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

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
30 August 1777 – Launch of French La Sibylle, a 32 gun Sibylle-class frigate

The ‘Sibylle’ was a 32-gun fifth rate frigate launched on 1st September 1777 at Brest. She was designed and built for the French Navy by Jacques-Noel Sane in Brest, Brittany. Armament with 26 x 12-pounder and 6 x 6-pounder guns. She was captured by HMS ‘Centurion’ on 22nd February 1783. She was paid off and broken up in London in 1784.

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'Start of the action between HMS Magicienne and La Sibylle, 2 January 1783'. This painting depicts a battle that occurred on 2nd January 1783 between the 32-gun frigate HMS ‘Magicienne’ (seen in centre-foreground), and the French navy ship ‘Sibylle’, another 32-gun ‘5th rate’ (seen on the left behind the ‘Magicienne’). The two ships are exchanging broadsides, as shown by the clouds of gun-smoke, and both have suffered apparent damage. The ‘Magicienne’, shown here flying the Blue Ensign, was itself a French naval vessel until it was captured by the British on 2nd July 1781, nearly two years before. The ‘Sibylle’ was herself captured by HMS ‘Centurion’ the following month, on 22nd February 1783. Two other vessels can be seen in the background, one on each side of the combatants.The painting was produced in 1784, a year after this battle.
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/11948.html#00AICHRI2QlsB4v8.99

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End of the action between HMS Magicienne and La Sibylle, 2 January 1783 (BHC0457)
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/11949.html#5oIqFv5CsMydcBRb.99


The Sibylle class was a class of five 32-gun sail frigates designed by Jacques-Noël Sané and built for the French Navy in the late 1770s. They carried 26 x 12-pounder guns on the upper deck and 6 x 8-pounder guns on the forecastle and quarter deck.

Builder: Brest
Begun: April 1777
Launched: 1 September 1777
Fate: Captured by the Royal Navy in February 1783, broken up in 1784
Builder: Saint Malo
Begun: October 1778
Launched: 31 May 1779
Fate: Captured by the Royal Navy in December 1797, becoming HMS Nereide; retaken by the French Navy in August 1810, but destroyed at the Battle of Grand Port in December 1810.

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Capture of La Nereide Decr 21st. 1797 (PAD5533)
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/109684.html#yjHeko5W0XPspiMQ.99

Builder: Nantes
Begun: October 1778
Launched: 11 August 1779
Fate: Wrecked in Chesapeake Bay in November 1793.
Builder: Saint Malo
Begun: December 1778
Launched: 18 January 1779
Fate: Lost in a tempest on 17 March 1780 off St Lucia
Builder: Nantes
Begun: December 1778
Launched: 25 October 1779
Fate: Broken up in 1797.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibylle-class_frigate
sisitership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_frigate_Néréide_(1779)
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
30 August 1791 – HMS Pandora (1779 - 24 - Porcupine-class post ship) sinks after having run aground on the outer Great Barrier Reef the previous day.


HMS Pandora was a 24-gun Porcupine-class sixth-rate post ship of the Royal Navy launched in May 1779. She is best known as the ship sent in 1790 to search for the Bounty mutineers. The Pandora was partially successful by capturing 14 of the mutineers, but was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef on the return voyage in 1791. The Pandora is considered to be one of the most significant shipwrecks in the Southern Hemisphere.

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Plan showing the body plan, sheer lines, and longitudinal half-breadth for Pelican (1777). Annotated with Isaac Rogers (bottom right). From Tyne & Wear Archives Service, Blandford House, Blandford Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4JA.
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/382888.html#wKYAcfFdW7hdKj5y.99


Early service
Her first service was in the Channel during the 1779 threatened invasion by the combined fleets of France and Spain. She was deployed in North American waters during the American War Of Independence and saw service as a convoy escort between England and Quebec. On 18 July 1780, while under the command of Captain Anthony Parry, she and Danae captured the American privateer Jack. Then on 2 September, the two British vessels captured the American privateer Terrible. On 14 January Pandora captured the brig Janie. Then on 11 March she captured the ship Mercury. Two days later Pandora and HMS Belisarius were off the Capes of Virginia when they captured the sloop Louis, which had been sailing to Virginia with a cargo of cider and onions. Under Captain John Inglis Pandora captured more merchant vessels. The first was the brig Lively on 24 May 1782. More followed: the ship Mercury and the sloops Port Royal and Superb (22 November 1782), brig Nestor (3 February 1783), and the ship Financier (29 March). At the end of the American war the Admiralty placed Pandora in ordinary (mothballed) in 1783 at Chatham for seven years.

Voyage in search of the Bounty
Pandora was ordered to be brought back into service on 30 June 1790 when war between England and Spain seemed likely due to the Nootka Crisis. However, in early August 1790, 5 months after learning of the mutiny on HMS Bounty, the First Lord of the Admiralty, John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, decided to despatch her to recover the Bounty, capture the mutineers, and return them to England for trial. She was refitted, and her 9-pounder guns were reduced to 20 in number, though she gained four 18-pounder carronades.

Pandora sailed from The Solent on 7 November 1790, commanded by Captain Edward Edwards and manned by a crew of 134 men. With his crew was Thomas Hayward, who had been on the Bounty at the time of the mutiny, and left with Bligh in the open boat. At Tahiti they were also assisted by John Brown, who had been left on the island by an English merchant ship, The Mercury.

Unknown to Edwards, twelve of the mutineers, together with four crew who had stayed loyal to Bligh, had by then already elected to return to Tahiti, after a failed attempt to establish a colony (Fort St George) under Fletcher Christian's leadership on Tubuai, one of the Austral Islands. The disaffected men were living in Tahiti as 'beachcombers', many of them having fathered children with local women. Fletcher Christian's group of mutineers and their Polynesian followers had sailed off and eventually established their settlement on the then uncharted Pitcairn Island. By the time of Pandora's arrival, fourteen of the former Bounty men remained on Tahiti, Charles Churchill having been murdered in a quarrel with Matthew Thompson, who was in turn killed by Polynesians who considered Churchill their king.

The Pandora reached Tahiti on 23 March 1791 via Cape Horn. Three men came out and surrendered to Edwards shortly after Pandora's arrival. These were Joseph Coleman, the Bounty's armourer, and Peter Heywood and George Stewart, midshipmen. Edwards then dispatched search parties to round up the remainder. Able Seaman Richard Skinner was apprehended the day after Pandora's arrival. By now alerted to Edwards' presence, the other Bounty men fled to the mountains while James Morrison, Charles Norman and Thomas Ellison, tried to reach the Pandora to surrender in the escape boat they had built. All were eventually captured, and brought back to Pandora on 29 March. An eighth man, the half blind Michael Byrne, who had been fiddler aboard Bounty, had also come aboard by this time. It was not recorded whether he had been captured or had handed himself in. Edwards conducted further searches over the next week and a half, and on Saturday two more men were brought aboard Pandora, Henry Hilbrant and Thomas McIntosh. The remaining four men, Thomas Burkett, John Millward, John Sumner and William Muspratt, were brought in the following day. These fourteen men were locked up in a makeshift prison cell, measuring eleven-by-eighteen feet, on the Pandora's quarter-deck, which they called "Pandora's Box".

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Voyage of HMS Pandora in 1791

On 8 May 1791 the Pandora left Tahiti and subsequently spent three months visiting islands in the South-West Pacific in search of the Bounty and the remaining mutineers, without finding any traces of the pirated vessel. During this part of the voyage fourteen crew went missing in two of the ship's boats. In the meantime the Pandora visited Tokelau, Samoa, Tonga and Rotuma. They also passed Vanikoro Island, which Edwards named Pitt's Island; but they did not stop to explore the island and investigate obvious signs of habitation. If they had done so, they would very probably have discovered early evidence of the fate of the French Pacific explorer La Perouse's expedition which had disappeared in 1788. From later accounts about their fate it is evident that a substantial number of crew survived the cyclone that wrecked their ships Astrolabe and Boussole on Vanikoro's fringing reef.

Wrecked
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HMS Pandora in the act of foundering 29 August 1791 by Robert Batty

Heading west, making for the Torres Strait, the ship ran aground on 29 August 1791 on the outer Great Barrier Reef. She sank the next morning, claiming the lives of 35 men - 31 crew and 4 of the mutineers. The remainder of the ship's company (89 crew and 10 prisoners, 7 of who were released from their cell as the ship sank) assembled on a small treeless sand cay. After two nights on the island they sailed for Timor in four open boats, arriving in Kupang on 16 September 1791 after an arduous voyage across the Arafura Sea. Sixteen more died after surviving the wreck, many having fallen ill during their sojourn in Batavia (Jakarta). Eventually only 78 of the 134 men who had been on board upon departure returned home.

Captain Edwards and his officers were exonerated for the loss of the Pandora after a court martial. No attempt was made by the colonial authorities in New South Wales to salvage material from the wreck. The ten surviving prisoners were also tried; the various courts martial held found four of them innocent of mutiny and, although the other six were found guilty, only three were executed - Millward, Burkitt and Ellison who were executed on 29 October 1792 on board the Brunswick man of war at Portsmouth. Peter Heywood and James Morrison received a Royal pardon, while William Muspratt was acquitted on a legal technicality.

Descendants of the nine mutineers not discovered by Pandora still live on Pitcairn Island, the refuge Fletcher Christian founded in January 1790 and where they burnt and scuttled the Bounty a few weeks after arrival. Their hiding place was not discovered until 1808 when the New England sealer Topaz (Captain Mayhew Folger) happened on the tiny uncharted island. By then, all of the mutineers – except John Adams (aka Alexander Smith) – were dead, most having died under violent circumstances.

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The sinking of the HMS Pandora on August 30, 1791. This painting was based on a watercolor by Peter Heywood, a Bounty prisoner who survived the wreck.

Wreck site: discovery and archaeology
The wreck of the Pandora is located approximately 5 km north-west of Moulter Cay 11°23′S 143°59′ECoordinates:
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11°23′S 143°59′E on the outer Great Barrier Reef, on the edge of the Coral Sea. It is one of the best preserved shipwrecks in Australian waters. Its discovery was made on 15 November 1977 by independent explorers Ben Cropp, Steve Domm and John Heyer.

John Heyer, an Australian documentary film maker, had predicted the position of the wreck based on his research in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. His discovery expedition was launched with the help of Steve Domm, a boat owner and naturalist, and the Royal Australian Air Force. Using the built-in sensors of the RAAF P-2V Neptune, the magnetic anomaly caused by the wreck was detected and flares were laid down near the coordinates predicted by John Heyer.

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http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/images/applications/pandora/

Ben Cropp, an Australian television film maker, gained knowledge of Heyer's expedition and decided to launch his own search with the intention of following Heyer by boat; In this way Ben Cropp found the Pandora wreck just before John Heyer's boat did. The wreck was actually sighted by a diver called Ron Bell on Ben Cropp's boat. After the wreck site was located it was immediately declared a protected site under the Australian Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976, and in 1978 Ben Cropp and Steve Domm shared the $10,000. reward for finding the wreck.

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The Queensland Museum excavated the wreck on nine occasions between 1983 and 1999, according to a research design devised by marine archaeologists at the West Australian and Queensland museums (Gesner, 2016:16). Archaeologists, historians and scholars at the Museum of Tropical Queensland, Townsville, continue to piece together the Pandora story, using archaeological and extant historical evidence. A large collection of artefacts is on display at the museum.

In the course of the nine seasons of excavation during the 1980s and 1990s, the museum's marine archaeological teams established that approximately 30% of the hull is still intact (Gesner, 2000:39ff). The vessel came to rest at a depth of between 30 and 33 m on a gently sloping sandy bottom, slightly inclined to starboard; consequently more of the starboard side has been preserved than the port side of the hull. Approximately one third of the seabed in which the wreck is buried has been excavated by the Queensland Museum, leaving approximately 350 m³ for any future excavations.

A beautiful scratch built model in scale 1:36 of the HMS Pandora was built by the hungarian modeler Gémes Attila
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http://www.shipmodell.com/index_files/SHIPMODELL_PANDORA.htm

The Porcupine-class sailing sixth rates were a series of ten 24-gun post ships built to a 1776 design by John Williams, that served in the Royal Navy during the American War Of Independence. Some survived to serve again in the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars. The first two were launched in 1777. Three were launched in 1778, three more in 1779, and the last two in 1781.

Design
John Williams, the Surveyor of the Navy, designed the class as a development of his 1773 design for the 20-gun Sphinx class. The 1776 design enlarged the ship, which permitted the mounting of an eleventh pair of 9-pounder guns on the upper deck and two smaller (6-pounder) guns on the quarterdeck.

Ships in class
The Admiralty ordered ten ships to this design over a period of two years. The contract for the first ship was agreed on 25 June 1776 with Greaves, for launching in July 1777; the second was agreed with Adams on 6 August 1776, for launching in May 1777. The contract price for each was £10½ per ton BM; they were named Porcupine and Pelican by Admiralty Order on 27 August 1776. The contract price for Penelope was £11½ per ton BM.

HMS Porcupine
HMS Pelican
HMS Eurydice
HMS Hyaena
HMS Penelope
HMS Amphitrite
HMS Crocodile
HMS Siren
HMS Pandora
HMS Champion


An interesting read
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The Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora: In Pursuit of the Mutineers of the Bounty in the South Seas-1790-1791


Museum of Tropical Queensland - Townsville museum
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http://www.mtq.qm.qld.gov.au/Find+o...ort+Maritime+History/HMS+Pandora#.W4f3CugzaUk


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Pandora_(1779)
http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/images/applications/pandora/
https://www.lenzell.com/hmspandora/story.htm
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
30 August 1799 – The entire Dutch fleet surrendered to the British navy under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Sir Charles Mitchell during the War of the Second Coalition.


In the Vlieter incident on 30 August 1799, a squadron of the Batavian Navy, commanded by Rear-Admiral Samuel Story, surrendered to the British navy. The incident occurred during the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland. It took place in the tidal trench between Texel and the mainland that was known as De Vlieter, near Wieringen.

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Surrender of Samuel Story's Dutch Texel squadron to a British-Russian fleet under Andrew Mitchell, 30th of August 1799 in the Vlieter.

Background
During the War of the First Coalition the Dutch Republic was invaded in 1794 by the armies of the French Republic, which led to the flight of Stadtholder William V, Prince of Orange to England, and the proclamation of the Batavian Republic. This Republic now changed sides in the war, entering into an offensive and defensive alliance with France.

In the course of the War of the Second Coalition, which actually was a continuation of the first war, without France, Great Britain, or the Batavian Republic having concluded a peace, Great Britain and Russia decided to launch an invasion of the Batavian Republic in the peninsula of North Holland in August 1799. It was hoped that this invasion would cause a popular uprising of the Dutch population against their republic. The former Stadtholder and his eldest son the Hereditary Prince tried to support the expedition by propaganda-efforts and intrigues with disaffected officers. The loyalty of the Batavian navy was especially in doubt, as this was a hotbed of Orangist sentiment. The British Major General George Don, who conducted a reconnaissance of the Republic in July, 1799, estimated that the Helder squadron of the Batavian fleet would fall into British hands without a fight, if the Allies played their cards right.

To accomplish this bloodless coup, the invading fleet came well stocked with flags of the previous regime, propaganda pamphlets, and Dutch émigrés, the most important of whom was the Hereditary Prince. One of the Orangist officers who had left the Navy in 1795, Carel Hendrik Ver Huell, had on behalf of the Prince contacted two of his former colleagues, Theodorus Frederik van Capellen and Aegidius van Braam (who had re-enlisted in the Batavian navy), with the object of getting them to organize a mutiny in the Helder squadron (where they each commanded a ship-of-the-line). However, it is not clear whether the two officers indeed made a determined organizational effort before the fatal day.

The invasion fleet of about 200 warships and transports left England on 13 August 1799. Inclement weather at first prevented it from approaching the Dutch coast. However, on 22 August, British Vice-Admiral Mitchellwas able to approach the roadstead of Den Helder where the squadron of Admiral Story lay at anchor. Mitchell sent over parlimentaires demanding that Story defect to the Prince with his fleet, but Story refused indignantly. He replied further that he would ask for further instructions from the Batavian government. The British ships then withdrew and the weather again turned bad for a few days.

On 26 August 1799 an Anglo-Russian invasion fleet of eleven ships-of-the-line and seven frigates arrived at the roadstead of Texel, flying the flag of the Prince of Orange. They started to disembark troops on the 27th, without opposition from the Batavian fleet, that had withdrawn into the Zuider Zee. General Herman Willem Daendels, the commander of the Batavian landforces, ordered the evacuation of the coastal forts of Den Helder after losing the Battle of Callantsoog (1799)

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disembark troops on the 27th

Mutiny and surrender
On 28 August, Admiral Story returned with his squadron to the Vlieter roadstead, where he anchored, because adverse winds made it impossible to attack the British. Enervated by the sight of the Orangist flags on the forts and church steeples of Den Helder, the crews of several of the ships then started to mutiny. Van Braam's ship Leyden was one of those. He later admitted that it would have been easy for him to quell the revolt, but he intentionally did nothing. Instead, he informed his commanding officer, Admiral Story (who himself had to counter an incipient mutiny on the flagship Washington) of the "precarious situation" aboard the other ships of the fleet.

