–44 guns, design by Laurent Coulomb at Toulon – deleted as frigate 1691, but probably used as a flûte and renamed Concorde in April 1692.


1680 – Launch of French Ardent, 64 guns (designed and built by Étienne Salicon, at Le Havre – Captured by the Dutch in the Battle of Marbella in March 1705


1720 - HMS Speedwell (1690 - 28), Cptn. Hon. George Clinton, wrecked on the Dutch coast.

HMS Speedwell (1690) was an 8-gun fireship, rebuilt in 1702 as a 28-gun fifth rate, and wrecked in 1720.


1739 - British squadron of 6 ships of the line, under Vice Admiral Edward Vernon, bombard and capture of Porto Bello, Panama.


1861 - During the Civil War, the screw steamer USS New London, along with screw steamer R.R. Cuyler and crew members of the screw steamer Massachusetts, capture the Confederate schooner Olive with a cargo of lumber in Mississippi Sound.

USS New London (1859) was a screw steamer of the Union Navy during the American Civil War. She was outfitted with a Parrott rifle and 32-pounders, and was assigned as a gunboat in the Union blockade of the Confederate States of America

USS R. R. Cuyler was a steamer in the United States Navy during the American Civil War. She was outfitted by the Union Navy as a gunboat and was assigned to the Union blockade of the Confederate States of America.
She was named for the president of the Central Georgia Railroad.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_New_London_(1859)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_R._R._Cuyler_(1860)


1912 - Battle of Kaliakra

The Battle of Kaliakra, usually known as the Attack of the Drazki (Bulgarian: Атаката на Дръзки) in Bulgaria, was a maritime action between four Bulgarian torpedo boats and the Ottoman cruiser Hamidiye in the Black Sea. It took place on 21 November 1912 at 32 miles off Bulgaria's primary port of Varna.

During the course of the First Balkan War, the Ottoman Empire's supplies were dangerously limited after the battles in Kirk Kilisse and Lule Burgas and the sea route from the Romanian port Constanţa to Istanbul became vital for the Ottomans. The Ottoman navy also imposed a blockade on the Bulgarian coast and on 15 October, the commander of the cruiser Hamidiye threatened to destroy Varna and Balchik, unless the two towns surrendered.

On 21 November an Ottoman convoy was attacked by the four Bulgarian torpedo boats Drazki (Bold), Letyashti (Flying), Smeli (Brave) and Strogi (Strict). The attack was led by Letyashti, whose torpedoes missed, as did those of Smeli and Strogi, Smelibeing damaged by a 150 mm round with one of her crewmen wounded. Drazki however got within 100 meters from the Ottoman cruiser and her torpedoes struck the cruiser's starboard side, causing a 10 square meter hole.

However, Hamidiye was not sunk, due to her well-trained crew, strong forward bulkheads, the functionality of all her water pumps and a very calm sea. She did however have 8 crewmen killed and 30 wounded, and was repaired within months.

After this encounter, the Ottoman blockade of the Bulgarian coast was significantly loosened.


Drazki and her crew

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kaliakra_(1912)


1918 - U.S. battleships witness the surrender of German High Seas fleet at Rosyth, Firth of Forth, Scotland to U.S. and British fleets.


1942 - USS Cincinnati (CL 6) and USS Somers (DD 381) uncover the Norwegian ship SS Skjilbred as being the German blockade runner Anneliese Essberger after setting explosions and boarding the ship. Survivors are taken on board USS Milwaukee (CL 5).

USS Cincinnati (CL-6), was the third Omaha-class light cruiser, originally classified as a scout cruiser, built for the United States Navy. She was the third Navy ship named after the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, the first being Cincinnati, an ironcladcommissioned in 1862, during the Civil War, and the second being Cincinnati, a protected cruiser, that was decommissioned in 1919.
Cincinnati split her pre-war career between the Atlantic and the Pacific fleets. She served in the Scouting Fleet, based in the Atlantic, in 1924 to 1927, serving in the Pacific for a brief time in 1925 for fleet maneuvers. Cincinnati joined the Asiatic Fleet in 1927, and returned to the Atlantic from 1928 to 1932. She continued to go back and forth between oceans until March 1941, when she was assigned to Neutrality Patrol in the western Atlantic.
When the United States entered World War II she was assigned to TF41, based at Recife, and used on convoy escort duties and patrols in the south Atlantic. In 1944, she sailed for the Mediterranean to support Operation Dragoon, the invasion of the south of France. After the war, she was deemed surplus and scrapped at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in February 1946.


The U.S. Navy light cruiser USS Cincinnati (CL-6) in New York Harbor (USA), on 22 March 1944. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives.

On 21 November 1942, along with her sister Milwaukee and the destroyer Somers, they spotted Anneliese Essberger. The crew had begun to scuttle the ship, but the boarding party that had been dispatched was able to reach the ship and discover her true identity, a German blockade runner, and take the crew of 62 as prisoners, before she sank.


Anneliese Essberger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cincinnati_(CL-6)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
22 November 1718 – Off the coast of North Carolina, British pirate Edward Teach (best known as "Blackbeard") is killed in battle with a boarding party led by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard.
- Death of Edward Teach - better known as Blackbeard


Edward Teach or Edward Thatch (c. 1680 – 22 November 1718), better known as Blackbeard, was an English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of Britain's North American colonies. Little is known about his early life, but he may have been a sailor on privateer ships during Queen Anne's War before settling on the Bahamian island of New Providence, a base for Captain Benjamin Hornigold, whose crew Teach joined around 1716. Hornigold placed him in command of a sloop that he had captured, and the two engaged in numerous acts of piracy. Their numbers were boosted by the addition to their fleet of two more ships, one of which was commanded by Stede Bonnet; but Hornigold retired from piracy towards the end of 1717, taking two vessels with him.



Teach captured a French merchant vessel, renamed her Queen Anne's Revenge, and equipped her with 40 guns. He became a renowned pirate, his nickname derived from his thick black beard and fearsome appearance; he was reported to have tied lit fuses (slow matches) under his hat to frighten his enemies. He formed an alliance of pirates and blockaded the port of Charles Town, South Carolina, ransoming the port's inhabitants. He then ran Queen Anne's Revenge aground on a sandbar near Beaufort, North Carolina. He parted company with Bonnet and settled in Bath, North Carolina, also known as Bath Town where he accepted a royal pardon. But he was soon back at sea, where he attracted the attention of Alexander Spotswood, the Governor of Virginia. Spotswood arranged for a party of soldiers and sailors to capture the pirate, which they did on 22 November 1718 following a ferocious battle. Teach and several of his crew were killed by a small force of sailors led by Lieutenant Robert Maynard.

Teach was a shrewd and calculating leader who spurned the use of force, relying instead on his fearsome image to elicit the response that he desired from those whom he robbed. Contrary to the modern-day picture of the traditional tyrannical pirate, he commanded his vessels with the consent of their crews and there is no known account of his ever having harmed or murdered those whom he held captive. He was romanticized after his death and became the inspiration for an archetypal pirate in works of fiction across many genres.