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Surrender of Samuel Story's Dutch Texel squadron to a British-Russian fleet under Andrew Mitchell, 30th of August 1799 in the Vlieter.

Story now sent his flag captain, Van Capellen, and the captain of the Cerberus, De Jong, under a flag of truce to the commander of the British squadron, Admiral Mitchell, to parley. They were to tell Mitchell that the Dutch fleet intended to give battle, in accordance with the explicit orders of the Agent for the Navy of the Batavian Republic, Jacobus Spoors, but that Story had asked for further orders, and proposed to await those. He asked for a temporary truce to avoid unnecessary bloodshed - Story later averred that this was a ruse on his part to gain time to restore discipline on his ships.

Mitchell did not fall for this ruse, probably because the two Dutch negotiators were actually the ringleaders of the mutiny. He issued an ultimatum giving Story one hour to defect and join the invasion force with his ships, or face the consequences. Faced with this ultimatum, Story convened a council of war aboard his flagship with all his captains. According to Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Maitland, who was present at the discussions on board Washingtonas a British parlimentaire, Van Capellen, De Jong, and Van Braam did their best to influence the council in the direction of accepting the ultimatum. He later asked in a letter to General Dundas that "...the opinions and sentiments expressed by the captains Van Capelle, Van Braam and the [sic] Jong generally in the presence of Admiral Story might not become public and those officers thereby endangered. To you in this letter, I apprehend I do right inform you, that above mentioned captains did declare their attachment to the Stadholder and the former government and their disgust at the present government and their French connections...".

Before this council started, the crew of the Washington had already begun a full mutiny, refusing to man the guns, and throwing munitions into the sea. Attempts of Story himself, and Van Braam to reason with the mutineers had been of no avail. When asked during the council of war to describe the situation aboard their ships all, except Captain Van Senden of Batavier, had similar stories. In these circumstances it seemed impossible to engage in battle. Besides, the officers calculated that their continued resistance would contribute little to the fight against the invasion, as the disembarkation had already taken place. Scuttling the fleet seemed impossible, because the crews would not allow it. Finally, some calculated that it would be better to surrender without resistance, because in that case the ships would end up in the possession of the Stadtholder, instead of becoming war booty for the British.

The council of war therefore unanimously decided to lower the flag of the Batavian Republic and declare themselves prisoners of war. They refused, however, to hoist the Orange flag. This may seem a minor point, but it signified that the officers did not defect. When Mitchell accepted the surrender, he did this in the name of the Prince of Orange. He therefore ordered the flag of the Prince to be hoisted, with which order some of the officers complied. This little act was to cost them dearly later on, as it was interpreted as an act of treason.

Meanwhile, in the absence of the captains further acts of mutiny had taken place on the other ships. One officer was drowned; others loyal to the Batavian Republic were beaten up. The Batavian flag was torn up by the mutineers. British officers restored order with some difficulty. After the surrender the Prince visited several of the ships to receive the cheers of the mutineers. He had now hoped to take command of the surrendered fleet himself, but this was denied by the British. The crews were taken off the ships, and British prize crews sailed them to England. Only five derelict frigates lying in Den Helder were handed over to William. These were manned with volunteer crews of the old-regime Dutch navy, living in the vicinity, and under jury rig sailed to England in November. One of these frigates foundered with loss of life.

Aftermath
After this initial success, the Anglo-Russian expedition soon ran into difficulties. The civilian population of North Holland did not display the fervour for the cause of Orange that the Prince had expected. The Batavian army proved remarkably resilient and managed in cooperation with the French army of occupation to deal the Allies defeats at the Battle of Bergen and Battle of Castricum. The Allies therefore evacuated North Holland at the end of October, 1799.

As this was the second surrender of a Batavian fleet in short order (after the capitulation of Saldanha Bay in 1796), the authorities of the Batavian Republic decided to convene a court-martial ((in Dutch) Hoge Zeekrijgsraad) on 8 October 1799, to exact exemplary punishment of the officers responsible for the surrender, and of the mutineers. As these were away in England the trial had to wait till the first returned to the Netherlands on parole. Those were arrested. Only Story himself, Van Braam and Van Capellen remained outside the reach of the court. They were eventually tried in absentia.

One captain, N. Connio, of the brig Gier was condemned to death, and executed on board the guard ship Rozenburg on 27 December 1799, to the consternation of the detained officers. Captain Dirk Hendrik Kolff of Utrecht was also condemned to death, but he managed to escape before his execution.

Captain De Jong was acquitted of the charge of treason, for lack of evidence, but he was convicted of dereliction of duty. He was cashiered; had to undergo a symbolic simulated execution (whereby a sword was swung over his head), and was banished for life. The trials were then suspended in hope that the absent officers would become available. In July 1801 the trial was resumed with new indictments against officers who had surrendered ships on earlier occasions or been otherwise derelict. Several other officers were punished in an attempt to make clear to the officer corps that surrender without a fight was unacceptable.

In June 1802 the Hoge Zeekrijgsraad was replaced by a permanent court, the Hoge Militaire Vierschaar (High Military Court). This court eventually conducted the trials of Story, Van Capellen, Van Braam, and Kolff in absentia, after it had become clear that these officers would not return to the Netherlands after the Peace of Amiens in 1802, when they were released as POWs. They were convicted of dereliction of duty, cowardice, and disloyalty. The court declared them perjurious (because they had broken their oath of loyalty), without honour and "infamous", and they were cashiered, and banished for life, on penalty of execution (by beheading in the case of Story; by death by firing squad in the case of the other three).

Story moved to Germany. He protested his innocence to the very end, publishing a public defence in the form of a book. He died in Cleves in 1811, before he could ask the new King of the Netherlands for rehabilitation.

The others were more fortunate in this respect. They were fully rehabilitated after the Orangist party was restored to power in 1814. Van Capellen became a vice-admiral in the new Royal Netherlands Navy, and commanded a squadron at the Bombardment of Algiers in 1816.

Dutch ships surrendered
The squadron of Admiral Story comprised only part of the Batavian fleet. In Amsterdam lay four 74-gun and two 64-gun ships; at Hellevoetsluis one 74-gun ship and seven 64-guns, besides several frigates and brigs.

Ship Guns Commander Notes

Washington 74 Van Capellen Ship of the line, flagship
Cerberus 64 De Jong Ship of the Line
Admiral De Ruyter 64 Huijs Ship of the Line
Gelderland 64 Waldeck Ship of the Line
Leyden 64 Van Braam Ship of the Line
Utrecht 64 Kolff Ship of the Line
Batavier 50 Van Senden Ship of the Line
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The Dutch ship Batavier (E) during the Battle of the Dogger Bank on 5 August 1781.

Beschermer 50 Eilbracht Ship of the Line
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Figurehead of the Dutch warship Beschermer

Mars 44 De Bock Frigate
Amphitrite 40 Schutter Frigate
Ambuscade 32 Riverij Frigate
Galathea 16 Droop Brig

Letter of capitulation of Admiral Story to Admiral Mitchell
"Neither your superiority, nor the threat that the spilling of human blood should be laid to my account, could prevent my shewing to you, to the last moment, what I could do for my sovereign, whom I acknowledge to be no other than the Batavian people and its representatives, when your prince's and the Orange flags have obtained their end. The traitors whom I commanded refused to fight; and nothing remains to me and my brave officers but vain rage and the dreadful reflection of our present situation: I therefore deliver over to you the fleet which I commanded. From this moment it is your obligation to provide for the safety of my officers and the few brave men who are on-board the Batavian ships, as I declare myself and my officers prisoners of war, and remain to be considered as such."



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlieter_Incident
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
30 August 1791 – Launch of French Sibylle, a 38 gun Hebe-class frigate, later HMS Sybille


Sibylle was a 38-gun Hébé-class frigate of the French Navy. She was launched in 1791 at the dockyards in Toulon and placed in service in 1792. After the 50-gun fourth rate HMS Romney captured her in 1794, the British took her into service as HMS Sybille. She served in the Royal Navy until disposed of in 1833. While in British service Sybille participated in three notable single ship actions, in each case capturing a French vessel. On anti-slavery duties off West Africa from July 1827 to June 1830, Sybille captured numerous slavers and freed some 3,500 slaves. She was finally sold in 1833 in Portsmouth.

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Capture of HMS Sybille capturing the Chiffone

French service
From 23 April 1790 to October–December 1792, Sibylle escorted a convoy and transferred funds from Toulon to Smyrna, first under Capitaine de vaisseau (CV) Grasse-Briançon and then CV de Venel. From March 1793 to January 1794, under CV Rondeau, she escorted convoys between Toulon and Marseilles and then she moved to the Levant station. She cruised the Aegean Sea, and in June 1794 she was escorting a convoy from Candia to Mykonos.

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Action of the Romney... & La Sybille & 3 armed vessels... June 17th 1794 (off Miconi, Grecian Archipelago) (PAG9743)
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/139691.html#tODJ6xYg99ju2h1E.99


On 17 June, as Sybille was anchored in Miconi along with three merchantmen bound for Cadiz, a British convoy escorted by HMS Romney, under Captain Paget, and three frigates appeared. Romney approached and demanded that Sibylle hoist a white flag, to which Rondeau retorted that he could not fly another flag than that of the Republic.

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Robert Cleveley (Deptford 1747-1809 Dover) H.M.S. Romney capturing the French 44-gun Sybille and three merchantmen in the roads off Mykonos, Greece,

Romney opened fire, and after one hour and a half of gunnery exchanges, Sibylle struck to her much more powerful opponent. Paget took possession of Sibylle and the merchantmen, but put the crew and Rondeau ashore. Sibylle was taken into British service as HMS Sybille.

British service in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
In 1798, now named Sybille, the ship served off the Philippines, participating in the bloodless Raid on Manila. In December, she gave chase to the privateer Clarisse, under Robert Surcouf. Clarisse escaped by throwing eight guns overboard.

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Sybille fighting Forte.

In February 1799, while under the command of Captain Edward Cooke, Sybille patrolled the Indian Ocean in a hunt for the French frigate Forte, under Captain Beaulieu-Leloup. The ships met on 28 February in the Balasore Roads in the Bay of Bengal at the Action of 28 February 1799. Sybille took Forte by surprise and captured her, as Forte's captain mistook Sybille for a merchantman.[Note 3] Cooke was wounded in the action and died at Calcutta 23 May, aged 26. Though his grave is in Calcutta, the East India Company erected a monument to him in Westminster Abbey in appreciation of the benefit to British trade of his capture of Forte. In all, Sybille lost five dead and 17 wounded. In 1847 the Admiraltyauthorized the issuance of the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Sybille 28 Feby. 1799" to all remaining survivors of the action.

In June 1799, Sybille came under the command of Captain Charles Adam. On 23 August 1800, Sybille, with Daedalus, Centurion and Braave captured a Dutch brig. The Royal Navy took her into service as Admiral Rainier. The British ships had entered Batavia Roads and captured five Dutch armed vessels in all and destroyed 22 other vessels.[8]Sybille alone apparently captured one brig of six guns, four proas armed with swivels, four proas armed, between with three 8-pounder and three 4-pounder guns, and some 21 unarmed proas, of which five were lost. How many of these, if any, are among the vessels reported as being taken in the Batavia Roads is not clear.

On 19–20 August 1801, in the Roads of Mahé, Seychelles, Sybille captured the French frigate Chiffone, under the command of Capitaine de Vaisseau Guieyesse. Chiffone had captured the Portuguese corvette Andorinha off the coasts of Brazil on 5 May, and the East Indiaman Bellona in the Madagascar Channel on 16 June. (Later, from 23 May 1803 to 1805, Charles Adams would command Chiffonne.)

On 3 May 1807, under Captain Robert Winthrop, Sybille captured the French 4-gun privateer Oiseau in the English Channel.

Sybille, under the command of Capt. Clotworthy Upton, participated in Battle of Copenhagen in 1807, where she bombarded the city. The battle resulted in the British capturing the Danish Fleet.

On 25 January 1808, while on the Home station, Sibylle captured the French privateer lugger Grand Argus. Grand Argus was pierced for 12 guns but carried only four. She and her crew of 41 men were under the command of Michael Daguinet. She was on her first cruise from Granville but had made no captures in the three days she had been out.

Then on 16 August, Sybille captured the French brig-corvette Espiègle, later recommissioned in the Royal Navy as Electra. Espiègle arrived in Cork on the evening of 31 August.

In the summer of 1809 Sybille cruised off the Greenland ice. Her role was to protect the whalers from privateers and then to escort them back to Britain.

In subsequent years she captured several privateers. In October 1810 she captured the French privateer Edouard off the coast of Ireland. Edouard, under Guillaume Moreau, was armed with 14 guns and had a crew of 90 men. She was eight days out of Abrevarake.

On 28 January 1812 Sybille was in company with Surveillante and Spitfire, when Surveillante captured the American ship Zone. On 10 May Sybille captured the French 14-gun privateer Aigle at sea. On 2 August she detained and sent into Cork Perseverance of New York.

Lastly, on 5 February 1813 Sybille captured the French privateer Brestois at sea. Brestois was a schooner armed with 14 guns and carrying a crew of 121 men. Sybille sent her into Cork too.

Post-war service
Captain Sir John Pechell took command of Sybille on 1 July 1823 and fitted her out for service in the Mediterranean. She sailed in October and proceeded to spend three years protecting the Ionian Islands and suppressing piracy.

A year later, Sybille enforced an indemnity on the government of the First Hellenic Republic for an attack on a Turkish vessel at Ithaca in violation of the neutrality of the United States of the Ionian Islands in December 1823. On 5 October 1824, Pechell seized three Greek schooners in the harbour of Nauplia (Polyxenes of 8 guns and 69 men; San Niccolo of 10 guns and 73 men; and Bella Poula of 8 guns and 37 men) as a provision until the indemnity of 40,000 dollars was forthcoming. The ship took the prizes to Zante and the prisoners to Corfu.

In October 1825, boats from Sybille and Medina, Captain Timothy Curtis, found a Greek pirate mistico and her prize at anchor in a cove at Catacolo. The British handed the Ionian prize over to the authorities in Zante and sent the mistico to Corfu.

Sybille's next notable action occurred when she attacked a pirate lair at Kaloi Limenes at the end of June 1826. Sybille sent in her boats but they were unsuccessful, suffering some 13 dead and 31 wounded, five of whom died subsequently. Gunfire from Sybille killed many pirates until the pirates traded a Royal Marine they had captured from one of the boats for a cease-fire. Sybille left the island though some time later a Turkish brig chased the pirates' remaining boat ashore in Anatolia thus ending that threat.

Suppressing the slave trade
In 1822 Sybille was in the West Indies. That year her tender, the 5-gun schooner Speedwell, shared with the frigate Tyne in the capture of two pirate schooners on 5 November, the Union and the Constantia (alias Espereanza), and in the destruction of the Hawke and the Paz.

From 4 December 1826 until 1830, Sybille was part of the West Africa Squadron, which sought to suppress the slave trade. There she was under the command of Commodore Francis Augustus Collier.

On 6 September 1827, Sybille captured the Brazilian ship Henriqueta (also Henri Quatre), with 569 slaves on board, of whom 546 survived to be liberated in Sierra Leone. In December the Admiralty purchased Henriquetta for £900 as a tender to Sybille and renamed her Black Joke. Black Joke would go on to be one of the most successful anti-slavery vessels in the squadron.

On 14 March 1828 Sybille was reported to have captured three slave vessels: possibly a Dutch schooner with 272 slaves; a Spanish schooner with 282 slaves; and the Hope, former tender to Maidstone, with a cargo on board for the purchase of slaves. When Sybillearrived at Sierra Leone on 17 May for refitting in preparation for a passage to Ascension Island, she reported that since she arrived on the station in July 1827 she had freed over 1100 slaves.

In 1829, 204 men died on board Eden from yellow fever. To convince the crew of Sybille that the fever was not contagious, her surgeon, Robert McKinnal, drank a glassful of black vomit from an ailing crew member.

Between February and March 1829 Sybille captured a Brazilian brig, and her tenders captured the slave schooner Donna Barbara. By 11 April 1829, Sybille claimed to have released over 3,900 slaves in the previous 22 months. On 29 April she captured a Spanish schooner with 291 slaves on board. Then on 12 May she sent in to the prize court a schooner with 185 slaves on board.

Sybille also seized and condemned a number of vessels for illicitly trafficking in slaves. On 11 October it was the brigantine Tentadora and on 1 November the brigantine Nossa Senhora da Guia, with 310 slaves, of whom 238 survived. On 30 January 1830 Sybille seized and condemned a third, unnamed vessel. Then on 15 January she took Umbelino, with 377 slaves of whom only 163 survived, and eight days later, Primera Rosalia, with 282 slaves, of whom 242 survived. She also captured a brigantine from Lagos after a 27-hour chase; the vessel turned out to have 282 slaves on board. Her last capture occurred on 1 April when she captured Manzanares. Sybille finally returned to Portsmouth from the coast of Africa on 26 June and was paid off.

Fate

Between January 1830 and July 1831 she was fitted as a lazaretto for Dundee. She was eventually sold to Mr. Henry for ₤2,460 on 7 August 1833


The Hébé class was a class of six 38-gun (later 40-gun) frigates of the French Navy, designed in 1781 by Jacques-Noël Sané. The name ship of the class. Hébé, was also the basis for the British Leda-class frigatesafter the ship had been captured.

John_Christian_Schetky,_HMS_Amelia_Chasing_the_French_Frigate_Aréthuse_1813_(1852).jpg
A depiction of the H.M.S. Amelia pursuing the French frigate Aréthuse.

Ships in class

Sybille vs. Chiffone

Name Builder Laid down Launched Completed Fate

Hébé - Saint Malo - December 1781 - 25 June 1782 - August 1782 - Captured by British Navy in the Action of 4 September 1782. The British took her into service and in 1805 renamed her HMS Blonde. Hébé became the model for the British Leda-class frigates, the first of which was HMS Leda. Hébé, therefore, has the rare distinction of being the model for both a French and a British frigate class.
Vénus - Brest - November 1781 - 14 July 1782 - October 1782 - Wrecked on 31 December 1788 in the Indian Ocean.
Dryade - Saint Malo - 1782 - 3 February 1783 - April 1783 - Retired in 1796; condemned 16 November 1801 and taken to pieces.
Proserpine - Brest - December 1784 - 25 June 1785 - August 1785 - Captured by British Navy on 13 June 1796. The British took her into service as HMS Amelia.
Sibylle - Toulon - April 1790 - 30 July 1791 - May 1792 - Captured by British Navy on 17 June 1794. The British took her into service as HMS Sybille.
Carmagnole - La Motte, Brest - March 1792 - 22 May 1793 - July 1793 - Renamed Rassurante 30 May 1795, but reverted to Carmagnole 24 February 1798; wrecked in a storm at Vlissingen on 9 November 1800.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_frigate_Sibylle_(1792)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hébé-class_frigate
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
30 August 1948 - HMS Worcester foundered at river Thames


HMS Frederick William was an 86-gun screw-propelled first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy.

HMS Worcester8.jpg


She was initially ordered from Portsmouth Dockyard on 12 September 1833 as a 110-gun Queen-class ship of the line, under the name HMS Royal Sovereign. The order was suspended on 7 May 1834, but was later renewed, this time under the name HMS Royal Frederick, a change in name which took place on 12 April 1839. She was laid down on 1 July 1841, but work commenced slowly, and on 29 June 1848 she was re-ordered to a modification of the Queen-class design, still powered by sails alone. The order for the still unfinished ship was again modified on 28 February 1857, when it was ordered that she be completed as an 86-gun screw battleship. Conversion work began on 28 May 1859, and the ship was renamed HMS Frederick William on 28 January 1860, shortly before her launch on 24 March that year. She was completed in June 1860.

HMS Worcester3.jpg

From 1 July to 31 December 1864, she served as a Coast Guard Service Home Station, at Portland, replacing HMS Colossus. On 19 October 1876 she was renamed as Worcester, to take on a new role as a training ship at Greenhithe for the Thames Nautical Training College. She fulfilled this role until her sale in July 1948. She foundered in the River Thames on 30 August 1948. She was raised in May 1953 and was broken up

HMS Worcester2.jpg

HMS Worcester was the name given to the Thames Nautical Training College. It was established in 1862 aboard the fourth rate HMS Worcester. The name HMS Worcester ceased to be associated with the establishment after 1968. Ships that have been named or renamed HMS Worcester whilst serving with the establishment include:
Cig-Card.jpg



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Frederick_William
http://www.nickmessinger.co.uk/worcester.html
 

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Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
Other Events on 30 August


1363 – The five-week Battle of Lake Poyang begins, in which the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders (Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang) meet to decide who will supplant the Yuan dynasty.

The battle of Lake Poyang (鄱陽湖之戰) was a naval conflict which took place 30 August – 4 October 1363 between the rebel forces of Zhu Yuanzhang and Chen Youliang during the Red Turban Rebellion which led to the fall of the Yuan dynasty. Chen Youliang besieged Nanchang with a large fleet on Lake Poyang, China's largest freshwater lake, and Zhu Yuanzhang met his force with a smaller fleet. After an inconclusive engagement exchanging fire, Zhu employed fire ships to burn the enemy tower ships and destroyed their fleet. This was the last major battle of the rebellion prior to the rise of the Ming dynasty.

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

1669 – Launch of French Wallon 48, later 50 guns (designed and built by Laurent Hubac, launched 30 August 1669 at Brest) - renamed Duc in June 1671; condemned 1691

1673 – Launch of French Magnanime 70, later 76/80 guns (designed by Rodolphe Gédéon and built by Charles Audibert, launched 30 August 1673 at Marseille) – driven ashore and burnt in the Battle of Marbella in March 1705

1705 - England's Glory - Raising of the Siege.jpg
The Battle of Cabrita Point where the Franco-Spanish fleet was defeated by by superior allied forces. It spelled the end of the siege. The book from which this print comes from - England's Glory - was published to promote a pro-war agenda against Spain. Note Date on Picture.

1705 Dutch fighting Battle of Cabrita Point.jpg
Here is a Dutch version of the Battle of Cabrita Point. The picture of the Rock seems quite accurate showing a derelict Torre del Tuerto.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cabrita_Point
http://gibraltar-intro.blogspot.com/2010/10/chapter-3.html

1707 - HMS Childs Play (24), Cdr. George Doiley, foundered in a hurricane off St. Christopher's

1777 - Launch of french Charmante at Rochefort
– wrecked 1780
Charmante class, (32-gun design by Jean-Denis Chevillard, with 26 x 12-pounder and 6 x 6-pounder guns).

Unite_(1796)_RMG_J6091.jpg
Unite (1796) Scale 1:48. Plan showing the body plan with sternboard decoration and name in a cartouche or stern counter, sheer lines with inboard figurehead detail and longitudinal half breadth for for Unite (1796) a captured French Frigate fitted at Plymouth Dockyard prior to fitting as a 32-gun, Fifth Rate Frigate. Signed J. Marshall. (Master Shipwright) UNITE FL.1796 [FRENCH]

Sistership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_frigate_Gracieuse_(1787)
http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collec...el-351688;browseBy=vessel;vesselFacetLetter=S

1806 - Boats of HMS Bacchante (22), Cptn. James R. Dacres, cut out a brig and two feluccas, San Antonio letter of marque and Spanish privateer Deseado, at Santa-Martha.

1806 - HMS Pike (4), Lt. Macdonald, captured a guarda-costa.

1806 – Launch of HMS Magnificent, a 74 gun Repulse class Ship of the Line

large.jpg
Scale: 1:48. Plan showing the body plan, sheer lines illustrating the awning stantions, and longitudinal half-breadth for 'Magnificent' (1806), 'Valiant' (1807), 'Elizabeth' (1807), and 'Cumberland' (1807), all 74-gun Third Rate, two-deckers. The plan has been drawn on an unused printed 'Observations of the Qualities of His Majesty's Ship', and illustrates the ships when they were in ordinary having been paid off with awnings erected. Note that 'Elizabeth' was broken up in 1820.
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/80901.html#wgdjtWsj7t0kREji.99


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Magnificent_(1806)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repulse-class_ship_of_the_line
http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collec...el-328019;browseBy=vessel;vesselFacetLetter=M

1814 - Party from HMS Menelaus (38), Cptn. Peter Parker (Killed in Action), engaged ashore in Chesapeake Bay

1814 - Launch of french Iena a Commerce de Paris class 110-gun ship of the line

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Iéna_(1805)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_de_Paris-class_ship_of_the_line

1825 – Launch of HMS Success, a 28 gun Atholl class corvette

HMS Success was an Atholl-class 28-gun sixth-rate wooden sailing ship notable for exploring Western Australia and the Swan River in 1827 as well as being one of the first ships to arrive at the fledgling Swan River Colony two years later, at which time she ran aground off Carnac Island.

Her keel was laid at Pembroke Dock in August 1823 and she was launched on 31 August 1825. She was 114 ft long (35 m) and 32 ft wide (9.8 m), and was a sixth-rate ship with 28 guns, including twenty 32-pounders.

She was sent by the Royal Navy on a mission to New South Wales and Melville Island. She made an expedition to the Swan River in 1827, arriving there in early March. Captain James Stirling was in command. There is a record of the expedition, An account of the expedition of H.M.S. 'Success', Captain James Stirling, RN., from Sydney, to the Swan River, in 1827 by Augustus Gilbert. Another account The visit of Charles Fraser (the colonial botanist of New South Wales) : to the Swan River in 1827, with his opinion on the suitableness of the district for a settlement was published in 1832.

On 3 December 1829 Success was grounded on Carnac Reef.[4] She was dismantled and repaired, with assistance from HMS Cruizer.
In 1832 Success was engaged in harbour service. In January 1840, Success was a receiving ship in Portsmouth. She was broken up in 1849.
Success Bank, the suburb of Success and a number of other features in Western Australia are named after the ship.

The_Success_hove_down_to_the_Couizer_-ca._1829-1830-.jpg
HMS Success undergoing repairs off Carnac Island Western Australia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Success_(1825)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atholl-class_corvette

1856 - Death of John Ross, british Conteradmiral and arctic explorer

Admiral Sir John Ross CB, RN (24 June 1777 – 30 August 1856) was a British naval officer and Arctic explorer. He was the uncle of Captain Sir James Clark Ross, RN who explored the Arctic with him, and later led expeditions to Antarctica.

Victory_in_Gulf_of_Boothia,_1832.jpg
John Ross's ship Victory under sail for the last time in the Gulf of Boothia, 1832

The_Victory's_crew_sav'd_by_the_Isabella_RMG_PU6091_(cropped).jpg
The crew of the Victory saved by the Isabella, by Edward Francis Finden, 1834

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ross_(Royal_Navy_officer)

1862 – Launch of USS Passaic, a single turreted, coastal monitor

The first Passaic was a single turreted, coastal monitor purchased by the United States Navy for service during the American Civil War.

USS_Passaic_(1862).jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Passaic_(1862)

1873 – Austrian explorers Julius von Payer and Karl Weyprecht discover the archipelago of Franz Josef Land in the Arctic Sea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_von_Payer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Weyprecht

1881 - The Cape Mai steamer RMS Teuton struck a rock and started to take on water, the captain altered course for Simon's Bay, near Cape Town, at initially 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph). At ten in the evening the engines were stopped and the ship's boats lowered but the ship sank quickly, along with four of the ship's boats, drowning 236.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Teuton
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
31 August 1591 - The Battle of Flores - (galleon Revenge sinking)

was a naval engagement of the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585 fought off the Island of Flores between an English fleet of 22 ships under Lord Thomas Howard and a Spanish fleet of 55 ships under Alonso de Bazán. Sent to the Azores to capture the annual Spanish treasure convoy, when a stronger Spanish fleet appeared off Flores, Howard ordered his ships to flee to the north, saving all of them except the galleon Revenge commanded by Admiral Sir Richard Grenville.

The_Last_fight_of_the_Revenge_off_Flores_in_the_Azores_1591_by_Charles_Dixon.jpg
Revenge in action against the Spanish fleet 31 August – 1 September 1591 (Charles Dixon)

After transferring his ill crew men onshore back to his ship, he led the Revenge in a rear guard action against 55 Spanish ships, allowing the British fleet to retire to safety. The crew of the Revenge sank and damaged several Spanish ships during a day and night running battle. The Revenge was boarded many times by different Spanish ships and repelled each attack successfully. When Admiral Sir Richard Grenville was badly wounded, his surviving crew surrendered. Lord Alfred Tennyson wrote a poem about the battle entitled The Revenge: a Ballad of the Fleet.

Background
In order to impede a Spanish naval recovery after the Armada, Sir John Hawkins proposed a blockade of the supply of treasure being acquired from the Spanish Empire in the Americas by a constant naval patrol designed to intercept Spanish ships. Revenge was on such a patrol in the summer of 1591 under the command of Sir Richard Grenville. The Spanish, meanwhile, had dispatched a fleet of some 55 ships under Alonso de Bazán, having under his orders Generals Martín de Bertendona and Marcos de Aramburu. Bazán learned that the English were patrolling around the northern Azores. In late August 1591, having been joined by 8 Portuguese flyboats under Luis Coutinho, the Spanish fleet came upon the English. Howard's fleet was caught while undergoing repairs and when the crews, many of whom were suffering an epidemic of fever, were resting ashore.

Revenge_last_fight,_map.jpg
Map of the engagement

Battle
Bazán tried to surprise the English fleet at anchor, but Sancho Pardo's Vice-flagship lost their bowsprit, forcing the attack to be delayed. It was not until 5 PM when Bazán's ships bore down the channel which separated Flores and Corvo islands. Howard, alerted to the arrival of the Spanish, managed to slip away to sea. An exchange of fire took place between both fleets before they became separated. Grenville, however, preferred to fight and went straight through the Spaniards, who were approaching from the eastward.

Revenge's_19th_century_view_of_the_action..jpg
19th-century view of the action

Meanwhile, Defiance, Howard's flagship, received heavy gunfire from Aramburu's San Cristóbal before withdrawing from the battle. Revenge was left behind and directly engaged by Claudio de Viamonte's San Felipe. Viamonte boarded the English galleon, suffering the misfortune of the grappling hook parting after having only passed 10 men aboard her. Shortly after Martín de Bertendona's San Bernabé did the same, this time successfully, and managed to rescue seven survivors of San Felipe´s boarding party. San Bernabé´s grappling was decisive to the fate of Revenge, because the English warship lost the advantage of her long-range naval guns. Conversely, the heavy musketry fire of the Spanish infantry forced the English gunners to abandon their post in order to repulse the attack.

Combat_du_Revenge.jpg
The last fight of the Revenge (James Cundee)

At dusk, having dispersed the bulk of the English fleet, San Cristobal rammed Revenge underneath its aft-castle, putting on board of the English ship a second boarding party which captured her colours. The Spanish soldiers got as far forward as far as the mainmast before being forced to retreat due to the heavy musketry fire made from the aftcastle. San Cristóbal's bow had been shattered by the ramming and she had to ask for reinforcements. Antonio Manrique's Asunción and Luis Coutinho's flyboat La Serena attacked then at the same time, increasing the number of ships beating the Revenge to five, which was still grappled by the galleons San Bernabé and the damaged San Cristóbal. Grenville held them back with cannon and musket fire until, being himself badly injured and Revenge severely damaged, completely dis-masted and with 150 men killed or unable to fight, surrendered.[4] During the night Manrique's and Coutinho's ships sank after they collided with each other.

Aftermath
Despite the damage Grenville had inflicted, the Spanish treated Revenge's survivors honourably. Grenville, who had been taken aboard Bazán's flagship, died two days later. The Spanish Treasure Fleet rendezvoused with Bazán soon after, and the combined fleet sailed to Spain. They were overtaken by a week-long storm during which Revenge and 15 Spanish warships and merchant vessels were lost. Revengesank with her mixed prize-crew of 70 Spaniards and English prisoners near the island of Terceira, at the approximate position 38°46′9″N 27°22′42″W.

The battle, however, marked the resurgence of Spanish naval power and proved that the English chances of catching and defeating a well-defended treasure fleet were remote. It also hinted at what might have happened in Gravelines in 1588 if Medina Sidonia had succeeded in luring the English ships within grappling range of the Armada, and if the cannonballs had actually fit the Spanish cannon (they'd been manufactured in different areas of the Spanish Habsburg Empire and so were not all designed in the same way, shape or size).


Revenge was an English race-built galleon of 46 guns, built in 1577 and captured by the Spanish in 1591, sinking soon afterwards. She was the first of 13 English and Royal Navy ships to bear the name.

Construction
Revenge was built at a cost of £4,000 at the Royal Dockyard, Deptford in 1577 by Master Shipwright Mathew Baker. Her race-built design was to usher in a new style of ship building that would revolutionise naval warfare for the next three hundred years. A comparatively small vessel, weighing about 400 tons, being about half the size of Henri Grâce à Dieu, Revenge was rated as a galleon.

Armament
The armament of ships of this period was fluid; guns might be added, removed or changed for different types for dozens of reasons. Revenge was particularly heavily armed during her last cruise: she carried 20 heavy demi-cannon, culverins and demi-culverins on her gun deck, where the sailors slept. On her upper decks were more demi-culverins, sakers, and a variety of light weapons, including swivel-mounted breech-loaders, called "fowlers" or "falcons"

Career
Raid on Cadiz (1587)
Main article: Singeing the King of Spain's Beard
In 1587, Sir Francis Drake sailed to the Spanish coast and destroyed much materiel that Philip II had accumulated in preparation for the Armada. In consequence, Spanish plans for the invasion of England were put off until the following year.