Alexander Spotswood
As it spread throughout the neighbouring colonies, the news of Teach and Vane's impromptu party worried the Governor of Pennsylvania enough to send out two sloops to capture the pirates. They were unsuccessful, but Governor of Virginia Alexander Spotswood was also concerned that the supposedly retired freebooter and his crew were living in nearby North Carolina. Some of Teach's former crew had already moved into several Virginian seaport towns, prompting Spotswood to issue a proclamation on 10 July, requiring all former pirates to make themselves known to the authorities, to give up their arms and to not travel in groups larger than three. As head of a Crown colony, Spotswood viewed the proprietary colony of North Carolina with contempt; he had little faith in the ability of the Carolinians to control the pirates, who he suspected would be back to their old ways, disrupting Virginian commerce, as soon as their money ran out.[60]


Blackbeard the Pirate: this was published in the General History of the Pyrates, 1725.

Spotswood learnt that William Howard, the former quartermaster of Queen Anne's Revenge, was in the area, and believing that he might know of Teach's whereabouts had the pirate and his two slaves arrested. Spotswood had no legal authority to have pirates tried, and as a result, Howard's attorney, John Holloway, brought charges against Captain Brand of HMS Lyme, where Howard was imprisoned. He also sued on Howard's behalf for damages of £500, claiming wrongful arrest.

Spotswood's council claimed that Teach's presence was a crisis and that under a statute of William III, the governor was entitled to try Howard without a jury. The charges referred to several acts of piracy supposedly committed after the pardon's cut-off date, in "a sloop belonging to ye subjects of the King of Spain", but ignored the fact that they took place outside Spotswood's jurisdiction and in a vessel then legally owned. Another charge cited two attacks, one of which was the capture of a slave ship off Charles Town Bar, from which one of Howard's slaves was presumed to have come. Howard was sent to await trial before a Court of Vice-Admiralty, on the charge of piracy, but Brand and his colleague, Captain Gordon (of HMS Pearl) refused to serve with Holloway present. Incensed, Holloway had no option but to stand down, and was replaced by the Attorney General of Virginia, John Clayton, whom Spotswood described as "an honester man [than Holloway]". Howard was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, but was saved by a commission from London, which directed Spotswood to pardon all acts of piracy committed by surrendering pirates before 23 July 1718.

Spotswood had obtained from Howard valuable information on Teach's whereabouts, and he planned to send his forces across the border into North Carolina to capture him. He gained the support of two men keen to discredit North Carolina's Governor—Edward Moseley and Colonel Maurice Moore. He also wrote to the Lords of Trade, suggesting that the Crown might benefit financially from Teach's capture. Spotswood personally financed the operation, possibly believing that Teach had fabulous treasures hidden away. He ordered Captains Gordon and Brand of HMS Pearl and HMS Lyme to travel overland to Bath. Lieutenant Robert Maynard of HMS Pearl was given command of two commandeered sloops, to approach the town from the sea. An extra incentive for Teach's capture was the offer of a reward from the Assembly of Virginia, over and above any that might be received from the Crown.

Maynard took command of the two armed sloops on 17 November. He was given 57 men—33 from HMS Pearl and 24 from HMS Lyme. Maynard and the detachment from HMS Pearl took the larger of the two vessels and named her Jane; the rest took Ranger, commanded by one of Maynard's officers, a Mister Hyde. Some from the two ships' civilian crews remained aboard. They sailed from Kecoughtan, along the James River, on 17 November. The two sloops moved slowly, giving Brand's force time to reach Bath. Brand set out for North Carolina six days later, arriving within three miles of Bath on 23 November. Included in Brand's force were several North Carolinians, including Colonel Moore and Captain Jeremiah Vail, sent to put down any local objection to the presence of foreign soldiers. Moore went into the town to see if Teach was there, reporting back that he was not, but that the pirate was expected at "every minute." Brand then went to Governor Eden's home and informed him of his purpose. The next day, Brand sent two canoes down Pamlico River to Ocracoke Inlet, to see if Teach could be seen. They returned two days later and reported on what eventually transpired.

Last battle
Maynard found the pirates anchored on the inner side of Ocracoke Island, on the evening of 21 November. He had ascertained their position from ships he had stopped along his journey, but unfamiliar with the local channels and shoals he decided to wait until the following morning to make his attack. He stopped all traffic from entering the inlet—preventing any warning of his presence—and posted a lookout on both sloops to ensure that Teach could not escape to sea.[72] On the other side of the island, Teach was busy entertaining guests and had not set a lookout. With Israel Hands ashore in Bath with about 24 of Adventure's sailors, he also had a much-reduced crew. Johnson (1724) reported that the pirate had "no more than twenty-five men on board" and that he "gave out to all the vessels that he spoke with that he had forty". "Thirteen white and six Negroes", was the number later reported by Brand to the Admiralty.

At daybreak, preceded by a small boat taking soundings, Maynard's two sloops entered the channel. The small craft was quickly spotted by Adventure and fired at as soon as it was within range of her guns. While the boat made a quick retreat to the Jane, Teach cut the Adventure's anchor cable. His crew hoisted the sails and the Adventure manoeuvred to point her starboard guns toward Maynard's sloops, which were slowly closing the gap. Hyde moved Ranger to the port side of Jane and the Union flag was unfurled on each ship. Adventure then turned toward the beach of Ocracoke Island, heading for a narrow channel. What happened next is uncertain. Johnson claimed that there was an exchange of small-arms fire following which Adventure ran aground on a sandbar, and Maynard anchored and then lightened his ship to pass over the obstacle. Another version claimed that Jane and Ranger ran aground, although Maynard made no mention of this in his log.

Damn you for Villains, who are you? And, from whence came you? The Lieutenant made him Answer, You may see by our Colours we are no Pyrates. Black-beard bid him send his Boat on Board, that he might see who he was; but Mr. Maynard reply'd thus; I cannot spare my Boat, but I will come aboard of you as soon as I can, with my Sloop. Upon this, Black-beard took a Glass of Liquor and drank to him with these Words: Damnation seize my Soul if I give you Quarters, or take any from you. In Answer to which, Mr. Maynard told him, That he expected no Quarters from him, nor should he give him any.
Reported exchange of views between Teach and Maynard​

What is certain though is that Adventure turned her guns on the two ships and fired. The broadside was devastating; in an instant, Maynard had lost as much as a third of his forces. About 20 on Janewere either wounded or killed and 9 on Ranger. Hyde was dead and his second and third officers either dead or seriously injured. His sloop was so badly damaged that it played no further role in the attack.[80] Again, contemporary accounts of what happened next are confused, but small-arms fire from Jane may have cut Adventure's jib sheet, causing her to lose control and run onto the sandbar. In the aftermath of Teach's overwhelming attack, Jane and Ranger may also have been grounded; the battle would have become a race to see who could float their ship first.


Capture of the Pirate, Blackbeard, 1718, Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, painted in 1920

The lieutenant had kept many of his men below deck and in anticipation of being boarded told them to prepare for close fighting. Teach watched as the gap between the vessels closed, and ordered his men to be ready. The two vessels contacted one another as the Adventure's grappling hooks hit their target and several grenades, made from powder and shot-filled bottles and ignited by fuses, broke across the sloop's deck. As the smoke cleared, Teach led his men aboard, buoyant at the sight of Maynard's apparently empty ship, his men firing at the small group formed by the lieutenant and his men at the stern.

The rest of Maynard's men then burst from the hold, shouting and firing. The plan to surprise Teach and his crew worked; the pirates were apparently taken aback at the assault. Teach rallied his men and the two groups fought across the deck, which was already slick with blood from those killed or injured by Teach's broadside. Maynard and Teach fired their flintlocks at each other, then threw them away. Teach drew his cutlass and managed to break Maynard's sword. Against superior training and a slight advantage in numbers, the pirates were pushed back toward the bow, allowing the Jane's crew to surround Maynard and Teach, who was by then completely isolated. As Maynard drew back to fire once again, Teach moved in to attack him, but was slashed across the neck by one of Maynard's men. Badly wounded, he was then attacked and killed by several more of Maynard's crew. The remaining pirates quickly surrendered. Those left on the Adventure were captured by the Ranger's crew, including one who planned to set fire to the powder room and blow up the ship. Varying accounts exist of the battle's list of casualties; Maynard reported that 8 of his men and 12 pirates were killed. Brand reported that 10 pirates and 11 of Maynard's men were killed. Spotswood claimed ten pirates and ten of the King's men dead.


Edward Teach's severed head hangs from Maynard's bowsprit, as pictured in Charles Elles's The Pirates Own Book (1837)

Maynard later examined Teach's body, noting that it had been shot five times and cut about twenty. He also found several items of correspondence, including a letter to the pirate from Tobias Knight. Teach's corpse was thrown into the inlet and his head was suspended from the bowsprit of Maynard's sloop so that the reward could be collected


HMS Pearl was a 42-gun fourth-rate of the Royal Navy. Her crew was involved in the hunt and death of Blackbeard in 1718.

Class and type: 42-gun fifth-rate
Tons burthen :559 20⁄94 (bm)
Length:

• 117 ft (35.7 m) (gundeck)
• 96 ft 9.5 in (29.5 m) (keel)

Beam: 33 ft (10 m)
Depth of hold: 13 ft 7.25 in (4.1466 m)
Sail plan: Full-rigged ship
Complement: 190
Armament:

• Lower gundeck: 18 × 9-pounder guns
• Upper gundeck: 20 × 6-pounder guns
• Quarterdeck: 4 × 6-pounder guns

Early career
The Pearl was launched by Richard Burchett of Rotherhithe on 5 August 1708. She was commissioned in July 1708 under the command of Captain Henry Lawson, who commanded her at first in the Bristol Channel in 1709, moving to the Channel Islands in 1710, and then into the English Channel in 1711. She went on to cruise off the coast of Portugal, where she captured two French privateers, the Bizarre on 8 September 1711, and the Victorieuse on 18 September 1711. Captain Caesar Brookes took over command in 1712, serving in the North Sea, before Pearl was paid off in December that year. She recommissioned in July 1715 under the command of Captain Charles Poole, and served with Admiral George Byng's fleet in the English Channel, and then on the coast of Scotland during the Jacobite rising of 1715. In 1716 she commissioned under Captain George Gordon, who served first in the Baltic and North Sea, before sailing to Virginia in 1717.

Anti-piracy operations
By 1718 the Pearl was stationed in Virginia, under Captain Gordon, and with Robert Maynard as her first lieutenant. That year, Governor Alexander Spotswood issued an order for the capture of the pirate Blackbeard. Blackbeard, who had supposedly retired, was living in the neighbouring Province of North Carolina, and Spotswood felt that he was an immediate threat to Virginia commerce should he resume his pirating career. Using information gathered from a captured member of Blackbeard's crew, Spotswood dispatched 33 crewmen from the Pearl and 24 crewmen from HMS Lyme and commandeered two merchant sloops, which they used to sail down the coast to North Carolina. With Maynard in command, the group finally located Blackbeard's ship, the Adventure, and attacked, resulting in his subsequent death and post-mortem decapitation by Maynard.

The Pearl remained in American waters until 1719, returning to Britain to be paid off in December 1719. She was broken up at Deptford Dockyard between December 1722 and January 1723. The succeeding HMS Pearl, launched in 1726, was ordered as a rebuild of the 42-gun ship



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbeard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maynard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Pearl_(1708)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
22 November 1744 – Launch of French Magnanime, 74 at Rochefort, designed by Blaise Geslain – captured by the British in January 1748 and added to the RN under the same name, BU 1775


The Magnanime was originally a 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy launched in 1744 at Rochefort. Captured on 12 January 1748, she was taken into Royal Navy service as the third rate HMS Magnanime. She played a major part in the 1757 Rochefort expedition, helping to silence the batteries on the Isle of Aix, and served at the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759 under Lord Howe, where she forced the surrender of the French 74-gun Héros. Following a survey in 1770, she was deemed unseaworthy and was broken up in 1775.

Construction
Le Magnanime was built between 1741 and 1745 in the port of Rochefort on the Charente estuary, France, and was designed by the renowned shipwright Blaise Geslain. She was 165 French feet in length (153½ French feet on the keel), 44½ French feet in breadth and 22 French feet in depth in hold; she measured 1,600 tons (2,900 tons displacement). As remeasured by the British following her capture, she was 173 feet 7 inches (52.91 m) along her gundeck with a 49 feet 4.5 inches (15.050 m) beam, and with a depth in the hold of 21 feet 7 inches (6.58 m), she had a capacity of just over 1,823 tons BM. When first fitted out by the British, Magnanime carried twenty-eight 32 pounders (15 kg) cannon on her lower deck (replacing the French 36-livre guns she had originally carried), thirty 18 pounders (8.2 kg) on her upper deck (replacing her French 18-livre guns), and sixteen 9 pounders (4.1 kg) guns (replacing her French 8-livre guns) - ten on her quarter deck and six on her forecastle.





Scale: 1:48. A contemporary block design model of the ‘Magnanime’ (1744), a French 70-gun, two-decker ship of the line. There is painted decoration on the stern along with the name, ‘Le Magnanime’. It appears to be a block model but is in fact hollow. 'Magnanime' measured 174 feet along the gun deck by 50 feet in the beam, displacing 1823 tons. It was captured by the ‘Nottingham’ and ‘Portland’ in 1747 and commissioned into the Royal Navy. In 1759 under the captaincy of Lord Howe it took part in the Battle of Quiberon Bay, a naval encounter with the French fleet during the Seven Years War (1756–63). It was broken up in 1775.

General characteristics (as re-measured following her capture)
Class and type: 74-gun third-rate ship of the line
Tons burthen: 1,823 45⁄94 (bm)
Length:

• 173 ft 7 in (52.91 m) (gundeck)
• 140 ft 7.5 in (42.863 m) (keel)

Beam: 49 ft 4.5 in (15.050 m)
Depth: 21 ft 7 in (6.58 m)
Sail plan: Full-rigged ship
Complement: 650
Armament:

• Lowerdeck: 28 × 32 pdr (15 kg)
• Upperdeck: 30 × 18 pdr (8.2 kg)
• Quarterdeck: 10 × 9 pdr (4.1 kg)
• Forecastle: 6 × 9 pdr (4.1 kg)

From the Terrible (of 1739) onwards, the lengthened hulls of new ships meant that they could mount an extra pair of guns on the lower deck and another extra pair on the upper deck; the 4 small guns on the dunette were henceforth abolished. The consequent armament of 28 guns (36-pounders) in their lower deck battery and 30 guns (18-pounders) in their upper deck battery, with 16 guns on the gaillards, thus became the standard for the next 75 years.