Battle of Gravelines (1588)
Main article: Spanish Armada
In early 1588, Drake moved his flag from Elizabeth Bonaventure to Revenge, which was considered[by whom?] to be the best by far of the new ships. On 29 July 1588 the Battle of Gravelines (named after a Flemish town near Calais), was concluded as one of the fiercest and most decisive battles engaged in during these years. At the outset of the conflict, Revenge proved worthy of her reputation. Following Revenge at the head of the line, the English fleet engaged their broadsides into the Spanish Armada. Many Spanish vessels were severely damaged, although only a few sank or ran aground. However, it was only when fireships were sent in that the Spanish broke their formation and sailed into the North Sea. The English fleet monitored them until they drew level with Edinburgh, and then returned to port.

Drake-Norris Expedition (1589)
Main article: English Armada
In 1589 Revenge again put to sea as Drake's flagship, in what was to be a failed attempt to invade Spanish-controlled Portugal. With the ship in an unseaworthy condition, and without any prizes to his credit Drake fell out of favour with Queen Elizabeth and was kept ashore until 1594.

Frobisher Expedition (1590)
In 1590 Revenge was commanded by Sir Martin Frobisher in an unsuccessful expedition along the coast of Spain to intercept the Spanish treasure fleet.

Capture by the Spanish and sinking (1591)
Revenge_surrendered.jpg
Revenge sinking near Terceira during a storm after surrender to the Spanish off Flores, according to an illustration from 1897.

Revenge came to her end in a glorious but bizarre episode that has become a legend. In order to impede a Spanish naval recovery after the Armada, Sir John Hawkins proposed a blockade of the supply of treasure being acquired from the Spanish Empire in America by a constant naval patrol designed to intercept Spanish ships. Revenge was on such a patrol in the summer of 1591 under the command of Sir Richard Grenville.

The Spanish had dispatched a fleet of some 53 ships under Alonso de Bazán, having under his orders Generals Martín de Bertendona and Marcos de Aramburu. Intent upon the capture of the English at Flores in the northern Azores. In late August 1591 the Spanish fleet came upon the English while repairs to the ships caused the crews, many of whom were suffering an epidemic of fever, to be ashore. Most of the ships managed to slip away to sea. Grenville who had many sick men ashore decided to wait for them. When putting to sea he might have gone round the west of Corvo island, but he decided to go straight through the Spaniards, who were approaching from the eastward.

The battle began late on 31 August, when overwhelming force was immediately brought to bear upon the ship, which put up a gallant resistance. For some time he succeeded by skillful tactics in avoiding much of the enemy's fire, but they were all round him and gradually numbers began to tell. As one Spanish ship retired beaten, another took her place, and for fifteen hours the unequal contest continued. Attempts by the Spaniards to board were driven off. San Felipe, a vessel three times her size, tried to come alongside for the Spaniards to board her, along with Aramburu's San Cristóbal. After boarding Revenge, San Felipe was forced to break off. Seven men of the boarding party died, and the other three were rescued by San Bernabé, which grappled her shortly after. The Spanish also lost the galleon Ascensión and a smaller vessel by accident that night, after they collided with each other. Meanwhile, San Cristóbal, which had come to help San Felipe, rammed Revenge underneath her aftcastle, and some time later, Bertendona's San Bernabébattered the English warship with heavy fire, inflicting many casualties and severe damage. The English crew returned fire from the embrasures below deck. When morning broke on 1 September, Revenge lay with her masts shot away, six feet of water on the hold and only sixteen men left uninjured out of a crew of two hundred and fifty. She remained grappled by the galleons San Bernabé and San Cristóbal, the latter with her bow shattered by the ramming. The grappling manoeuvre of San Bernabé, which compelled the English gun crews to abandon their posts in order to fight off boarding parties, was decisive in securing the fate of the Revenge.

"Out-gunned, out-fought, and out-numbered fifty-three to one", when the end looked certain Grenville ordered Revenge to be sunk: "Sink me the ship, Master Gunner—sink her, split her in twain! Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain! ". His officers could not agree with this order and a surrender was agreed by which the lives of the officers and crew would be spared. After an assurance of proper conduct, and having held off dozens of Spanish ships, Revenge at last surrendered. The injured Grenville died of wounds two days later aboard the Spanish flagship.

The captured but heavily damaged Revenge never reached Spain, but was lost with her mixed prize-crew of 70 Spaniards and English captives, along with a large number of the Spanish ships in a dreadful storm off the Azores. The battle-damaged Revenge was cast upon a cliff next to the island off Terceira, where she broke up completely. Between 1592 and 1593, 14 guns of the Revenge were recovered by the Spanish from the site of the wreck. Other cannons were driven ashore years later by the tide, and the last weapons raised were salvaged as late as 1625.

Revenge in literature
Her final action inspired a popular poem entitled The Revenge: A Ballad of the Fleet by Lord Tennyson, which dramatically narrates the course of the engagement.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Flores_(1591)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_ship_Revenge_(1577)
https://www.menofthewest.net/the-battle-of-flores/
https://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/renaissance/revenge/default.aspx
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
31 August 1772 - Launch of HMS Prince George, a 90 gun Barfleur-class Ship of the Line


HMS Prince George was a 90-gun second-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 31 August 1772 at Chatham. During her career, she was upgraded to a 98-gun ship, through the addition of eight 12 pdr guns to her quarterdeck.

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Scale 1:48. Plan showing the body plan, sheer lines, and longitudinal half-breadth for 'Barfleur' (1768), and later for 'Prince George' (1772), 'Princess Royal' (1773) and 'Formidable' (1777), all 90-gun Second Rate, three-deckers.
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/80128.html#bSz78ltfcqRkEKep.99

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In 1780, Prince George was part of Rodney's fleet at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent. She took part in the Battle of the Saintes in 1782, and the Battle of Groix in 1795.

In 1807, Prince George, under Captain Woodley Losack, was in the West indies in the squadron under the command of Rear-Admiral Alexander Cochrane. The squadron captured the Telemaco, Carvalho and Masteron 17 April 1807.

In December Prince George participated in Cochrane's expedition that captured the Danish islands of St Thomas on 22 December and Santa Cruz on 25 December. The Danes did not resist and the invasion was bloodless.

Prince George was converted to serve as a sheer hulk in 1832. In 1835 she was used in a series of gunnery trials as a target ship, the results of which contributed to the rapid introduction of the shell firing gun. The Prince George was broken up in 1839.


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Scale 1:48. Plan showing the starboard inboard elevation for 'Prince George' (1772), a 90-gun Second Rate, three-decker, after having been cut down to the lower deck, and prior to being broken up at Portsmouth Dockyard in January 1839. The plan illustrates the effects of shells fired from 'Excellent' (ex-'Boyne') at more than 1200 yards. It includes a detailed key for all the shot holes in the broadside. Reverse: Plan showing an incomplete profile of the Prince George (1772), prior to being used as a target practice.
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/80141.html#zM8bR3EUs2k7djDb.99


The Barfleur-class ships of the line were a class of four 90-gun second rates, designed for the Royal Navy by Sir Thomas Slade.

Design
The design for the Barfleur class was based upon HMS Royal William.

Ships
Builder: Chatham Dockyard
Ordered: 1 March 1762
Launched: 30 July 1768
Fate: Broken up, 1819

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The Battle of the Saintes, 12 April 1782: surrender of the Ville de Paris by Thomas Whitcombe, painted 1783, shows Hood's Barfleur, centre, attacking the French flagship Ville de Paris, right, at the Battle of the Saintes.
Builder: Chatham Dockyard
Ordered: 11 June 1766
Launched: 31 August 1772
Fate: Broken up, 1839
Builder: Portsmouth Dockyard
Ordered: 10 September 1767
Launched: 18 October 1773
Fate: Broken up, 1807
Builder: Chatham Dockyard
Ordered: 17 August 1768
Launched: 20 August 1777
Fate: Broken up, 1813

1280px-Le_Formidable_Les_Saintes.JPG
Scale model of HMS Formidable, flagship of Rodney at the Battle of the Saintes. On display at Fort Napoléon des Saintes museum.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Prince_George_(1772)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barfleur-class_ship_of_the_line
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
31 August 1799 – Launch of French Chiffone, a 38 gun Heureuse-class frigate


Chiffonne was a 38-gun Heureuse-class frigate of the French Navy. She was built at Nantes and launched in 1799. The British Royal Navy captured her in 1801. In 1809 she participated in a campaign against pirates in the Persian Gulf. She was sold for breaking up in 1814. (38-gun design by Pierre Degay, with 26 x 12-pounder and 12 x 6-pounder guns).

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lines & profile NMM, Progress Book, volume 5, folio 298, states that 'Chiffonne' arrived at Woolwich Dockyard on 3 March 1803 and was docked on 8 April to be recoppered. She was undocked on 23 May 1803, and sailed on 17 June 1808 having been fitted. NMM, Progress Book, volume 6, folio 373, states that 'Chiffonne' went to Sheerness Dockyard in 1804 for defects to be sorted, and then in 1808 and 1811 to Portsmouth Dockyard for repairs.

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French service
On 11 July 1801, Chiffone, under the command of Captain Pierre Guiyesse arrived at Mahé, Seychelles from the port of St Nazaire with 33 deportees under sentence of exile from France. The exiles had been involved in the Plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise against Napoleon.

On 15 May, off Brazil, she captured a Portuguese schooner. Three days later she captured the Brazilian frigate Hirondelle, armed en flute. Hirondelle (or possibly Andorhina) was armed with twenty-four 24-pounder carronades and put up a short fight. Guiyesse had her guns thrown overboard, took her stores (cables, spare rigging and sails), and then released her officers and crew under parole.

On 16 June, Chiffone captured the East Indiaman Bellona on her way from Bengal to London. In taking Bellone, Chiffone had her mizzen mast crippled. A prize crew under Ensign Jean-Michel Mahé took Bellona to Mauritius where she arrived a month later.

Further information: Battle of Mahé
On 19 August HMS Sibylle, Captain Charles Adam, chased her off Mahé, Seychelles. At the time of the British attack Chiffone was at anchor and aided her defense by constructing a battery using some of her forecastle guns and heating the shot. Her captain, Commander Guiyesse, attempted to avoid capture by beaching Chiffonne, but the British captured her the next day. She had lost 23 men killed and 30 wounded; Sybille lost two men killed and one wounded. She was brought into British service as HMS Chiffonne. When Adams arrived in Madras with his prize the insurance company there presented him with a sword worth guineas, while the merchants of Calcutta later too presented him with a sword and a piece of plate.

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Capture of HMS Sybille capturing the Chiffone

British service
The British commissioned Chiffone in 1802 in the East Indies under Captain Henry Stuart. In July 1802 she carried despatches to Calcutta with the reports of the murder of the Persian ambassador Haji Khalil Khan in Bombay. She returned to England and was fitted at Woolwich in 1803. Captain Charles Adam (late of Sibylle) took command of Chiffone on 23 May 1803 and recommissioned her for service in the North Sea and the coast of Spain, where she served from 1803 to 1807.

On 5 August 1803 Chiffone, Ethalion and Cruizer captured Flore. The same three vessels shared the salvage money arising from the recapture on the same day of Margaret, Robert Lacs, master.

The next day Chiffonne and Ethalion captured John, of Workington. Then on 20 June Chiffonne captured Zeeluft. In October Chiffone was under the command of Captain Patrick Campbell, perhaps temporarily.

On 10 June 1804, Chiffone and consorts engaged French gunboats. Then on 20 June Chiffonne captured another Zeeluft, or at least a vessel by that name and with a different master than that of the previous year.Chiffonne was in company with Falcon, Clinker, Steady, and the hired armed cutter Frances.

On 10 June 1805, Chiffone, with Falcon, Clinker, and Frances chased a French convoy for nine hours until it took shelter under the guns of Fécamp. The convoy consisted of two corvettes (Foudre under Capitaine de vaisseau Jacques-Felix-Emmanuel Hemelin, and Audacieuse, under Lieutenant Dominique Roquebert), four large gunvessels and eight others, and 14 transports. The British suffered some casualties from gunfire from shore batteries, with Chiffone, which had borne the brunt of the firing, losing two men killed and three wounded.

In May 1806 Chiffone was under the command of John Wainwright. On 14 June Chiffone, which had returned to Portsmouth, sailed for Cadiz, carrying General Sir John Moore and Admiral Purvis, who had raised his flag on her. At Cadiz Purvis transferred his flag to Minotaur and Chiffone proceeded to Gibraltar. From there, on 5 July, she sailed to Messina in company with Active, Racehorse, and nineteen transports, supply vessels and merchant vessels, arriving on 7 August.

At some point in early 1807, boats from Chiffone and Sabrina cut out a brig and a schooner under the guns of a 4-gun battery on the south coast of Spain.

She sailed for the East Indies in May 1808. About a year and a half later, on 13 September 1809, Chiffone was in the port of Bombay when the ship Ardaseer caught fire. Mr. Kempt, the chief officer hailed the warships around her for help, and Wainright responded with 100 men, buckets, and an "engine". Despite their efforts, those of the crew, and those of men from the other British warships in the port, Ardaseer could not be saved.

Then in November, she and Caroline, together with a number of East Indiamen, participated in the campaign to eradicate piracy in the Persian Gulf, centered on Ras al-Khaimah. In an attack the British began with a cannonade of the town and followed with a ground attack. The destroyed about some vessels, 30 of them very large dhows, together with much in the way of naval stores. Chiffonne's casualties amounted to two men wounded. She and Caroline destroyed the Persian towns of Linga and Laft on Qeshm Island. Chiffonealso destroyed 20 vessels, nine of them large dhows at Linga and eleven, nine of them large dhows, at Laft. This time the resistance on shore was more intense and Chiffone lost one man killed and 17 wounded out of total British casualties (including men from the East India Company's vessels), of two killed and 27 wounded.

In January 1810 Chiffonne and Caroline carried Shenaz, which had rebelled against Sultan Sa'id of Oman and which they restored to him. Syyed Sa'id presented Wainwright with a scimitar in recognition of his efforts against the pirates. In November, Chiffonne rescued the crew of Mandarin, which had wrecked on Red Island, near Singapore.

Fate
Chiffone returned to Portsmouth in 1811. She was laid up there, but then repaired in 1812. In 1813 to 1814 she was in ordinary.

The Principal Officers and Commissioners of His Majesty's Navy offered "Chiffonne, of 36 guns and 945 tons", lying at Portsmouth, for sale on 11 August 1814. The buyer had to post a bond of £3,000, with two guarantors, that they would break up the vessel within a year of purchase. She was sold for breaking up for £1,700 at Portsmouth on 1 September 1814


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_frigate_Chiffone_(1799)
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
31 August 1810 – Launch of HMS Galatea, a 36 gun Apollo-class frigate


HMS Galatea was an Apollo-class fifth rate of the Royal Navy. The frigate was built at Deptford Dockyard, London, England and launched on 31 August 1810. In 1811 she participated in the Battle of Tamatave, which battle confirmed British dominance of the seas east of the Cape of Good Hope for the rest of the Napoleonic Wars. She was hulked in 1836 and broken up in 1849.

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H.M. Frigate Galatea, 38 Guns off the Needles, Isle Of Wight, by Thomas Whitcombe

Napoleonic Wars
Galatea was commissioned in September 1810 under Captain Woodley Losack, who would remain her captain until 1815. He sailed her to the Cape of Good Hope on 31 December 1810.

On 6 May 1811, a French squadron of frigates under the command of Commodore François Roquebert in Renommée approached Grand Port, not realizing that Isle de France (now Mauritius) had fallen to the British. The French squadron escaped an encounter with an equivalent British squadron under Captain Charles Marsh Schomberg of Astraea.

Between 7 and 9 May the frigates Galatea and Phoebe, under James Hillyar, and the brig-sloop Racehorse, sighted the French 40-gun frigates Renommée, Clorinde and Néréide off the Isle de France, whilst Astraeawas lying in Port Louis.

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Battle of Tamatave (Action of 20 May 1811)

On 14 May Astraea, Phoebe, Galatea, and Racehorse sailed from Port Louis for Tamatave, Madagascar and arrived on the 20th. The British squadron sighted the French squadron and made chase. A severe engagement, the Battle of Tamatave, ensued. During the battle, Renommée and Clorinde badly battered Galatea, with the result that she lost 16 men killed and 46 wounded - the largest number of casualties of any vessel in the squadron. In 1847 the Admiralty authorized the award of the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Off Tamatave 20 May 1811" to all surviving claimants from the action.

The British captured Renommée. Roquebert had sacrificed his flagship and ultimately his life to allow Clorinde and the badly damaged Néréide to escape. Five days later, Schomberg's squadron rediscovered Néréide at Tamatave. The British persuaded the town's commander to surrender the town, and Néréide, without any further fight.

The Royal Navy took Néréide in as Madagascar and Renommée as Java. The battle was the last action of the Mauritius campaign. Thereafter Galatea served primarily, and relatively uneventfully, as a convoy escort for the rest of war.

Galatea participated in the War of 1812.

On 27 September 1812, Galatea left St Helena, escorting three whalers: Admiral Berkley, Argo, and Fredrick. Frederick separated from the other three ships on 27 October, off Ascension. On 31 October the convoy encountered the USS President and the USS Congress at 33°10′N 20°28′W. They gave chase and Congress captured Argo, but Galatea escaped and arrived at Portsmouth.