Capture
The Action of 31 January 1748 was a minor naval battle of the War of Austrian Succession between two British Royal naval ships and a French naval ship of the line. The battle ended with the capture of the French ship of the line Le Magnanime.

In January 1748, Le Magnanime left Brest for the East Indies. She was partially dismasted in a storm off the coast of Ushant and while limping back to Brest, she was spotted by a British fleet under Edward Hawke.

All sail was immediately made; HMS Nottingham under Captain Robert Harland having at 1 am closed with the chase commenced the action and a running fight of six hours duration ensued. The rear admiral having observed the size of the ship sent the sixty gun ship HMS Portland under Captain Stevens to proceed to the Nottingham's assistance. By the time the Portland had arrived up the French ship which proved to be the Magnanime a large class 74 gun ship commanded by the Marquis d'Albert after receiving a few shot from the Portland was forced to strike

By the time the Portland had arrived up the French ship which proved to be the Magnanime a large class 74 gun ship commanded by the Marquis d'Albert after receiving a few shot from the Portland was forced to strike. The Magnanime out of a crew of 686 men had 45 killed and 105 wounded; Nottingham had 16 killed and 18 wounded while Portland, catching up and joining the fight an hour later, had only 4 wounded.

Magnanime being a new ship of less than four years old was added to the British navy under the same name.


Royal Navy service
Magnanime was purchased by the Navy Board in July 1749 and, after an extensive refit, went to sea in 1756 under the command of Captain Wittewronge Taylor. She served as Rear-Admiral Savage Mostyn's flagship, part of the Channel Fleet commanded by Vice Admirals Edward Boscawen and later, Charles Knowles.

General characteristics (as re-armed by the British in 1755)
Armament:

• Lowerdeck: 28 × 32 pdr (15 kg)
• Upperdeck: 30 × 24 pdr (11 kg)
• Quarterdeck: 10 × 9 pdr (4.1 kg)
• Forecastle: 6 × 9 pdr (4.1 kg)

Rochefort Expedition
Main article: Raid on Rochefort


1757 chart of Basque Roads

While in Admiral Hawke's fleet, under Captain Richard Howe, Magnanime took part in the 1757 Raid on Rochefort, one of a series of raids designed to draw French troops away from the German front.

The plan to take Rochefort itself was later abandoned but Île d'Aix was captured and in the preceding battle, it was Magnanime's guns that bombarded the island's fort into submission. The British fleet began its final approach to Basque Roads on 19 September 1757, Île-d'Aix lying some way beyond at the mouth of the Charente estuary. The island was extremely important to the port of Rochefort because ships of the line were required to load and unload supplies and armaments there, being unable to navigate the shallow river fully laden. It was expected therefore to be heavily defended. Although, as Hawke was later to discover, a couple of third rates would be sufficient for the task.

Hawke had formed an advanced squadron, under Sir Charles Knowles, comprising Magnanime, Barfleur, Neptune, Torbay and Royal William, and at around noon he sent these ships on ahead. Just after 14:00, as they were approaching the Antioch Passage, between Île d'Oléron and Île de Ré, a French two-decker was sighted, and Magnanime and two other vessels were ordered to pursue. The squadron was now without a competent pilot, who was aboard Magnanime, and the fleet, Hawke having by this time caught up, had to wait until the three ships returned the following afternoon. By this time the wind had dropped and the British were forced to anchor. The lack of wind caused further delays and it was not until the fifth attempt that the British finally managed to enter the bay. On the morning of 23 September, at around 10:00, Knowles' squadron, with Magnanime in the lead, was sent to silence the batteries on Île de Aix. Howe came within range of the fort at noon but held his fire for a further hour until he had brought Magnanimeup within 40 yards (37 m). Shortly after the second ship, Barfleur arrived, the fort surrendered.


The Battle of Quiberon Bay, Nicholas Pocock, 1812. National Maritime Museum

Quiberon Bay
Main article: Battle of Quiberon Bay
In 1758, Magnanime was in Admiral George Anson's fleet under the temporary command of Captain Jervis Porter before rejoining Hawke's fleet under Lord Howe once more. In 1759 Hawke was charged with blockading the French coast but a storm had forced him off his station, allowing the French fleet, under the Comte de Conflans, to break out of Brest on 14 November. On hearing the news, Hawke immediately set off in pursuit. Conflans had slowed on the night of the 19th in order to arrive at Quiberon at dawn, and to investigate a small squadron of ships under Admiral Robert Duff, 20 miles (32 km) off Belleisle. At this point Hawke's fleet appeared on the horizon. Magnanime and two frigates had been ordered ahead and were the first ships to spot the French at around 8:30. Conflans was faced with the decision to stand and fight in rough seas and unfavourable winds, or to attempt to reach the hazardous waters around Quiberon Bay before nightfall. He chose the latter and Hawke gave the signal for 'line abreast'. The French fleet entered the bay at around 14:30 and, despite the fading light, the British fleet followed with Magnanime in the van.


Richard Howe, twice captain of Magnanime

The British van was already starting to overhaul the French and, around this time, the first shots were being exchanged. Magnanime's guns were not discharged however, Howe wanted to reach the centre of the enemy's fleet before firing. Hawke's ship, HMS Royal George, entered the bay at around 16:00, by which time the French 80 gun Formidable had already surrendered to HMS Resolution. Magnanime forced the 74 gun, Héros to strike her colours, but was unable to take possession of the ship, which later ran aground. In all six French battleships were wrecked or destroyed with one, Formidable, captured. The rest of the French fleet dispersed with many jettisoning guns and supplies to escape over the shoals. The British lost two ships.

Later career
In July 1760, Howe was replaced as captain of Magnanime by Captain Robert Hughes. This was a temporary command however and Hughes was replaced by Captain Charles Saxton early in 1762 where she served as flagship to Commodore J. Cerrit in the Basque Roads. Magnanime spent the summer of 1762 under Captain John Montagu, again in a fleet commanded by Edward Hawke but by the autumn of that year she was in Charles Hardy's fleet. She was surveyed by the Navy Board in 1763 and again in 1770 when she was considered unseaworthy. She was not repaired and was broken up in April 1775, at Plymouth



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Magnanime_(1748)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_Rochefort
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_of_31_January_1748

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
22 November 1786 – Launch of HMS Saturn, a 74-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, at Northam


HMS Saturn was a 74-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 22 November 1786 at Northam.


Scale: 1:48. Plan showing the inboard profile with figurehead and alterations, for Saturn (1786), a 74-gun Third Rate, two-decker, after being cut down and fitted as a 58-gun Fourth Rate, Frigate. The old upper deck became a continuous quarterdeck and forecastle (spar deck). Signed by Thomas Roberts [Master Shipwright, Plymouth Dockyard, 1813-1815].
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/81409.html#g7TuDATb9BywTTdu.99

Class and type: Arrogant class ship of the line
Tons burthen: 1646 (bm)
Length: 168 ft (51 m) (gundeck)
Beam: 46 ft 9 in (14.25 m)
Depth of hold: 19 ft 9 in (6.02 m)
Sail plan: Full rigged ship
Armament:

• Gundeck: 28 × 32-pounder guns
• Upper gundeck: 28 × 18-pounder guns
• QD: 14 × 9-pounder guns
• Fc: 4 × 9-pounder guns

In 1801, she served in the Channel Fleet under the command of Capt. Boyles. Then under Capt. Robert Lambert she sailed with Admiral Sir Hyde Parker's expedition to the Baltic. She was present at the Battle of Copenhagen as part of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker's reserve.

Saturn was reduced to a 58-gun ship in 1813 at the Plymouth dockyards in preparation for service in the War of 1812. On 14 February 1814, under Capt. James Nash, Saturn sailed for Bermuda; later she was on the Halifax station. She then served as part of the blockading-squadron off New York until the War of 1812 ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in 1814.

On 25 May 1814 Saturn captured the American privateer schooner Hussar, of 211 tons (bm), at 40°8′N 73°28′W after a four-hour chase. Hussar was armed with one 12-pounder gun and nine 12-pounder carronades, eight of which she threw overboard during the chase. Her complement consisted of 98 men. She had been in commission for only a week and had left New York the previous evening for her first cruise, bound for Newfoundland; she was provisioned for a four-month cruise. Nash described her as "coppered, copper-fastened, and sails remarkably fast". Hussar had been launched in 1812 and had made previous cruises, but apparently without success. She was under the command of Francis Jenkins when Saturn captured her.

From January 1815, Captain Thomas Brown, assumed command of Saturn until Capt. Nash returned to command in April 1815.

Fate
From 1825 Saturn was on harbour service at Milford Haven. She was broken up in 1868. By that time she was the last survivor of her class of 12 ships.


Scale: 1:48. Plan showing the body plan, sheer lines, and longitudinal half-breadth for building Cornwall (1761), Arrogant (1761), and Kent (1762), and later for Defence (1763), Edgar (1779), Goliath (1781), Vanguard (1787), Excellent (1787), Saturn (1786), Elephant (1786), Illustrious (1789), Bellerophon (1786), Zealous (1785), and Audacious (1785), all 74-gun Third Rate, two-deckers.
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/80933.html#4LVuBaIpcuwmYG6g.99


The Arrogant-class ships of the line were a class of twelve 74-gun third rate ships designed by Sir Thomas Slade for the Royal Navy.

The Arrogant-class ships were designed as a development of Slade's previous Bellona class, sharing the same basic dimensions. During this period, the original armament was the same across all the ships of the common class, of which the Arrogant-class ships were members. Two ships were ordered on 13 December 1758 to this design (as the same time as the fourth and fifth units of the Bellona class), and a further ten ships were built to a slightly modified version of the Arrogant design from 1773 onwards.

Arrogant class (Slade) – modified Bellona class

• Arrogant 74 (1761) – broken up 1810
• Cornwall 74 (1761) – scuttled/burnt 1780
• Edgar 74 (1779) – broken up 1835
• Goliath 74 (1781) – razéed to 58 guns 1813, broken up 1815
• Zealous 74 (1785) – broken up 1816
• Audacious 74 (1785) – broken up 1815
• Elephant 74 (1786) – razéed to 58 guns 1818, broken up 1830
• Bellerophon 74 (1786) – sold 1836
• Saturn 74 (1786) – razéed to 58 guns 1813, broken up 1868
• Vanguard 74 (1787) – broken up 1821
• Excellent 74 (1787) – razéed to 58 guns 1820, broken up 1835
• Illustrious 74 (1789) – wrecked 1795

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Saturn_(1786)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrogant-class_ship_of_the_line
http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collec...el-346279;browseBy=vessel;vesselFacetLetter=S

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
22 November 1790 – Launch of british Woodford, an East Indiaman of the British East India Company (EIC)


Woodford was launched in 1790 and made nine voyages as an East Indiaman for the British East India Company (EIC). In 1797 her captain was commodore of a small group of East Indiamen that managed to bluff a French squadron of warships into sailing away to avoid an engagement. In 1812 Woodford was sold for breaking up.


Samuel Atkins - The East Indiaman Woodford near Plymouth

Tons burthen: 1,180, or 1,206, or 1,206 13⁄94, or 1,210, (bm)
Length: 163 ft 7 in (49.9 m) (overall), 132 ft 5 1⁄2 in (40.4 m) (keel)
Beam: 41 ft 4 1⁄2 in (12.6 m)
Depth of hold: 17 ft 3 in (5.3 m)
Sail plan: Full rigged ship
Complement:

• 1794:160
• 1799:130
• 1803:20
• 1806:130

Armament:

• 1794: 36 x 18&12&6-pounder guns
• 1799:36 × 18&12&6-pounder guns
• 1803:26 × 12-pounder guns
• 1806:30 × 18-pounder guns + six swivel guns

Notes: Three decks


Career
EIC voyage #1 (1791–1792)
Captain Charles Lennox sailed from the Downs on 27 March 1791, bound for Bencoolen and China. Woodford reached Bencoolen on 25 July and arrived at Whampoa age on 6 October. Homeward bound, she crossed the Second Baron 13 January 1792, reached St Helena on 3 April, and arrived at the Downs on 17 May.

EIC voyage #2 (1794–1795)
Captain Charles Lennox received a letter of marque on 20 February 1794.

The British government held Woodford at Portsmouth, together with a number of other Indiamen in anticipation of using them as transports for an attack on Île de France (Mauritius). It gave up the plan and released the vessels in May 1794. It paid £1666 5s for having delayed her departure by 62 days.

See also: Transport vessels for the cancelled British invasion of Île de France (1794)
Captain Lennox sailed from Portsmouth on 2 May, bound for Bombay and China. Woodford reached Bombay on 4 September and arrived at Whampoa on 26 February 1795. Homeward bound, she crossed the Second Bar on 19 May and reached Batavia on 5 August. She reached St Helena on 16 October, and arrived at the Downs on 21 December.



Samuel Atkins (c.1765-1808)
The Honourable East India Company's ships Devonshire, Woodford and Lord Duncanlying on the Thames off Blackwall (illustrated) ; View of Battersea; and View of Penny's Dockyard at Blackwall (illustrated)
the first inscribed and dated 'The Devonshire/on the left. Woodford &/in the middle/Lord Duncan/outside right hand/E. Indiamen/- Sketch at Blackwall/Augst. 1807' (on the reverse of the old mount); the second inscribed and dated 'Battersea 1800' (on the reverse of the old mount); the third inscribed and dated 'Blackwall, with Penny's Dockyard - 1800' (on the reverse of the old mount)
taken from https://www.christies.com/lotfinder...1808-the-honourable-east-5366906-details.aspx

EIC voyage #3 (1796–1798)
Captain Lennox sailed from Portsmouth on 17 May 1796 bound for Bombay and China. Woodford reached Bombay on 5 September and Colombo on 9 December.

At Colombo Woodford met up with five other East Indiamen,: Alfred, Ocean, Taunton Castle, Canton, and Boddam (1787 EIC ship). The fleet sailed towards China under the overall command of Captain James Farquahrson in Alfred, who was the senior captain and so commodore of the fleet. On 28 January 1797 the Indiamen were off Java when they encountered six French frigates.