Galatea was in company with Spitfire when they recaptured the brig Fermina on 18 April 1813. On 1 June 1813 she sailed for Lisbon

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Post-war
In October 1815 Galatea was laid up at Portsmouth. She underwent ₤36,187 in expenses for repairs and fitting for sea at Deptford from late 1819 to February 1826.

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Sir Charles Napier (1854).

In August 1825 Captain Sir Charles Sullivan recommissioned Galatea and then went on to command her on the coasts of Portugal and South America until 1829. From 8 January 1829 to 28 January 1832 her commander was Captain Charles Napier who, in a letter written shortly after his appointment, described her as "a ship that has the worst reputation in the Navy"

Between January and May 1829, Napier fitted her with an experimental system of his own design of paddles that the crew would work via winches on the main deck. The paddles proved useful for manoeuvering at speeds of up to 3 knots in windless conditions. On 12 September 1831 Galatea towed the line-of-battle ship Caledonia by means of paddles alone. Between December 1829 and February 1830 she underwent a refit that cost ₤12,595.

Twice during this period she cruised to the Caribbean, calling at Jamaica, Havana, Cuba and Tampico, Mexico. Between August and October 1830 she was sent to Lisbon to demand the restitution of British merchantmen which had been seized by the government of the Portuguese usurper Dom Miguel, and in May–July 1831 she was engaged in guarding British interests in the Azores when the forces of Dom Pedro were engaged in recovering those islands for the rightful queen, Donna Maria II. Napier quit Galatea in 1832 after she was paid off and succeeded George Sartorius as commander of Dom Pedro's navy in February 1833.

Fate
Between August and September 1836, Galatea was at Plymouth being fitted as a receiving ship and a coal depot for Jamaica. She was then moved to Jamaica in 1840. She was broken up there in 1849 following an Admiralty order dated 24 September 1849.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Galatea_(1810)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo-class_frigate
http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collec...7;browseBy=vessel;vesselFacetLetter=G;start=0
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
31 August 1986 – The Soviet passenger liner SS Admiral Nakhimov sinks in the Black Sea after colliding with the bulk carrier Pyotr Vasev, killing 423.


SS Admiral Nakhimov (Russian: Адмирал Нахимов), launched in March 1925 and originally named SS Berlin, was a passenger liner of the German Weimar Republic later converted to a hospital ship, then a Soviet passenger ship. On 31 August 1986, Admiral Nakhimov collided with the large bulk carrier Pyotr Vasev in the Tsemes Bay, near the port of Novorossiysk, Russian SFSR, and quickly sank. In total, 423 of the 1,234 people on board died.

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SS Admiral Nakhimov sailing under her original name, Berlin, in 1925.

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History
Career: 1925–1945

Berlin was built by Bremer Vulkan at Vegesack, Germany (Yard 614) and was completed in March 1925. She was launched on 25 March 1925, and commissioned on 17 September 1925. The ship was 572 feet (174 m) long, had four decks and a volume of 15,286 GRT. She originally operated the BremenSouthamptonCherbourgNew York City run for the North German Lloyd Line.

The ship's main route was between Bremerhaven, Southampton and New York, which she began on 26 September 1925 and operated until May 1939 when she was laid up in Bremerhaven for refitting. On 12 November 1928, Berlin rescued the passengers and crew of the liner Vestris, which sank off the coast of Virginia en route from New York City to Barbados. An estimated 113 people died in the sinking.

Berlin was chartered by the Nazis in 1939 as a Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude, KdF) workers' cruising ship and was used as a hospital ship later on in World War II.

World War II
Berlin was one of eight German ships commissioned as hospital ships (Lazarettschiffe) during World War II. Most, if not all, of these ships also served in other capacities during the war after being decommissioned as hospital ships, mainly as accommodation or transport ships for military personnel. All German hospital ships were given alphabetic identifiers, Berlin's being 'A'. On 16 July 1939, Berlin began her conversion to hospital ship and entered service with the Kriegsmarine as Lazarettschiff A, Sanitätsamt Ost on 23 August 1939. The ship had berthing for 400 patients, with a crew of 165. Initially serving in Norwegian waters, she was identified as "Field Post Number 07520". By January 1945, Berlin was assigned to Operation Hannibal, the transport of refugees and soldiers from the Eastern Baltic. On 31 January 1945, while forming up in convoy to head east, Berlin struck a mine off Swinemünde, and was put in tow for Kiel. She then hit another mine and was beached (23.53 hr, at position 54°02.6 N/14°19 E, in shallow waters). There was one fatality. All usable equipment was salvaged by 5 February 1945, and the ship was abandoned.

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SS Berlin at Langelinie, between 1940-42

Soviet service
She was refloated and salvaged by the Soviets in 1949 and renamed Admiral Nakhimov after Admiral Pavel Nakhimov, a 19th-century Russian naval commander who played a prominent role in the Crimean War. After her conversion, her size was increased to 17,053 GRT. She entered passenger service for the Black Sea Steamship Company in 1957. In 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the ship was used to transport soldiers to Cuba.

During the peak summer travel season, Admiral Nakhimov operated cruises on the Black Sea between Odessa and Batumi, a six-day round trip. She carried an average of 1,000 people per voyage. She was the flagship of the Black Sea passenger fleet for several years until more modern liners entered service.

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Sinking
At 10:00 p.m. Moscow Time on 31 August 1986, Admiral Nakhimov sailed from Novorossiysk en route to Sochi, its next stop. There were 888 passengers and 346 crew members aboard. Most of the passengers were Ukrainian, with others from Russia, Moldova, the Baltic republics and Central Asia. The captain of the ship was Vadim Markov.

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Admiral Nakhimov docked in Novorossiysk, August 31, 1986. She would sink later that day.

Just minutes into the voyage, the ship's pilot noticed that the large bulk carrier Pyotr Vasev was on a collision course with Admiral Nakhimov. Pyotr Vasev was a Japanese-built, 18,604-ton freighter recently acquired by the Soviet Union, and was carrying a cargo of oats and barley from Canada. The pilot radioed a warning to Pyotr Vasev, and the freighter responded, "Don't worry. We will pass clear of each other. We will take care of everything."

Despite the message, Captain Viktor Tkachenko of Pyotr Vasev did nothing to slow his ship or change course. Convinced that the freighter would pass without incident, Captain Markov of Admiral Nakhimov retired to his cabin, leaving his second mate Alexander Chudnovsky in charge. From 11:00 p.m., Chudnovsky radioed Pyotr Vasev several times, asking about her course and her further actions. Chudnovsky changed the ship's course 10 degrees portside. At 11:10 p.m., Chundovsky cried on VHF to the freighter, "Immediately reverse full astern!" When it was clear that the freighter was headed directly for the ship, Pyotr Vasyov's engines were thrown in reverse. Admiral Nakhimov turned hard to port, but it was too late.

At 11:12 p.m., Admiral Nakhimov was struck by Pyotr Vasev 8 miles (13 km) from the port at Novorossiysk and 2 miles (3.2 km) from shore, at 44°36′15″N 37°52′35″E[citation needed] While many passengers had gone to bed by this time, some were on deck listening and dancing to music. They could only watch helplessly as the freighter rammed into the starboard side of the ship at a speed of about 5 knots (9.3 km/h; 5.8 mph). Admiral Nakhimov continued forward with the freighter's bow in its side, ripping a 900 square feet (84 m2) hole in the hull between the engine and boiler rooms.

Admiral Nakhimov immediately took on a list on her starboard side, and her lights went out upon impact. After a few seconds, the emergency diesel generator powered on, but the lights went out again two minutes later, plunging the sinking ship into darkness. People below decks found themselves lost in the dark and rapidly canting hallways.

There was no time to launch the lifeboats. Hundreds of people dived into the oily water, clinging to lifejackets, barrels and pieces of debris.

Admiral Nakhimov sank in only seven minutes. Rescue ships began arriving just 10 minutes after the ship went down. Pyotr Vasev was not badly damaged, and assisted in the rescue effort. Sixty-four rescue ships and 20 helicopters rushed to the scene, and 836 people were pulled from the water. Some people were so slick with fuel oil that they could not keep hold of the hands of their rescuers. Sailors had to jump into the water to save people.

Admiral Nakhimov lacked proper ventilation, which was the reason all 90 windows in the cabins were open during the accident. The bulkheads that would have prevented the ship from sinking were removed during the conversion.
Passengers and crew had little time to escape, and 423 of the 1,234 on board perished. Sixty-four of those killed were crew members and 359 were passengers.

The event was not reported in the news for forty eight hours. The survivors were only allowed to send telegrams saying "Alive and well in Novorossiysk."
The wreck of Admiral Nakhimov lies on its starboard side in 150 feet (46 m) of water in Tsemes Bay off Novorossiysk.

Pyotr Vasev was renamed and sailed under other flags until 2012.

Investigation
The Soviet government formed a commission of inquiry to investigate the disaster. It determined that both Captain Markov of Admiral Nakhimov and Captain Tkachenko of Pyotr Vasev had violated navigational safety rules. Despite repeated orders to let Admiral Nakhimov pass, Tkachenko refused to slow his ship and only reported the accident 40 minutes after it occurred. Captain Markov was absent from the bridge. The inquiry took place in 1987 in Odessa. Both Captains Markov and Tkachenko were found guilty of criminal negligence and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Both were released in 1992.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Admiral_Nakhimov
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
Other Events on 31 August


1697 – Launch of French Prudent, a 60 gun Assure-class

Prudent 60 guns (launched 31 August 1697 at Toulon) Designed and built by François Coulomb. – burnt in the Battle of Vigo Bay in October 1702

1760 – Birth of French Admiral Aristide Aubert Dupetit-Thouars

Aristide Aubert Du Petit Thouars (31 August 1760 in Boumais – 2 August 1798 in Abukir; often written Dupetit-Thouars) was a French naval officer, and a hero of the Battle of Aboukir, where he died.

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Bild Tonnant at the Battle of the Nile, and death of Aristide Aubert Du Petit Thouars.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristide_Aubert_Dupetit-Thouars

1772 – Launch of HMS Defiance, a 64 gun Intrepid-class

HMS Defiance was a 64-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 31 August 1772 at Woolwich. Defiance was wrecked in 1780

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Scale: 1:48. Plan showing the inboard profile for 64-gun Third Rate, two-deckers of the Intrepid class (approved 1765). As this plan is undated, it is unknown as to which of the class the plan refers to. The class was built in two batches: those ordered between 1765 and 1769 - Intrepid (1770), Monmouth (1772), Defiance (1772), Nonsuch (1774) and Ruby (1776), and then the second group ordered between 1771 and 1779 - Vigilant (1774), Eagle (1774), America (1777), Anson (1781), Polyphemus (1782), Magnanime (1780), Sampson (1781), Repulse (1780), Diadem (1782), and Standard (1782).
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/81279.html#DFB0e4YFYRIskMLJ.99


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Defiance_(1772)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrepid-class_ship_of_the_line

1795 – War of the First Coalition: The British capture Trincomalee (present-day Sri Lanka) from the Dutch in order to keep it out of French hands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Ceylon_(1795)

1795 – Launch of French Revanche, a 34 to 42 gun Romaine-class frigate

The Revanche was a Romaine class frigate of the French Navy.
On 2 August 1806 Revanche, capitaine de frégate Lambert, and Sirène, capitaine de frégate Le Duc, captured the Greenland whalers Holderness, Swan, master, and Blenheim, Welburn, master, both of and for Hull. The French burnt their captures.
On 12 March 1811, Revanche and Prégel captured the British sloop HMS Challenger.

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Poursuivante, sister-ship of Revanche

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Plans of the French 24-pounder frigate Incorruptible

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_frigate_Revanche_(1795)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romaine-class_frigate

1810 - HMS Repulse (74), Cptn. John Halliday, and HMS Philomel (18), Gardener Henry Guion, repulsed 3 French frigates off Toulon.

1809 - HMS Foxhound Sloop (18) foundered in the Atlantic on her return from Halifax.

1811 – Death of Louis Antoine de Bougainville, French admiral and explorer (b. 1729)

Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville (12 November 1729 – 31 August 1811) was a French admiral and explorer. A contemporary of the British explorer James Cook, he took part in the Seven Years' War in North America and the American Revolutionary War against Britain. Bougainville later gained fame for his expeditions, including circumnavigation of the globe in a scientific expedition in 1763, the first recorded settlement on the Falkland Islands, and voyages into the Pacific Ocean. Bougainville Island of Papua New Guinea was named for him.

Louis_Antoine_de_Bougainville_-_Portrait_par_Jean-Pierre_Franquel.jpg

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

1814 – Death of Arthur Phillip, English admiral and politician, 1st Governor of New South Wales (b. 1738)

Admiral Arthur Phillip (11 October 1738 – 31 August 1814) was a Royal Navy officer and the first Governor of New South Wales who founded the British penal colony that later became the city of Sydney, Australia.

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After much experience at sea, Phillip sailed with the First Fleet as Governor-designate of the proposed British penal colony of New South Wales. In January 1788, he selected its location to be Port Jackson (encompassing Sydney Harbour).

Phillip was a far-sighted governor who soon saw that New South Wales would need a civil administration and a system for emancipating the convicts. But his plan to bring skilled tradesmen on the voyage had been rejected, and he faced immense problems of labour, discipline and supply. His friendly attitude towards Aboriginal people was also sorely tested when they killed his gamekeeper, and he was not able to assert a clear policy about them.

The arrival of the Second and Third Fleets placed new pressures on the scarce local resources, but by the time Phillip sailed home in December 1792, the colony was taking shape, with official land-grants and systematic farming and water-supply.

Phillip retired in 1805, but continued to correspond with his friends in New South Wales and to promote the colony's interests.

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

1817 – Death of Sir John Duckworth, 1st Baronet, English admiral and politician, 39th Commodore Governor of Newfoundland (b. 1747)

Sir John Thomas Duckworth, 1st Baronet, GCB (9 February 1748 – 31 August 1817) was an officer of the Royal Navy, serving during the Seven Years' War, the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, as the Governor of Newfoundland during the War of 1812, and a member of the British House of Commons during his semi-retirement. Duckworth, a vicar's son, achieved much in a naval career that began at the age of 11.

Admiral_Sir_John_Thomas_Duckworth_(1748-1817).jpg

Serving with most of the great names of the Royal Navy during the later 18th and early 19th centuries, he fought almost all of Britain's enemies on the seas at one time or another, including a Dardanelles operation that would be remembered a century later during the First World War. He was in command at the Battle of San Domingo, the last great fleet action of the Napoleonic Wars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_John_Duckworth,_1st_Baronet

1818 – Death of Robert Calder, Scottish admiral (b. 1745)

Admiral Sir Robert Calder, 1st Baronet, KCB (13 July [O.S. 2 July] 1745 – 31 August 1818) was a British naval officer who served in the Seven Years' War, the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.

Abbott,_Robert_Calder.jpg

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

1849 – brig Lady Mary Pelham (1816) wrecked

was a brig launched in 1816 that initially worked as a Falmouth packet. After her modification to a barque became part of the South Australia Company's fleet of 1836. She later served as a whaler and transport between Van Diemens Land and Portland, Victoria.

Lady Mary Pelham was wrecked on 31 August 1849 at Port Fairy, Victoria or Belfast as it was then officially named. She was anchored off the port awaiting a favourable wind, when a fierce gale broke her chains. Captain Wing deliberately beached her, with the result that no lives were lost, and most of her cargo was salvaged. Her back was broken and by mid-October she had completely broken up by wave action.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Mary_Pelham_(1816_ship)

1862 - The daily rum issued to US Navy sailors on board vessels is abolished. On July 14, by an Act of Congress, the spirit ration ceases Sept. 1. Secretary of Navy Gideon Welles issues a further order requiring captains of naval vessels to remove all distilled liquors from their ships except those that serve as medical stores. Ale, beer, wine, and other liquors not distilled are exempted from the provisions of the act of July 14.

1943 USS Harmon, the first U.S. Navy ship to be named after a black person, is commissioned.

USS Harmon (DE-678) was a Buckley-class destroyer escort of the United States Navy. USS Harmon was named after Mess Attendant Leonard Roy Harmon, who was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his actions on the USS San Francisco during the battle of Guadalcanal. USS Harmon was the first warship to be named after an African-American.

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Harmon was launched 25 July 1943 by Bethlehem Steel Co., Quincy, Massachusetts; sponsored by Mrs. Nau-nita Harmon Carroll, mother of Mess Attendant Harmon; and commissioned 31 August 1943, Lt. Comdr. Kendall E. Read in command.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Harmon_(DE-678)
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
Events on 1 September

1557 – Death of Jacques Cartier, French navigator and explorer (b. 1491)

Jacques Cartier (December 31, 1491 – September 1, 1557) was a Breton explorer who claimed what is now Canada for France. Jacques Cartier was the first European to describe and map the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, which he named "The Country of Canadas", after the Iroquois names for the two big settlements he saw at Stadacona (Quebec City) and at Hochelaga (Montreal Island)

800px-Jacques_Cartier_by_Hamel.jpg

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

1599 – Death of Cornelis de Houtman, Dutch explorer (b.1565)

Cornelis de Houtman (2 April 1565 – 1 September 1599), brother of Frederick de Houtman, was a Dutch explorer who discovered a new sea route from Europeto Indonesia and who thus begun the Dutch spice trade. At the time, the Portuguese Empire held a monopoly on the spice trade, and the voyage was a symbolic victory for the Dutch, even though the voyage itself was a disaster. Houtman was also a spy, having worked against the Portuguese by bringing back to the Netherlands privileged nautical information obtained during his stay in Portugal.