Main article: Bali Strait Incident
Farquharson proceeded to organize a bluff. To give the impression that the convoy consisted of the powerful ships of the line that the Indiamen resembled, Farquharson ordered his ships to advance in line of battle, and the French retreated, convinced they were facing a superior force. The Indiamen sailed east and then up towards China. Ocean wrecked in a storm the next day, but Woodford and the other four Indiamen arrived at Whampoa on 8 or 9 April.

Homeward bound, she crossed the Second Bar on 9 June, reached the Cape of Good Hope on 3 December and St Helena on 3 January 1798, and arrived at the Downs on 17 March.

EIC voyage #4 (1799–1800)
Captain James Martin received a letter of marque on 20 March 1799. On 13 June he sailed form Portsmouth, bound for Bombay. Woodford reached Rio de Janeiro on 13 August and arrived at Bombay on 6 December. She sailed form Bombay on 23 January 1800 in company with Albion to gather pepper on the Malabar Coast prior to returning to England. On 1 February 1800 she was at Anjengo. From there she sailed to Quilon, which she reached 4 four days later. Woodford and Albion were at Anjengo again on 15 February, and then homeward bound, they reached St Helena on 15 May. Woodford and Albion arrived at the Downs on 3 August.

EIC voyage #5 (1801–1802)
Captain James Martin sailed from Portsmouth on 19 May 1801 bound for China. Woodford reached Rio de Janeiro on 31 July and Penang on 31 October, and arrived at Whampoa on 1 February 1802. Homeward bound, she crossed the Second Bar on 30 March, reached St Helena on 10 July, and arrived at the Downs on 11 September.

EIC voyage #6 (1803–1805)
In the months before the resumption of war with France, the Navy started preparations that included impressing seamen. The crews of outbound Indiamen were an attractive target. Woodford and Ganges were sitting in the Thames in March 1803, taking their crews on board just prior to sailing. At sunset, a press gang from HMS Immortalite rowed up to Woodford, while boats from HMS Amethyst and HMS Lynx approached Ganges. As the press gangs approached they were noticed, and the crews of both Indiamen were piped to quarters. That is, they assembled on the decks armed with pikes and cutlasses, and anything they could throw. The officers in charge of the press gangs thought this mere bravado and pulled alongside the Indiamen, only to meet a severe resistance from the crewmen, who had absolutely no desire to serve in the Royal Navy. The men from Immortalite suffered several injuries from shot and pike that were thrown at them, and eventually the marines opened fire with muskets, killing two sailors on Woodford. Even so, the press gangs were not able to get on board either Indiaman, and eventually withdrew some distance. When Woodford's officers finally permitted the press gang from Immortalite to board, all they found on board were a few sickly sailors.

Because war with France had resumed, James Martin required a new letter of marque, which he received on 20 June. The letter gives an anomalously low number for the size of Woodford's crew. (Ganges's letter of marque had been issued in February, i.e., before the incident, and reports a crew size of 135 men.)

Captain Martin sailed from Portsmouth on 21 May 1803, bound for China. Woodford arrived at Whampoa on 24 January 1804. Homeward bound, she crossed the Second Bar on 9 March and reached Penang on 21 April. She left Penang on 10 August in company with Maria and Hugh Inglis. Woodford reached St Helena on 15 November and arrived at the Downs on 7 February 1805.

EIC voyage #7 (1807–1808)
Captain Martin received another letter of marque on 12 March 1807. (This one gave her crew size as 130 men.) Martin sailed from Portsmouth on 19 April, bound for China. Woodford reached Penang on 14 September and Malacca on 21 October, and arrived at Whampoa on 4 January 1808. Homeward bound, she crossed the Second Bar on 10 March, reached St Helena on 9 July, and arrived at the Downs on 12 September.

EIC voyage #8 (1810–1811)
Captain Martin sailed from Portsmuth on 19 February 1810, bound for Madras and China. Woodford reached Madras on 10 July, Penang on 17 August, and Malacca on 11 September, before arriving at Whampoa on 12 October. Homeward bound, she crossed the Second Bar on 11 January 1811, reached St Helena on 29 May, and arrived at the Downs on 8 August.

Fate
Woodford was described as worn out after having made eight voyages. She was sold in 1812 for breaking up.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodford_(1790_EIC_ship)
http://www.heicshipslogs.co.uk/encounter.htm

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
22 November 1847 - Steamship Phoenix burned down to waterline on Lake Michigan with the loss of at least 190 but perhaps as many as 250 lives. The loss of life made this disaster, in terms of loss of life from the sinking of a single vessel, the fourth-worst tragedy in the history of the Great Lakes.


The Phoenix was a steamship that burned on Lake Michigan on 21 November 1847, with the loss of at least 190 but perhaps as many as 250 lives. The loss of life made this disaster, in terms of loss of life from the sinking of a single vessel, the fourth-worst tragedy in the history of the Great Lakes.


Illustration of the steamship Phoenix which burned on Lake Michigan November 21, 1847.

Characteristics
The Phoenix was built in 1845 in Cleveland, Ohio or Buffalo, New York. It was built with the then-new technology of twin screw propellers instead of side-mounted paddlewheels. The ship was 140 feet (43 m) long, with a beam of 22 feet (6.7 m), a depth of 10 feet (3.0 m) and a displacement of 302 tons.

Career
The Phoenix spent its career making trips between Buffalo and Chicago. The ship was owned by Pease and Allen of Cleveland.

Final voyage
The Phoenix departed Buffalo on 11 November 1847, for its last trip of the year. It was carrying around 275 passengers, mostly Dutch immigrants, and a crew of 25 commanded by Captain G. B. Sweet. The ship also carried a cargo of molasses, coffee, sugar, and hardware. While on Lake Erie Captain Sweet fell and injured his knee badly enough that he was forced to stay in bed for the rest of the journey. The first mate, H. Watts, took command.

The Phoenix reached Manitowoc, Wisconsin just before midnight on 20 November. The ship took on cordwood for fuel and unloaded cargo while waiting for the weather to improve. The Phoenix departed Manitowoc at 1 am on 21 November.

About two hours out of Manitowoc, the fireman tending the Phoenix's boilers noticed that the pumps were not working properly. He reported this to the ship's second engineer, but was ignored; he later reported that the water in the boilers was dangerously low, but was again ignored.


The Phoenix aflame

At 4 am, clouds of smoke started billowing from the ship's engine room. The ship's passengers were alerted, and the first mate organized the crew and passengers into a bucket brigade in an attempt to fight the fire. The fire soon grew out of control. First Mate Watts ordered the ship turned towards shore, but the fire overwhelmed the engine room and the ship drifted to a halt about five miles from shore and nine miles from Sheboygan.

The Phoenix carried only two lifeboats, with a capacity of 20 people each. These were quickly launched: the first with Captain Sweet and 20 others, the second carrying 19. By the time the lifeboats reached the shore, those aboard were exhausted from rowing, and unable to return to try and rescue more people.

Meanwhile, the Phoenix was being consumed by flames. The crew and passengers tore apart the cabin and threw the pieces overboard to use as floats. The water was freezing cold; most of those who managed to find wreckage to cling to succumbed to hypothermia. Those who remained on the ship tried to climb upward to rigging, but the rigging burned and collapsed, sending those on it into the fire below.