COLLECTIE_TROPENMUSEUM_Schoolplaat_getiteld_de_eerste_O.I._vaarders_op_de_reede_van_Bantam_TMn...jpg
Arrival of the De Houtman on the beach of Banten

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

1747 - HMS Hind (14) foundered in North America.

1748 - HMS Serpent bomb (12) wrecked

1752 – Launch of French Heros, a 74 gun ship

The Héros ("hero") was a 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy, built by Joseph Chapelle at Brest and launched in 1752
In 1755, the Héros, under captain de Kermabon, took part in the Canadian campaign in the Bullion de Montlouet squadron.
She was wrecked off le Croisic and scuttled at the Battle of Quiberon Bay, the 21 September 1759.

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The French Soleil Royal and Héros are in flames on the right, in the foreground HMS Resolution lies wrecked on her starboard side. In front of her is HMS Essex, with other members of the British fleet at anchor in the background. The captured French Formidable is attended by a British frigate on the left of the picture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Héros_(1752)
sister https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Palmier_(1752)

1762 - HMS Lyon (60), Cptn. Le Cross, captured French frigate Zephyre (26).

1777 – Launch of French 32 gun Sibylle, a Sibylle-class frigate

The Sibylle class was a class of five 32-gun sail frigates designed by Jacques-Noël Sané and built for the French Navy in the late 1770s. They carried 26 x 12-pounder guns on the upper deck and 6 x 8-pounder guns on the forecastle and quarter deck.

Debut_de_l_action_entre_la_Magicienne_et_la_Sibylle_janvier_1783.jpg
start of the action between HMS Magicienne and La Sibylle, 2 January 1783.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibylle-class_frigate

1784 – Launch of HMS Hussar, a 28 gun Enterprise frigate

HMS Hussar was a 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. Hussar was first commissioned in May 1790 under the command of Captain Eliab Harvey.

Career
On 2 May 1795 Rear Admiral George Murray sent Captain Alexander Cochrane in Thetis, together with Hussar, to intercept three French supply ships reported at Hampton Roads. At daybreak on 17 May the British came upon five ships 20 leagues West by South from Cape Henry. The French made a line of battle to receive the British frigates. An action commenced, with three of the French vessels eventually striking their colours. Thetis took possession of the largest, which turned out to be Prévoyante, pierced for 36 guns but only mounting 24. Hussar captured a second, Raison, pierced for 24 guns but only mounting 18. One of the vessels that had struck nonetheless sailed off. Two of the five had broken off the fight and sailed off earlier. (The three that escaped were Normand, Trajan, and Hernoux.) An hour after she had struck, Prévoyante's main and foremasts fell over the side. In the battle, Thetis had lost eight men killed and 9 wounded; Hussar had only two men wounded.

Capture_of_La_Prevoyante_and_La_Raison.jpg

Four of the French ships had escaped from Guadeloupe on 25 April. They had sailed to American ports to gather provisions and naval stores to bring back to France. Cochrane had intended to leave the prizes in charge of the cutter Prince Edward after repairing the damage to his vessel during the night. However, a breeze picked up and by morning the escaping French vessels were out of sight. The British sailed with their prizes to Halifax. The British took Prévoyante into the Royal Navy as HMS Prevoyante.

On 20 July, Hussar was in company with Thetis and HMS Esperance when they intercepted the American vessel Cincinnatus, of Wilmington, sailing from Ireland to Wilmington. They pressed many men on board, narrowly exempting the Irish revolutionary Wolfe Tone, who was going to Philadelphia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hussar_(1784)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise-class_frigate

1800 - During the Quasi-War with France, the schooner, USS Experiment, commanded by Lt. Charles Stewart, captures the French privateer Deux Amix off Barbuda, West Indies.

USS Experiment was a schooner in the United States Navy during the Quasi-War with France.
Experiment was built in 1799 at Baltimore, Maryland; and first put to sea late in November 1799, Lieutenant W. Maley in command.

Experiment joined the squadron commanded by Captain Silas Talbot on the Santo Domingo station, and for seven months, cruised against French privateers in the Caribbean, taking a number of valuable prizes. On 1 January 1800, while becalmed in the Bight of Leogane with a convoy of four merchantmen, Experiment was attacked by 11 armed pirate boats, manned by about four or five hundred buccaneers. In the seven hours of fighting that followed, the pirates boarded one of the merchantmen, killing her captain, and towed off two other ships of the convoy after their crews had abandoned them. But Experiment sank two of the attacking craft, and killed and wounded many of the pirates, suffering only one man wounded.

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A depiction of Experiments fight with Picaroons in the Action of 1 January 1800.

Arriving in the Delaware River early in July 1800, Experiment refitted, and returned to the West Indies. Again successful in her patrols against the French, she captured several armed vessels, one of which was carrying a high-ranking army officer. She also recaptured a number of American merchantmen, and in January 1801 rescued 65 Spaniards from the ship Eliza, wrecked on a reef of the island of Saona.

Experiment returned to Norfolk early in February 1801, and was laid up there until August, when she sailed to Baltimore. There, she was sold in October 1801.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Experiment_(1799)

1801 - french Cocarde-class 40 gun Bravoure wrecked 1 September 1801 near Livorno to avoid capture by the British Navy.
Cocarde Nationale class, (40-gun design by Pierre Duhamel, with 28 x 12-pounder and 12 x 6-pounder guns).

The Bravoure ("Bravery") was a 40-gun Cocarde class frigate of the French Navy.

She was launched in November 1795 in Saint Servan. She took part in the Expédition d'Irlande, and later served in Ganteaume's squadron. On 28 January 1801, she fought an indecisive battle against HMS Concorde. In June of the same year, under commander Dordelin, she ferried artillery pieces from Toulon to Elba with Succès; on the way back, she encountered HMS Concorde again, but this time accompanied by two other frigates. She beached herself to avoid capture and became a total loss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_frigate_Bravoure_(1795)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocarde-class_frigate

1812 - Boats of HMS Bacchante (38), Cptn. William Hoste, captured French national xebec Tisiphone (3), two gunboats and seven vessels from a convoy, at Port Lemo, Adriatic.

1814 - The sloop-of-war, USS Wasp, commanded by Johnston Blakely, sinks the British brig sloop, HMS Avon, south of Ireland.

The Sinking of HMS Avon was a single ship action fought during the War of 1812, and took place on 1 September 1814. In the battle, the ship-rigged sloop of war USS Wasp forced the Cruizer-class brig-sloop HMS Avon to surrender. The Americans could not take possession of the prize as other British brig-sloops appeared and prepared to engage. Avon sank shortly after the battle.

Prelude
The heavy sloop of war USS Wasp had spent seven weeks in Lorient in France, making repairs after an earlier hard-fought action against HMS Reindeer, and replacing casualties from the crews of American privateers in the port. Wasp sortied on 27 August, and almost immediately was involved in action. Early on 1 September, a convoy of ten merchant ships escorted by the ship of the line HMS Armada was encountered. Wasp made repeated attacks and succeeded in capturing one ship loaded with iron, brass and arms.

Later that day, as night was falling, Master Commandant Johnston Blakely, commanding Wasp, spotted four other unknown sail, and made for the nearest.

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Engraving of the battle by Abel Bowen

Battle
The unknown vessel was the Cruizer-class brig-sloop HMS Avon, mounting sixteen 32-pounder carronades and two 6-pounder long guns. Wasp carried twenty-two 32-pounder carronades, two 12-pounder chase guns and a 12-pounder boat carronade removed from Reindeer.

As Wasp approached Avon's quarter, the two vessels exchanged several hails, in which the Americans demanded that the British vessel heave to, and shots from the bow and stern chase guns. Blakely eventually drew up alongside Avon, deliberately selecting the leeward position to prevent Avon escaping downwind.

It was fully dark by this time, the wind was fresh and the sea was fairly rough. Nevertheless, the American gunners were very accurate. After half an hour, Avon had been partly dismasted, one third of her crew were casualties and her guns had been silenced, many of the broadside carronades being dismounted. By contrast, although the battle took place at such short range that one American sailor was struck by wadding from a British carronade, only four shot struck the hull of Wasp and only three American sailors were wounded.

Three quarters of an hour after the start of the battle, Avon surrendered. While the crew of Wasp were lowering a boat to take possession, another unknown vessel was seen approaching, followed by two more. Wasp made away downwind while the braces which had been shot away were replaced. The nearest pursuer was the British brig-sloop HMS Castilian. The brig got close enough to fire an inaccurate broadside over Wasp's quarter, but Avon had been making repeated distress signals, and Castilian broke off to help. Avon's crew was taken off, and the shattered brig sank soon afterwards.

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

1854 - Siege of Petropavlovsk

The Siege of Petropavlovsk was a military operation in the Pacific Theatre of the Crimean War. The Russian casualties are estimated at 115 soldiers and sailors killed and seriously wounded, whilst the British suffered 105 casualties and the French 104.

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

1911 – The armored cruiser Georgios Averof is commissioned into the Greek Navy. It now serves as a museum ship.

Georgios Averof is a modified Pisa-class armored cruiser built in Italy for the Royal Hellenic Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. The ship served as the Greek flagship during most of the first half of the century. Although popularly known as a battleship in Greek, she is in fact an armored cruiser (θωρακισμένο καταδρομικό), the only ship of this type still in existence.

1024px-Averof_Today2.jpg

The ship was initially ordered by the Italian Regia Marina, but budgetary constraints led Italy to offer it for sale to international customers. With the bequest of the wealthy benefactor George Averoff as down payment, Greece acquired the ship in 1909. Launched in 1910, Averof arrived in Greece in September 1911. The most modern warship in the Aegean at the time, she served as the flagship of admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis in the First Balkan War, and played a major role in the establishment of Greek predominance over the Ottoman Navy and the incorporation of many Aegean islands to Greece.

The ship continued to serve in World War I, the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, and the interwar period, receiving a modernization in France in 1925 to 1927. Following the German invasion of Greece in April 1941, Averof participated in the exodus of the Greek fleet to Egypt. Hopelessly obsolete and prone to mechanical breakdowns, she nevertheless spent the next three years as a convoy escort and guard ship in the Indian Oceanand at the Suez Canal. In October 1944, she carried the Greek government in exile back to liberated Athens, after the withdrawal of the German army.

In 1952, she was decommissioned, before being moved to Poros, where she was berthed from 1956 to 1983. From 1984 until today, she has been reinstated on active duty as museum ship in the Naval Tradition Park in Faliro. After maintenance in late 2017, she achieved seaworthiness state once again, allowing the ship to sail (towed) accompanied by Greek frigate Kountouriotis (F-462) (Φ/Γ Κουντουριώτης) to Thessaloniki Greece where she received more than 130,000 visitors over her 53-day stay.

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

1925 - Cmdr. John Rodgers and a crew of four in a PN-9 aircraft run out of fuel on the first San Francisco to Hawaii flight. Landing at sea, they rig a sail and set sail for Hawaii. On Sept. 10, they are rescued by the submarine USS R-4, 10 miles from Kaui, then Territory of Hawaii.

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

1932 - HMNZS Achilles launched

HMNZS Achilles was a Leander-class light cruiser which served with the Royal New Zealand Navy in the Second World War, the second of five in the class. Originally constructed by the Royal Navy, she was loaned to New Zealand in 1936 before formally joining the new Royal New Zealand Navy in 1941. She became famous for her part in the Battle of the River Plate, alongside HMS Ajax and HMS Exeter and notable for being the first Royal Navy cruiser to have fire control radar, with the installation of the New Zealand-made SS1 fire-control radar in June 1940.

HMNZS_Achilles_SLV_AllanGreen.jpg

After Second World War service in the Atlantic and Pacific, she was returned to the Royal Navy. She was sold to the Indian Navy in 1948 and recommissioned as INS Delhi. She was scrapped in 1978.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMNZS_Achilles_(70)

1939 Battle of the Danzig Bay

The Battle of Danzig Bay (Polish: bitwa w Zatoce Gdańskiej) took place on 1 September 1939, at the beginning of the invasion of Poland, when Polish Navy warships were attacked by German Luftwaffe aircraft in Gdańsk Bay (then Danzig Bay). It was the first naval-air battle of World War II.

Schleswig_Holstein_firing_Gdynia_13.09.1939.jpg
Schleswig Holstein feuert auf die Westerplatte(Foto vom 1. September 1939)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Danzig_Bay
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kampf_um_die_Westerplatte

1952 – The Old Man and the Sea, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Ernest Hemingway, is first published.

The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba.

Oldmansea.jpg

In 1953, The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to their awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954.

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

1985 – A joint American–French expedition locates the wreckage of the RMS Titanic.

The wreck of the RMS Titanic lies at a depth of about 12,500 feet (3.8 km; 2.37 mi), about 370 miles (600 km) south-southeast off the coast of Newfoundland. It lies in two main pieces about a third of a mile (600 m) apart. The bow is still largely recognizable with many preserved interiors, despite its deterioration and the damage it sustained hitting the sea floor. In contrast, the stern is completely ruined. A debris field around the wreck contains hundreds of thousands of items spilled from the ship as she sank. The bodies of the passengers and crew would have also been distributed across the sea bed, but have been consumed by other organisms.

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The bow of the wrecked RMS Titanic, photographed in June 2004

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wreck_of_the_RMS_Titanic
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
2 September 1773 – Launch of HMS Fox, a 28 gun Enterprise frigate


HMS Fox was a 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. Fox was first commissioned in October 1775 under the command of Captain Patrick Fotheringham. The Americans captured her in June 1777, only to have the British recapture her about a month later. The French then captured her a little less than a year after that, only to lose her to grounding in 1779, some six months later.

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Scale 1:48. Plan showing the body plan, sheer lines and longitudinal half breadth as proposed and approved for building Siren [Syren] (1773) and Fox (1773), and later for building Enterprize (1773), and Surprize (1774), all 28-gun, Sixth Rate Frigates. The plan includes a table of the mast and yard dimensions. Signed by John Williams [Surveyor of the Navy, 1765-1784].
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/83189.html#addzLCkwY1TMJfaf.99


Career
Capture

Hancock_Boston_Fox.jpg
USS Hancock and USS Bostonovertake HMS Fox.

On 7 June 1777 Fox was cruising off the Newfoundland banks when she sighted a strange vessel. Fox sailed towards the stranger until she sighted yet another strange vessel. Suspecting that these were both American frigates, Fox attempted to escape. However, Hancock, the first of the two, caught up with Fox and an engagement started that lasted for about a half-hour before Boston was able to join the combat. Fox again attempted to sail away, but Hancock caught up and opened fire. After Boston came up too and was able to shoot away Fox's mainmast and wheel, Fotheringham struck. Fox had lost four men killed and eight wounded.

Recapture
Main article: Capture of the USS Hancock
One month later, on 7–8 July, Hancock, Boston, and Fox were in company when they encountered HMS Rainbow, under the command of Captain Sir George Collier, and HMS Victor. Rainbow had left Halifax in the morning of 6 July and in the afternoon sighted three sail. She gave chase, during which HMS Flora came up independently and proceeded to engage one of the unknown vessels. The next day Rainbow and Flora exchanged quarry, with Rainbow pursuing the largest enemy vessel, accepting that one of the three American vessels would necessarily escape. The brig Victor was a poor sailer and essentially played no role in the engagement. Ultimately, Rainbow captured Hancock after a 39-hour chase,[2] but Boston escaped to the Sheepscot River on the Maine coast. (Captain McNeill, of Boston, was court-martialed in June 1779 for his failure to support Hancock and was dismissed from the U.S. Navy.)

Collier's after-action letter made no mention of any casualties on either side, even though the vessels had exchanged some fire. Hancock normally had a complement of 290 men, but only 229 on board when Rainbow captured her; the remainder were a prize crew on Fox. Fotheringham and 40 of his men were prisoners on Hancock. The other officers and some of the men were aboard Boston, and Captain John Manley of Hancock had put most into a fishing vessel and sent them to Newfoundland. Because of the number of American prisoners involved, Rainbow took Hancock into Halifax. When Collier arrived at Halifax he was delighted to see that Flora had captured Fox and that they had arrived there before him.

Combat_de_la_frégate_française_la_Junon_contre_la_frégate_anglaise_Fox_en_septembre_1778.jpg
Le 11 septembre 1778, au large d'Ouessant, la frégate de 32 canons la Junon commandée la frégate anglaise de 28 canons HMS Fox. Après quelques heures de combat le HMS Fox, démâté, cesse de tirer. La Junon le remorque jusqu'à Brest.
The capture of HMS Fox by the French frigate Junon


Junon_vs_HMS_Fox.jpg
Capture of HMS Fox by Junon

And capture again
The French frigate Junon captured Fox on 11 September 1778. Fox, now under the command of Captain the Honourable Thomas Windsor, was off Brestwhen she sighted a ship and sloop. Fox gave chase, but the weather made visibility poor and obscured Junon's approach. When Fox finally sighted Junon, Fox prepared to engage. The two vessels maneuvered against each other until finally they gave up and simply exchanged broadsides. Junon, unusually for a French vessel, fired at Fox's hull rather than her rigging, with the result that Junon's heavier guns were able to inflict heavy casualties on Fox, and shoot away her three masts. Windsor was forced to strike, having lost 14 men killed and 32 wounded.