In the nearby town of Sheboygan, a justice of the peace named Judge Morris woke and spotted the flames on the lake. He ran down to the harbor and woke the crew of the steamer Delaware, who began building up the steam needed to take their ship out to assist. At around the same time the captain of the schooner Liberty saw the flames, and he and his crew manned the ship's lifeboat and rowed for the Phoenix.

By the time the Delaware arrived at around 7 am, the Phoenix had burned to the waterline. The Delaware found only three survivors: the ship's clerk and a passenger clinging to the rudder chains, and an engineer clinging to a door. The boat from the Liberty arrived soon after, followed by one of the Phoenix's lifeboats. The Delaware retrieved five bodies from the water, then took the hull of the Phoenix and the Liberty's lifeboat in tow. The Delaware towed the wreck to Sheboygan, where it was beached by the city's north pier.

Aftermath
The exact death toll from the Phoenix is not known. The owners of the ship claimed that no more than 190 died, but the ship's clerk estimated that the number of lives lost was at least 250. 43 people were saved; 40 in the lifeboats and three rescued by the Delaware.

The engine, boiler, and cargo were later salvaged from the hulk of the Phoenix.

The Delaware would later come across the scene of another Great Lakes disaster. On 17 June 1850 when the G. P. Griffith burned with a loss of at least 241 of the roughly 300 people aboard, the Delaware arrived on the scene. Too late to rescue survivors, the Delaware could do no more than tow the burning wreck to shore, just as it did with the Phoenix. The Delaware itself sank on 3 November 1855 with the loss of 11 lives.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(1845)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
22 November 1858 – Launch of USS Hartford, a sloop-of-war, steamer,


The USS Hartford, a sloop-of-war, steamer, was the first ship of the United States Navy named for Hartford, the capital of Connecticut. Hartford served in several prominent campaigns in the American Civil War as the flagship of David G. Farragut, most notably the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864. She survived until 1956, when she sank awaiting restoration at Norfolk, Virginia.


United States Navy corvette USS Hartford at Mare Island Navy Yard, Vallejo, California

Service history
East India Squadron, 1859 - 1861
Hartford was launched 22 November 1858 at the Boston Navy Yard; sponsored by Miss Carrie Downes, Miss Lizzie Stringham, and Lieutenant G. J. H. Preble; and commissioned 27 May 1859, Captain Charles Lowndes in command. After shakedown out of Boston, the new screw sloop of war, carrying Flag Officer Cornelius K. Stribling, the newly appointed commander of the East India Squadron, sailed for the Cape of Good Hope and the Far East. Upon reaching the Orient, Hartford relieved Mississippi as flagship. In November she embarked the American Minister to China, John Elliott Ward, at Hong Kong and carried him to Canton, Manila, Swatow, Shanghai, and other Far Eastern ports to settle American claims and to arrange for favorable consideration of the Nation's interests.

Civil War, 1861 - 1875


A painting of USS Hartford by E. Arnold.

With the outbreak of the American Civil War, Hartford was ordered home. She departed the Sunda Strait with Dacotah on 30 August 1861 and arrived Philadelphia on 2 December to be fitted out for wartime service. She departed the Delaware Capes on 28 January as flagship of Flag Officer David G. Farragut, the commander of the newly created West Gulf Blockading Squadron. (See also: Confederate blockade mail.)

An even larger purpose than the important blockade of the South's Gulf Coast lay behind Farragut's assignment. Late in 1861, the Union high command decided to capture New Orleans, the South's richest and most populous city, to begin a drive of sea-based power up the Mississippi River to meet the Union Army which was to drive down the Mississippi valley behind a spearhead of armored gunboats. "Other operations," Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles warned Farragut, "must not be allowed to interfere with the great object in view—the certain capture of the city of New Orleans."

Hartford arrived 20 February at Ship Island, Mississippi, midway between Mobile Bay and the mouths of the Mississippi. Several Union ships and a few Army units were already in the vicinity when the squadron's flagship dropped anchor at the advanced staging area for the attack on New Orleans. In ensuing weeks a mighty fleet assembled for the campaign. In mid-March Commander David Dixon Porter's flotilla of mortar schooners arrived towed by steam gunboats.

The next task was to get Farragut's ships across the bar, a constantly shifting mud bank at the mouth of each pass entering the Mississippi. Farragut managed to get all of his ships but Colorado across the bar and into the river where Forts St. Philip and Jackson challenged further advance. A line of hulks connected by strong barrier chains, six ships of the Confederate Navy—including ironclad Manassas and unfinished but potentially deadly ironclad Louisiana, two ships of the Louisiana Navy, a group of converted river steamers called the Confederate River Defense Fleet, and a number of fire rafts also stood between Farragut and the great Southern metropolis.

On 16 April, the Union ships moved up the river to a position below the forts, and David Dixon Porter's gunboats first exchanged fire with the Southern guns. Two days later his mortar schooners opened a heavy barrage which continued for six days. On the 21st, the squadron's Fleet Captain, Henry H. Bell, led a daring expedition up river and, despite a tremendous fire on him, cut the chain across the river. In the early hours of 24 April, a red lantern on Hartford's mizzen peak signaled the fleet to get underway and steam through the breach in the obstructions. As the ships closed the forts their broadsides answered a fire from the Confederate guns. Porter's mortar schooners and gunboats remained at their stations below the southern fortifications covering the movement with rapid fire.


Hartford is attacked by a fire raft at the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip

Hartford dodged a run by ironclad ram Manassas; then, while attempting to avoid a fireraft, grounded in the swift current near Fort St. Philip. When the burning barge was shoved alongside the flagship, only Farragut's leadership and the training of the crew saved Hartford from being destroyed by flames which at one point engulfed a large portion of the ship. Meanwhile the sloop's gunners never slackened the pace at which they fired into the forts. As her firefighters snuffed out the flames, the flagship backed free of the bank.

When Farragut's ships had run the gantlet and passed out of range of the fort's guns, the Confederate River Defense Fleet attempted to stop their progress. In the ensuing melee, they managed to sink converted merchantman USS Varuna, the only Union ship lost during the night.

Battle of New Orleans, 1862
Main article: Battle of New Orleans (American Civil War)


Farragut's flagship, USS Hartford, forces its way past Fort Jackson.

The next day, after silencing Confederate batteries, a few miles below New Orleans, Hartford and her sister ships anchored off the city early in the afternoon. A handful of ships and men had won a great decisive victory that secured the north, the mouth of the Mississippi river.

Early in May, Farragut ordered several of his ships up stream to clear the river and followed himself in Hartford on the 7th to join in the conquest of the valley. Defenseless, Baton Rouge and Natchez promptly surrendered to the Union ships and no significant opposition was encountered until 18 May when the Confederate commandant at Vicksburg replied to Commander Samuel P. Lee's demand for surrender: "... Mississippians don't know and refuse to learn, how to surrender to an enemy. If Commodore Farragut or Brigadier General Butler can teach them, let them come and try."

When Farragut arrived on the scene a few days later, he learned that heavy Southern guns mounted on the bluff at Vicksburg some 200 feet (60 m) above the river could shell his ships while his own guns could not be elevated enough to hit them back. Since sufficient troops were not available to take the fortress by storm, the Flag Officer headed downstream on 27 May leaving gunboats to blockade it from below.