Fate
Fox ran aground in March 1779 on Pointe St Jacques on the Rhuys Peninsula and could not be refloated.

large (1).jpg
Scale 1:48. Plan showing the inboard profile plan for the Enterprize Class 1770: Enterprize (1774), Siren (1773), Fox (1773), Surprize (1774), Acteon (1775), Medea (1778), Serpine (1777), Andromeda (1777), Aurora (1777), Sibyl (1779), Brilliant (1779), Pomona (1778), Crescent (1779), Nemesis (1780), Resource (1778), Mercury (1779), Cyclops (1779), Vestal (1779), Laurel (1779), Pegasus (1779), and with modifications, written in green ink, for Hussar (1784), Rose (1783), Dido (1784), Thisbe (1783), Alligator (1787), Circe (1783), Lapwing (1785), all 28-gun, Sixth Rate Frigates building at various Royal and private yards. The reverse of the plan shows a section through the deck for the after Bitts as they appear face on, from upper deck to keel.
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/83174.html#G2eqKWieuqm3bXxR.99



The Enterprise-class frigates were the final class of 28-gun sailing frigates of the sixth-rate to be produced for the Royal Navy. These twenty-seven vessels were designed in 1770 by John Williams. A first batch of five ships were ordered as part of the programme sparked by the Falklands Islands emergency. Two ships were built by contract in private shipyards, while three others were constructed in the Royal Dockyards using foreign oak.

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Painting of an fictional model of the HMS Enterprise 1774

A second batch of fifteen ships were ordered in 1776 to 1778 to meet the exigencies of the North American situation, and a final group of seven ships followed in 1782 to 1783 with only some minor modifications to include side gangways running flush with the quarter deck and forecastle, and with solid bulkheads along the quarterdeck.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Fox_(1773)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise-class_frigate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_frigate_Junon_(1778)
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
2 September 1777 - The frigate USS Raleigh, commanded by Thomas Thompson, captures the British brig, HMS Nancy, while en route to France to purchase military stores.


USS Raleigh, a 32 gun Hancock class frigate was one of thirteen ships that the Continental Congress authorized for the Continental Navy in 1775. Following her capture in 1778, she served in the Royal Navy as HBMS Raleigh.

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Scale 1:48. A plan showing the body plan, stern board with decoration detail, sheer lines with inboard detail and figurehead, longitudinal half breadth for Raleigh (1778), a captured American Frigate, as taken off at Plymouth Dockyard in July 1779, prior to fitting as a 32-gun, Fifth Rate Frigate. Reverse: j6611. Scale 1:96: Quater deck and forecastle, upperdeck, lower deck, fore & aft platforms.
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/82918.html#AjCEUFAy8Ih5Fb6b.99


As USS Raleigh
Raleigh, a 32-gun frigate, was authorized by Continental Congress on 13 December 1775. Built by Messrs. James Hackett, Hill, and Paul under supervision of Thomas Thompson, the keel was laid on March 21, 1776 at the shipyard of John Langdon on what is now Badger's Island in Kittery, Maine. She was launched on May 21, 1776.

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Model of the USS Raleigh in the U.S. Navy Museum

With a full-length figure of Sir Walter Raleigh as figurehead, Raleigh put to sea under Captain Thomas Thompson, who also supervised her construction, on August 12, 1777. Shortly thereafter, she joined Alfred and sailed for France. Three days out they captured a schooner carrying counterfeitMassachusetts money. Burning the schooner and her cargo, except for samples, the frigates continued their transatlantic passage. On September 2 they captured the British brig, Nancy, and from her they obtained the signals of the convoy which the brig had been escorting from the rear. Giving chase, the Americans closed with the convoy on September 4, 1777.

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Delftware ship bowl, painted in blue with a brig under sail, inscribed below 'Success to the Nancy 1756'. She wears a red ensign, jack and red pennant. The sea is touched in with green and there is a yellow line around the hull. There is chinoiserie decoration on the exterior of the bowl which shows two scenes painted in blue of Chinese buildings and a country scene with a man fishing.
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/4146.html#IfYjcZt2ZisC8mhX.99


Raleigh, making use of the captured signals, intercepted the convoy and engaged HMS Druid. In the ensuing battle she damaged Druid, but the approach of the remaining British escorts forced her to retire.

On December 29, 1777, Raleigh and Alfred, having taken on military stores, set sail from L'Orient, France, following a course that took them along the coast of Africa. After capturing a British vessel off Senegal, Raleigh crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the West Indies. On March 9, 1778, in the Lesser Antilles, Alfred, some distance from Raleigh, was captured by the British ships HMS Ariadne and HMS Ceres. Raleigh, unable to reach Alfred in time to assist her, continued north and returned to New England early in April 1778.

Accused of cowardice and dereliction of duty for not aiding Alfred, Captain Thompson was suspended soon after reaching port. On May 30, 1778 the Marine Committee appointed John Barry to replace him as captain.

Barry arrived in Boston to assume command on June 24 only to find his ship without crew or stores and the Navy Board not wholly in support of the manner of his appointment. His reputation and character, however neutralized the ill-will of the Marine Committee, drew enlistments, and helped to obtain the stores.

On September 25, Raleigh sailed for Portsmouth, New Hampshire with a brig and a sloop under convoy. Six hours later two strange sails were sighted. After identification of the ships as British the merchant vessels were ordered back to port. Raleigh drew off the enemy. Through that day and the next the enemy ships HMS Unicorn and HMS Experiment pursued Raleigh. In late afternoon on the 27th, the leading British ship closed with her. A 7-hour running battle followed, much of the time in close action. About midnight, the enemy hauled off and Barry prepared to conceal his ship among the islands of Penobscot Bay.

The enemy, however, again pressed the battle. As Raleigh opened fire, Barry ordered a course toward the land. Raleigh soon grounded on Wooden Ball Island, part of Matinicus. The British hauled off but continued the fight for a while, then anchored. Barry ordered the crew ashore to continue the fight and to burn Raleigh.

A large party, including Barry, made it to shore. One boat was ordered back to Raleigh to take off the remainder of the crew, and destroy her, however the British again fired on the ship, striking the Continental colors. The battle was over. All three ships had been damaged, Unicorn particularly so. Of the Americans ashore, a few were captured on the island, but the remainder, including Barry, made it back to Boston, Massachusetts, arriving on October 7.

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As HBMS Raleigh
The British refloated Raleigh at high tide on the 28th, and after repairs, commissioned her into the Royal Navy as HBMS Raleigh. They admired her design, and applied it in their new ships. She continued to fight during the War for Independence as a British vessel and took part in the capture of Charleston, SC. In May 1780, she was decommissioned at Portsmouth, England, on June 10, 1781 and was sold in July 1783.

Legacy
Raleigh is depicted on the Seal of New Hampshire. Raleigh was the first U.S. Navy warship commissioned at the shipyard of Portsmouth merchant and statesman John Langdon on what is today Badger's Island. Only about two tenths of a mile (322 m) from the wharves of Portsmouth, the island in the Piscataqua River was taken for granted as the seaport's shipbuilding annex, just as the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is today.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Raleigh_(1776)
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
2 September 1787 – Launch of French ship Duquesne, a 74 gun Temeraire class


Duquesne was a Téméraire class 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy. She was captured by the British in 1803, and broken up in 1805.

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Gaspar Vence on Duquesne reaches Toulon with a convoy of food and drives three British ships away, 2 April 1794

French service
In 1793, under Captain Vence, she escorted an important convoy to the Levant, and then escaped a watching Anglo-Spanish squadron.

In 1795, under Captain Allemand, she took part in the Battle of Cape Noli, and in the Battle of Hyères Islands.

From mid-1801, she was armed en flûte and used as a troop ship. On 22 November 1802, she departed Toulon, bound to Saint-Domingue under Commodore Quérangal, along with Guerrière and Duguay-Trouin.

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Scale: 1:48. Plan showing the body plan with stern board outline, sheer lines with inboard detail, and longitudinal half-breadth for 'Duquesne' (1803), a captured French Third Rate, as taken off at Chatham Dockyard prior to being broken up in July 1805. Signed by Robert Seppings [Master Shipwright, Chatham Dockyard, 1803-1813; Surveyor of the Navy, 1813-1832].
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/80683.html#vARZeuvMoVJkfuH8.99


The flotilla found itself caught in the Blockade of Saint-Domingue by the British ships Elephant, Bellerophon, Theseus, Vanguard, and Tartar. Guerrièreand Duguay-Trouin managed to escape, and Duquesne, separated from the squadron, attempted to flee in the night. She was discovered by Tartar and Vanguard the next afternoon, and after a short artillery duel, Duquesne, outnumbered by her opponents, struck her colours.

Duquesne was incorporated in the Royal Navy as HMS Duquesne. In 1804, she ran aground on the Morant Cays. She was refloated in 1805, and sailed to England to be broken up.


The Téméraire-class ships of the line were class of a hundred and twenty 74-gun ships of the line ordered between 1782 and 1813 for the French navy or its attached navies in dependent (French-occupied) territories. Although a few of these were cancelled, the type was and remains the most numerous class of capital ship ever built.

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Scale model of Achille, sister ship of French ship Duquesne (1782), on display at the Musée de la Marine in Paris.

The class was designed by Jacques-Noël Sané in 1782 as a development of the Annibal and her near-sister Northumberland, both of which had been designed by him and built at Brest during the 1777-1780 period. Some dozen ships were ordered and built to this new design from 1782 to 1785, and then the same design was adopted as a standard for all subsequent 74s during the next three decades as part of the fleet expansion programme instituted by Jean-Charles de Borda in 1786.

The design was appreciated in Britain, which eagerly commissioned captured ships and even copied the design with the Pompée and America class.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Duquesne_(1787)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Téméraire-class_ship_of_the_line
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
2 September 1807 – Launch of French ship Hautpoult, a 74 gun Temeraire class


French service
On 16 February 1809 Captain Amand Leduc, Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur, commanded Hautpoult on her maiden voyage, a mission to Martiniquewith reinforcements and supplies, as flagship of a squadron of three 74-gun ships. (The others vessels were Courageux and Polonais), and two frigates, under the overall command of Commodore Amable Troude.) Learning of the capture of Martinique, Troude's squadron turned back but were pursued by the British.

Recruit_&_D'Haupoult.jpg
Intrepid behaviour of Captain Charles Napier, in HM 18-gun Brig Recruit for which he was appointed to the Hautpoult. The 74 now pouring a broadside into her. April 15, 1809. Hautpoult can be seen in the background.

Hautpoult was captured by her now-British sister ship, HMS Pompée, on 17 April 1809, after a chase over three nights and two days by Pompée, Recruit, and Neptune. Recruit hung on the tail of the French squadron and managed to cripple Hautpoult's mizzen mast, so Pompée could bring her to action and capture her after exchanging fire for 75 minutes. Between 80 and 90 men from Hautpoult were killed or wounded, including several officers.

British service
Taken as a prize, she was renamed Abercrombie, and was briefly given to the commander of Recruit, Charles Napier, who was made post captain for his part in the action, as acting captain. Captain Sir William Fahie of Pompée, who had fallen ill after capturing her, then replaced Napier.

large.jpg
Scale: 1:48. Plan showing the body plan, stern board outline with some detail, sheeer lines with inboard detail, and longitudinal half-breadth for Abercrombie (1809), a captured French Third Rate, as taken off at Portsmouth after having defects rectified. The plan illustrates the ship after her alterations to a British 74-gun Third Rate, two-decker. Signed by Nicholas Diddams [Master Shipwright, Portsmouth Dockyard, 1803-1823].
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/80510.html#eQ82XmBZZAFc4ORj.99


Abercrombie also participated in the capture of Guadeloupe in January and February 1810. In 1847 the Admiralty awarded the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Guadaloupe" to all surviving participants of the campaign.

While she was at anchor in Basque Roads on 26 October 1811, lightning damaged her fore topmast and foremast.

On 17 July 1813 Abercrombie, under the command of Captain William Charles Fahie, shared the proceeds of the capture of Union with Dublin.

Abercrombie was sold in 1817.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Hautpoult_(1807)
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
2 September 1866 - Brazilian ironclad Rio de Janeiro hit two mines on 2 September and rapidly sank, taking 53 of her crew with her.

The Brazilian ironclad Rio de Janeiro was an armored gunboat (Portuguese: Canhoneira Couraçada Nr. 3) built for the Brazilian Navy during the Paraguayan War in the mid-1860s. Like the other two gunboats she was built in Brazil and was designed as a casemate ironclad. Commissioned in April 1866, the ship did not enter combat until September, when she bombarded Paraguayan fortifications at Curuzu. Rio de Janeiro hit two mines on 2 September and rapidly sank, taking 53 of her crew with her.

Naval_Warfare_in_Paraguay._Destruction_of_a_Brazilian_Gunboat_by_a_torpedo.jpg
Naval Warfare in Paraguay. Destruction of a Brazilian Gunboat by a torpedo.

Design and description
Rio de Janeiro was designed to meet the need of the Brazilian Navy for a small, simple, shallow-draft armored gunboat capable of withstanding heavy fire. A casemate ironclad design was chosen for ease of construction and a bronze ram, 1.8 meters (5 ft 11 in) long, was fitted. The hull was sheathed with Muntz metal to reduce biofouling. For sea passages the ship's freeboard could be increased to 1.7 meters (5 ft 7 in) by use of removable bulwarks1.1 meters (3 ft 7 in) high. On riverine operations, the bulkwarks and the ship's masts, were usually removed.

The ship measured 56.69 meters (186 ft 0 in) long overall, with a beam of 9.19 meters (30 ft 2 in) and had a mean draft of 2.62 meters (8 ft 7 in). Rio de Janeiro normally displaced 871 metric tons (857 long tons) and 1,001 metric tons (985 long tons) at deep load. Her crew numbered 148 officers and men.[1]

Propulsion
Rio de Janeiro had a single John Penn & Sons 2-cylinder steam engine driving a single 2-bladed propeller. Her engine was powered by two tubular boilers. The engine produced a total of 420 indicated horsepower (310 kW) which gave the ship a maximum speed of 9 knots (17 km/h; 10 mph). The ship's funnel was mounted directly in front of her casemate. Rio de Janeiro carried enough coal for six days' steaming.

Armament
Rio de Janeiro mounted two 70-pounder Whitworth rifled muzzle loaders and two 68-pounder smoothbore guns in her casemate. To minimize the possibility of shells or splinters entering the casemate through the gunports they were as small as possible, allowing only a 24°-arc of fire for each gun. The rectangular, 9.8-meter (32 ft 2 in) casemate had two gun ports on each side as well as the front and rear.

The 70-pounder gun weighed 8,582 pounds (3,892.7 kg) and fired a 5.5-inch (140 mm) shell that weighed 81 pounds (36.7 kg). The gun had a maximum range of 5,540 meters (6,060 yd). The 7.9-inch (201 mm) solid shot of the 68-pounder gun weighed approximately 68 pounds (30.8 kg) while the gun itself weighed 10,640 pounds (4,826.2 kg). The gun had a range of 3,200 yards (2,900 m) at an elevation of 12°. All of the guns could fire both solid shot and explosive shells.[3][5]

Armor
The hull of Rio de Janeiro was made from three layers of wood, each 203 millimeters (8.0 in) thick.The ship had a complete wrought iron waterline belt, 1.52 meters (5.0 ft) high. It had a maximum thickness of 102 millimeters (4 in) covering the machinery and magazines, 51 millimeters (2 in) elsewhere. The curved deck, as well as the roof of the casemate, was armored with 12.7 millimeters (0.5 in) of wrought iron. The casemate was protected by 102 millimeters of armor on all four sides, backed by 609 millimeters (24.0 in) of wood capped with a 102 mm layer of peroba hardwood

Service

Buque_Rio_de_Janeiro.jpg
Battleship Rio de Janeiro sunk by a torpedo in front of Curuzú (painted by Adolfo Methfessel).

Rio de Janeiro was laid down at the Arsenal de Marinha da Côrte in Rio de Janeiro on 28 June 1865, during the Paraguayan War, which saw Argentina and Brazil allied against Paraguay. She was launched on 18 February 1866 and completed on 1 March 1866. Commissioned in April she reached the combat zone on 4 May. The ship reached Corrientes, with the ironclad Lima Barros, in July 1866. On 1 September Rio de Janeiro bombarded the Paraguayan fortifications at Curuzú in company with the other Brazilian ironclads. A 68-pounder shell entered one of her gunports during the bombardment, killing four men and wounding five. The next day, after her damage was repaired, the ship struck two floating mines ('torpedoes') in the Apa River while trying to rendezvous with the other Brazilian ironclads bombarding Curupaity. Rio de Janeiro sank instantly with the loss of 53 of her crew. She remains there, entombed under some 15 meters (49 ft 3 in) of sand.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_ironclad_Rio_de_Janeiro
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
2 September 1945 - The Japanese Instrument of Surrender

was the written agreement that formalized the surrender of the Empire of Japan, marking the end of World War II. It was signed by representatives from the Empire of Japan, the United States of America, the Republic of China, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of Canada, the Provisional Government of the French Republic, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the Dominion of New Zealand. The signing took place on the deck of USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.

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Representatives of the Empire of Japan stand aboard USS Missouri prior to signing of the Instrument of Surrender.

The date is sometimes known as Victory over Japan Day, although that designation more frequently refers to the date of Emperor Hirohito's Gyokuon-hōsō (Imperial Rescript of Surrender), the radio broadcast announcement of the acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration at noon Japan Standard Time on August 15.

ON board of USS Missouri
After the Japanese agreed to surrender, Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser of the Royal Navy, the Commander of the British Pacific Fleet, boarded Missouri on 16 August and conferred the honour of Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire upon Admiral Halsey. Missouri transferred a landing party of 200 officers and men to the battleship Iowa for temporary duty with the initial occupation force for Tokyo on 21 August. Missouri herself entered Tokyo Bay early on 29 August to prepare for the signing by Japan of the official instrument of surrender.

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Missouri (left) transfers personnel to Iowa in advance of the surrender ceremony planned for 2 September.

High-ranking military officials of all the Allied Powers were received on board on 2 September, including Chinese General Hsu Yung-Ch'ang, British Admiral-of-the-Fleet Sir Bruce Fraser, Soviet Lieutenant-General Kuzma Nikolaevich Derevyanko, Australian General Sir Thomas Blamey, Canadian Colonel Lawrence Moore Cosgrave, French Général d'Armée Philippe Leclerc de Hautecloque, Dutch Vice Admiral Conrad Emil Lambert Helfrich, and New Zealand Air Vice Marshal Leonard M. Isitt.

Douglas_MacArthur_signs_formal_surrender.jpg
Allied sailors and officers watch General of the Army Douglas MacArthur sign documents during the surrender ceremony aboard Missouri on 2 September 1945. The unconditional surrender of the Japanese to the Allies officially ended the Second World War.

Shigemitsu-signs-surrender.jpg
Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signing the Instrument of Surrender on behalf of the Japanese Government, formally ending World War II

Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz boarded shortly after 0800, and General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allies, came on board at 0843. The Japanese representatives, headed by Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, arrived at 0856. At 0902, General MacArthur stepped before a battery of microphones and opened the 23-minute surrender ceremony to the waiting world by stating, "It is my earnest hope—indeed the hope of all mankind—that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past, a world founded upon faith and understanding, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance, and justice."

During the surrender ceremony, the deck of Missouri was decorated with a 31-star American flag that had been taken ashore by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853 after his squadron of "Black Ships" sailed into Tokyo Bay to force the opening of Japan's ports to foreign trade. This flag was actually displayed with the reverse side showing, i.e., stars in the upper right corner: the historic flag was so fragile that the conservator at the Naval Academy Museum had sewn a protective linen backing to one side to help secure the fabric from deteriorating, leaving its "wrong side" visible. The flag was displayed in a wood-framed case secured to the bulkhead overlooking the surrender ceremony. Another U.S. flag was raised and flown during the occasion, a flag that some sources have indicated was in fact that flag which had flown over the U.S. Capitol on 7 December 1941. This is not true; it was a flag taken from the ship's stock, according to Missouri's commanding officer, Captain Stuart "Sunshine" Murray, and it was "...just a plain ordinary GI-issue flag".

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copies of the Instrument of Surrender

By 09:30 the Japanese emissaries had departed. In the afternoon of 5 September, Admiral Halsey transferred his flag to the battleship South Dakota, and early the next day Missouri departed Tokyo Bay. As part of the ongoing Operation Magic Carpet she received homeward bound passengers at Guam, then sailed unescorted for Hawaii. She arrived at Pearl Harbor on 20 September and flew Admiral Nimitz's flag on the afternoon of 28 September for a reception.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Missouri_(BB-63)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Instrument_of_Surrender
 
Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
Other Events on 2 September


31 BC – Final War of the Roman Republic: Battle of Actium: Off the western coast of Greece, forces of Octavian defeat troops under Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

The Battle of Actium was the decisive confrontation of the Final War of the Roman Republic, a naval engagement between Octavian and the combined forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra on 2 September 31 BC, on the Ionian Sea near the promontory of Actium, in the Roman province of Epirus Vetus in Greece. Octavian's fleet was commanded by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, while Antony's fleet was supported by the power of Queen Cleopatra of Ptolemaic Egypt.

Castro_Battle_of_Actium.jpg
A baroque painting of the battle of Actium by Laureys a Castro, 1672. National Maritime Museum, UK.

Octavian's victory enabled him to consolidate his power over Rome and its dominions. He adopted the title of Princeps ("first citizen") and some years later was awarded the title of Augustus ("revered") by the Roman Senate. This became the name by which he was known in later times. As Augustus, he retained the trappings of a restored Republican leader, but historians generally view this consolidation of power and the adoption of these honorifics as the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire.

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

1750 – Launch of French 64 gun ship Orignal but broke apart on launching.
Her sistership Saint Laurent was launched successfully on 13 June 1748 at Quebec, designed and built by René-Nicolas Levasseur – taken to pieces in 1753-54

1758 – Launch of French Robuste 74 at Lorient, designed by Antoine Groignard) - condemned in 1783 and taken to pieces in 1784.

1759 - The naval Battle of Pondicherry. Indecisive battle between a British squadron under Vice-Admiral George Pocock and French squadron under Comte d'Aché.

1762 - HMS Aeolus (1758 - 32 -Niger-class), Cptn. William Lord Hotham, drove Spanish West-Indiaman St. Joseph ashore in Aviles Bay near Cape Pinas and set her on fire.

HMS Aeolus (1758) was a 32-gun fifth-rate frigate launched in 1758. She was placed on harbour service in 1796, renamed HMS Guernsey in 1800, and was broken up in 1801.

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Scale: 1:48. Plan showing the body plan, sheer lines, and longitudinal half-breadth proposed (and approved) for Alarm (1758), Aeolus (1758), Montreal (1761), Niger (1759), Quebec (1760), Stag (1758), and Winchelsea (1764), all 32-gun Fifth Rate Frigates. The plan includes alterations, dated 1769, to the main channels and deadeyes.
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/82884.html#GxwCUA60D6rfwT28.99


The Niger-class frigates were 32-gun sailing frigates of the fifth rate produced for the Royal Navy. They were designed in 1757 by Sir Thomas Slade, and were an improvement on his 1756 design for the 32-gun Southampton-class frigates.

HMS_Pearl_and_Santa_Monica_Azores,_1779.jpg
Sistership HMS Pearl and Santa Monica, Azores, September 1779. La Santa Monica had been built at Cartagena during 1777.

Slade's design was approved in September 1757, on which date four ships were approved to be built to these plans - three by contract and a fourth in a royal dockyard. Seven more ships were ordered to the same design between 1759 and 1762 - three more to be built by contract and four in royal dockyards. Stag and Quebec were both reduced to 28-gun sixth rates in 1778, but were then restored to 32-gun fifth rates in 1779.

Ships in class
  • Stag
    • Launched: 4 September 1758
    • Fate: Taken to pieces at Deptford Dockyard in July 1783.
  • Alarm
    • Launched: 19 September 1758
    • Fate: Taken to pieces at Portsmouth Dockyard in September 1812.
  • Aeolus
    • Launched: 29 November 1758
    • Fate: Renamed Guernsey on 7 May 1800. Taken to pieces at Sheerness Dockyard in April 1801.
  • Niger
    • Launched: 25 September 1759
    • Fate: Renamed Negro 1813. Sold at Portsmouth Dockyard on 29 September 1814.
  • Montreal
    • Launched: 15 September 1761
    • Fate: Captured by French squadron off Gibraltar on 1 May 1779.
  • Quebec
    • Launched: 14 July 1760
    • Fate: Blew up and sunk in action against French frigate La Surveillante off Ushant on 6 October 1779.
  • Pearl
    • Launched: 27 March 1762
    • Fate: Renamed Prothee 19 March 1825. Sold at Portsmouth Dockyard on 14 January 1832.
  • Emerald
    • Launched: 8 June 1762
    • Fate: Taken to pieces at Deptford Dockyard in October 1793.
  • Winchelsea
    • Launched: 31 May 1764
    • Fate: Sold at Sheerness Dockyard on 3 November 1813.
  • Glory
    • Launched: 24 October 1763
    • Fate: Taken to pieces at Woolwich Dockyard in January 1786.
  • Aurora
    • Launched: 13 January 1766
    • Fate: Lost with all hands in the Indian Ocean (disappeared, fate unknown) in January 1770.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger-class_frigate


1782 - HMS Duc de Chartres (1780 - 16), Cptn. J. C. Purvis, took French frigate Aigle (22)

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Medium includes wash, technique could be described as sepia wash. The drawing shows the Duc de Chartres, a French East India ship. She was taken by the Bellona, commanded by the Hon. Samuel Barrington (not 'Cn' as inscibed) very soon after he had been promoted to the command of the frigate Bellona. Artist unknown, except for initials W. B. (bottom right corner).
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/112632.html#sgAyVj0uvbEWbgO7.99

The French brig Duc de Chartres was built between 1779 and 1780 at Le Havre as a 24-gun privateer. As a privateer she captured one British warship before in 1781 the Royal Navy captured her.

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The Capture of the Duc de Chartres, 18 April 1747 (BHC0370)
Read more at http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/11862.html#WVhEGftjv2PyMFGA.99


The Royal Navy took her into service as HMS Duc de Chartres. She then captured several American privateers and armed merchant vessels, and one French naval corvette in a noteworthy single-ship action. The Navy sold Duc de Chartres in 1784.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_brig_Duc_de_Chartres_(1780_Le_Havre)

1796 – Launch of French Indienne, a 42 gun Seine-class frigate

Builder: Le Havre, Begun: December 1794, Launched: 2 September 1796, Completed: October 1797, Fate: Burnt to avoid capture by the Royal Navy in April 1809.

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Sistership Revolutionaire 1799, portside view, hull only

The Seine class was a class of 42-gun frigates of the French Navy, designed in 1793 by Pierre-Alexandre Forfait. The vessels were originally designed to carry a main armament of 24-pounder guns, but in the event all six were completed at Le Havre with 18-pounders. The designs of the last pair were modified by the constructor (Charles-Henri Le Tellier) and were somewhat longer than the first four. A further vessel, the Furieuse, was originally ordered at Cherbourg in February 1794 to Forfait's Romaine class design, but was actually completed to the design of the Seine class.
  • Seine
Launched: 19 December 1793
Fate: Captured by the Royal Navy on 30 June 1798, becoming HMS Seine.
  • Révolutionnaire
Launched: 28 May 1794
Fate: Captured by the Royal Navy on 21 October 1794, becoming HMS Revolutionnaire.
  • Spartiate
Launched: late November 1794
Fate: Renamed La Pensée May 1795. Converted to a breakwater in November 1804, deleted 1832.
  • Indienne
Launched: 2 September 1796
Fate: Burnt to avoid capture by the Royal Navy in April 1809.
  • Valeureuse
Launched: 29 July 1798
Fate: Sold to United States in September 1806.
  • Infatigable
Launched: 6 April 1799
Fate: Captured by the Royal Navy on 24 September 1806, becoming HMS Immortalité.
  • Furieuse
Launched: 22 September 1796
Fate: Captured by the Royal Navy on 6 July 1809, becoming HMS Furieuse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seine-class_frigate

1801 - Start of long engagement in which HMS Victor (1798 - 18), George Ralph Collier, destroyed a French corvette Fleche (20), Lt. Bonamy, in the inner harbour at Mahe, Seychelles.

HMS Victor (1798) was an 18-gun sloop launched in 1798 and paid off to be sold in 1808. Because Victor served in the navy's Egyptian campaign (8 March to 2 September 1801), her officers and crew qualified for the clasp "Egypt" to the Naval General Service Medal, which the Admiralty issued in 1847 to all surviving claimants.

1801 - HMS Minerve (1794 - 38), Cptn. George Cockburn, HMS Pomone (1787 - 44), Cptn. Gower, and HMS Phoenix (1783 - 36), Cptn. L. W. Halsted, chased Le Succes (32) which ran aground off Vado and struck and La Bravoure which grounded off Livorno and was wrecked.

Capture_of_Minerve_off_Toulon.jpg
Capture of Minerve off Toulon

In September 1801 Minerve was in the Mediterranean protecting Elba. Early on 2 September Minerve alerted Phoenix, which was anchored off Piombino, to the presence of two French frigates nearby. Phoenix and Minerve set out in pursuit and Pomone soon came up and joined them. Pomone re-captured Success, a former British 32-gun fifth-rate frigate now under the command of Monsieur Britel. (The French had captured Success in February, off Toulon.) Minerve also ran onshore the 46-gun French frigate Bravoure, which had a crew of 283 men under the command of Monsieur Dordelin. Bravoure lost her masts and was totally wrecked; she struck without a shot being fired. Minerve took off a number of prisoners, including Dordelin and his officers, in her boats. With enemy fire from the shore and with night coming on, Captain Cockburn of Minerve decided to halt the evacuation of prisoners; he therefore was unwilling to set Bravoure on fire because some of her crew remained on board.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_frigate_Minerve_(1794)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Phoenix_(1783)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_frigate_Pomone_(1787)

1807 – The Royal Navy bombards Copenhagen with fire bombs and phosphorus rockets to prevent Denmark from surrendering its fleet to Napoleon.

Engelske_flåde_ud_for_København_august_1807.jpg
Contemporary Danish painting of the battle seen from land.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Copenhagen_(1807)

1809 - Danish gunboat flotilla from Fladstrand, Northern Jutland, under Lt. Nicolai H. Tuxen, takes brig HMS Minx (14), Lt. George Le Blanc, that was stationed as a light ship off Skagen Reef.

1811 - Danish brigs Lolland, Samsø and Alsen, under Cdr. Hans P. Holm, attacks 2 British brigs in the River Ems, Norway and HMS Manly (14), Lt. Martin White, is taken.

1812 - Boats of HMS Menelaus (38), Cptn. Peter Parker, brought out a French letter of marque, St. Esprit, from the River Mignore near Civita Vecchia.

1818 – Launch of French Constance, a 40 gun Pallas-class frigate

The Pallas class constituted the standard design of 40-gun frigates of the French Navy during the Napoleonic Empire period. Jacques-Noël Sané designed them in 1805, as a development of his seven-ship Hortense class of 1802, and over the next eight years the Napoléonic government ordered in total 62 frigates to be built to this new design. Of these some 54 were completed, although ten of them were begun for the French Navy in shipyards within the French-occupied Netherlands or Italy, which were then under French occupation; these latter ships were completed for the Netherlands or Austrian navies after 1813.

Clorinde-cropped.jpg
Clorinde

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallas-class_frigate_(1808)

1864 - During the Civil War, the 8-gun paddle-wheeler, USS Naiad (launched 1863), engages a Confederate battery at Rowes Landing, La., and silences it.

USS Naiad, was a sternwheel paddle steamer of the Union Navy in the American Civil War. In Greek mythology, naiads are nymphs who lived in and gave life to lakes, rivers, springs, and fountains. Built as Princess in 1863 at Freedom, Pennsylvania, the ship was purchased by the Navy from F. Martin at Cincinnati, Ohio, on 3 March 1864; and commissioned on 3 April 1864, Acting Master Harry T. Keene in command.

Uss_Naiad_1863.jpg
The USS Naiad (Tinclad #53) on the Western Rivers during the American Civil War, reproduced as a stereograph. Note mine-clearing "rake" projecting from her bow.

Acquired to bolster Union strength along the Mississippi River and its tributaries against Confederate cavalry and guerrilla raids, Naiad served in the shallow waters through the end of the American Civil War, from time to time fighting Southern shore batteries. On 15 and 16 June 1864, with USS General Bragg and USS Winnebago, she dueled Southern artillery at Ratliff's Landing, Louisiana, silencing the riverbank guns on both occasions. Again on 2 September, she snuffed out the fire of a Confederate battery near Rowe's Landing, Louisiana. The constant patrol of the rivers by Naiad and her sister "tinclads" helped the Union to maintain open communications and supply lines in the West while preventing the South from mustering her resources to oppose Generals Sherman and Grant.

Naiad decommissioned at Cairo, Illinois, on 30 June 1865 and was sold at auction at Mound City, Illinois to B. F. Beansly, on 17 August 1865. Renamed Princess in post-war civilian service, she struck a snag and sank at Napoleon, Missouri, on 1 June 1868.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Naiad_(1863)

1940 - As the Battle of Britain intensifies, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull agrees to the transfer 50 warships to the Royal Navy.
In exchange, the U.S. is granted land in various British possessions for the establishment of naval or air bases, on ninety-nine-year rent-free leases.


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