Orders awaited Farragut at New Orleans, where he arrived on 30 May, directing him to open the river and join the Western Flotilla and stating that Abraham Lincoln himself had given the task highest priority. The Flag Officer recalled Porter's mortar schooners from Mobile, Alabama and got underway up the Mississippi in Hartford on 8 June.

Prelude to the Vicksburg Campaign, 1862-63
Main article: Siege of Vicksburg
The Union Squadron was assembled just below Vicksburg by 26 June 1862. Two days later the Union ships, their own guns blazing at rapid fire and covered by an intense barrage from the mortars, suffered little damage while running past the batteries. Flag Officer Davis, commanding the Western Flotilla, joined Farragut above Vicksburg on the 30th; but again, naval efforts to take Vicksburg were frustrated by a lack of troops. "Ships," Porter commented, "... cannot crawl up hills 300 feet high, and it is that part of Vicksburg which must be taken by the Army." On 22 July, Farragut received orders to return down the river at his discretion and he got underway on 24 July, reached New Orleans in four days, and after a fortnight sailed to Pensacola, Florida, for repairs.

The flagship returned to New Orleans on 9 November to prepare for further operations in the unpredictable waters of the Mississippi. The Union Army, ably supported by the Mississippi Squadron, was pressing, on Vicksburg from above, and Farragut wanted to assist in the campaign by blockading the mouth of the Red River from which supplies were pouring eastward to the Confederate Army. Meanwhile, the South had been fortifying its defenses along the river and had erected powerful batteries at Port Hudson, Louisiana.

On the night of 14 March 1863, Farragut in Hartford and accompanied by six other ships, attempted to run by these batteries. However, they encountered such heavy and accurate fire that only the flagship and Albatross, lashed alongside, succeeded in running the gauntlet. Thereafter, Hartford and her consort patrolled between Port Hudson and Vicksburg denying the Confederacy desperately needed supplies from the West.

Porter's Mississippi Squadron, cloaked by night, dashed downstream past the Vicksburg batteries on 16 April, while General Ulysses S. Grant marched his troops overland to a new base also below the Southern stronghold. April closed with the Navy ferrying Grant's troops across the river to Bruinsburg whence they encircled Vicksburg and forced the beleaguered fortress to surrender on 4 July.

Battle of Mobile Bay, 1864
Main article: Battle of Mobile Bay
With the Mississippi River now opened, Farragut turned his attention to Mobile, a Confederate industrial center still building ships and turning out war supplies. The Battle of Mobile Bay took place on 5 August 1864. Farragut, with Hartford as his flagship, led a fleet consisting of four ironclad monitors and 14 wooden vessels. The Confederate naval force was composed of newly built ram Tennessee, Admiral Franklin Buchanan's flagship, and gunboats Selma, Morgan, and Gaines; and backed by the powerful guns of Forts Morgan and Gaines in the Bay. From the firing of the first gun by Fort Morgan to the raising of the white flag of surrender by Tennessee little more than three hours elapsed—but three hours of terrific fighting on both sides. The Confederates had only 32 casualties, while the Union forces suffered 335 casualties, including 113 men drowned in Tecumseh when the monitor struck a "torpedo" mine and sank.

Twelve of Hartford's sailors were awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions at the Battle of Mobile Bay.

Pacific, 1865–1926
Returning to New York on 13 December, Hartford decommissioned for repairs a week later. Back in shape in July 1865, she served as flagship of a newly organized Asiatic Squadron until August 1868 when she returned to New York and decommissioned. Recommissioned 9 October 1872, she resumed Asiatic Station patrol until returning home 19 October 1875. Two of her crewmen, Ordinary Seaman John Costello and Ordinary Seaman Richard Ryan, were awarded the Medal of Honor for rescuing drowning shipmates in separate 1876 incidents. In 1882, as Captain Stephen B. Luce's flagship of the North Atlantic Station, Hartford visited the Caroline Islands, Hawaii, and Valparaíso, Chile, before arriving San Francisco on 17 March 1884. She then cruised in the Pacific until decommissioning 14 January 1887 at Mare Island, California, for apprentice sea-training use.

From 1890 to 1899 Hartford was laid up at Mare Island, the last five years of which she was being rebuilt. On 2 October 1899, she recommissioned, then transferred to the Atlantic coast to be used for a training and cruise ship for midshipmen until 24 October 1912 when she was transferred to Charleston, for use as a station ship.

Final years, 1926–1956


Wheel and fife rail from the USS Hartford; displayed at the U.S. Navy Museum in Washington, D.C.


from the USS Hartford; displayed in the courtyard of Fort Gaines (Alabama).

Again placed out of commission 20 August 1926, the Hartford remained at Charleston until moved to Washington, D.C., on 18 October 1938. President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to build a naval museum there featuring the Hartford, USS Olympia, and a four-stack destroyer from World War I. When Roosevelt died, plans to establish this museum and to save the ships were abandoned. On 19 October 1945, the Hartford was towed to the Norfolk Navy Yard and classified as a relic. Unfortunately she was allowed to deteriorate, and as a result, the Hartford sank at her berth on 20 November 1956. She proved to be beyond salvage and was subsequently dismantled.

Remains
Major relics from her are at various locations:

• Her wheel and fife rail are displayed at the U.S. Navy Museum in Washington, D.C.
• A rowboat from the Hartford is located at the National Civil War Naval Museum at Port Columbus
• One of her anchors now sits at the University of Hartford
• Another of her anchors and a cathead are on display at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut.
• A third anchor is on display at Fort Gaines (Alabama) in Dauphin Island, Alabama, United States.
• One of her Parrott rifles is on display in Freeport, New York.
• Two of her Dahlgren smoothbore cannon are on display at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut
• One of her Dahlgren smoothbore cannon is on display in Alden Park at Mare Island Naval Shipyard near Vallejo, California
• Three Dahlgren cannon on display in Mackinaw City, Michigan
• IX-inch Dahlgren cannon which served on USS Hartford survive at:

Hagerstown, Maryland- Tredegar Iron Works registry #117
Cheboygan, Michigan- Cyrus Alger & Co. #225
Mare Island, California- Cyrus Alger & Co. #228
Vallejo, California- Cyrus Alger & Co. #229
Hartford, Connecticut- Cyrus Alger & Co. #247 & #248
Petoskey, Michigan- Cyrus Alger & Co. #249
Gaylord, Michigan- Cyrus Alger & Co. #250

• Her figurehead is displayed in the Connecticut State Capitol
• Her billethead, trailboards and other items are on display at the Mariners' Museum in Newport , Virginia.
• Her capstan resides in St. Petersburg, Florida at Admiral Farragut Academy, a college preparatory school named after her captain
• Metal from the propeller of the Hartford was used in the statue of David Farragut at Farragut Square in downtown Washington, D.C.
• Unspecified relic(s) are at the Washington Navy Yard
• Her ship's bell can be found on Constitution Plaza in Hartford, Connecticut (in front of the Old State House) in the eastern courtyard by the clock tower
• Her hatch cover is used as a coffee table in the Superintendent's office at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Hartford_(1858)