Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
Other Events on 26 October
1740 – Launch of French Sérieux 64 at Toulon, designed and begun by René, completed by Pierre-Blaise Coulomb – captured by the British in the First Battle of Cape Finisterre in May 1747
1768 – Launch of French Impérieuse at Bordeaux, renamed Amphitrite after her launch.
Dédaigneuse class (32-gun design by Leon-Michel Guignace, with 26 x 12-pounder and 6 x 6-pounder guns).
1781 - HMS Hannibal (1779 - 50) took Neckar.
HMS Hannibal was a 50-gun fourth rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built by Adams of Bucklers Hard and launched on 26 December 1779. She was subsequently captured by the French ship Héros off Sumatra, on 21 January 1782.
She was called Petit Annibal to distinguish her from the eponymous 74-gun Annibal, which was in the same fleet. English-language histories often refer to her as Hannibal for this reason. Admiral the Bailli de Suffren took her into his fleet, and she saw service in his five battles with British Admiral Sir Edward Hughes in 1782 and 1783.
She was decommissioned in 1787 and used as a hulk from 1792.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hannibal_(1779)
1788 - HMS Bounty, Cptn. William Bligh, arrived at Matavai Bay at Tahiti.
1794 – Spanish San Isidoro 64 (ex-Neapolitan, transferred 1776) - Wrecked
1803 - Boats of HMS Osprey (18), George Younghusband, captured French schooner La Ressource (4) off Trinidad
1807 - HMS Subtle (8), Lt. William Dowers, wrecked off Bermuda
The French schooner Impériale was a 3-gun mercantile schooner-aviso of the French Navy commissioned at Guadeloupe on 23 September 1805. The Royal Navy captured her on 24 May 1806 and named her HMS Vigilant. The Navy renamed her HMS Subtle on 20 November 1806. She wrecked at Bermuda on 20 October 1807.
Capture
On 23 May 1806, Impériale left Saintes to capture some merchant vessels at Roseau. The former British cutter HMS Dominica, which mutineers had taken four days earlier and delivered to the French at Basse-Terre, joined her. (The French had immediately commissioned Dominica under the name Napoléon, and put 75 men aboard her. At Roseau they managed to take one vessel that the British later recaptured.
The next day, His Majesty's sloop Cygnet was anchored at Prince Rupert's Bay, Dominica, when Robert Bell Campbell, Cygnet's captain, received information that a cutter and a schooner were nearby. He immediately made the appropriate signals to HMS Wasp, which was entering the bay.
By 2p.m. Wasp had recaptured Dominica. As Cygnet chased Impériale, the packet ships Duke of Montrose joined the chase and at 8pm engaged Impériale. As Cygnet came up, Impériale surrendered to Duke of Montrose. Impériale was armed with three guns and had a crew of 65 men under the command of a lieutenant de vaisseau.
Impériale was carrying General Hortrade, not in uniform, and 50 soldiers of the 26th Brigade. Duke of Montrose, Captain Birt Dynely (or Dyneley), which had been with the convoy in Roseau roads, and had sailed out in pursuit of the two French vessels, had taken on board Lieutenant Wallis and 40 soldiers from the 46th Regiment of Foot.
Loss
The Royal Navy took Impériale into service as HMS Vigilant, and commissioned her under the command of Lieutenant William Dowers. However, there was already a schooner Vigilantin service, so on 20 November the Navy renamed the ex-Impériale Subtle.
Subtle was sailing from the Delaware Capes to Barbados when Lieutenant Dowers decided to make for Bermuda as she was short of fresh water and had developed an annoying leak in her breadroom. On 25 October 1807, as Subtle sailed through the St George's Channel, sounding her way continuously, she nevertheless grounded. Despite attempts to lighten her, Subtle was soon on her side. She had run onto a reef eight miles WNW of Somerset Island, Bermuda. A current had driven her some 20 miles from where Dowers had believed her to be. The wreck occurred at approximately 32°16′40″N 65°02′20″W. The crew used Subtle's boats to save themselves and no lives were lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_schooner_Impériale_(1805)
1808 - HMS Crane Brig (4), Lt. Joseph Tindale, wrecked running on a rock to the W. of the Hoe, Plymouth.
HMS Crane was a Royal Navy Cuckoo-class schooner of four 12-pounder carronades and a crew of 20. She was built by Custance & Stone at Great Yarmouth and launched in 1806. Like many of her class and the related Ballahoo-class schooners, she succumbed to the perils of the sea relatively early in her career.
She was commissioned in 1806 under Lieutenant John Cameron for the North Sea. In May 1808 Crane sent into Plymouth the Danish vessel Justitia.
In 1808 she was under a Lieutenant Mitchell, and then under Lieutenant Joseph Tindale.
At 7:30pm on 25 October 1808 bad weather drove her from her anchorage at Plymouth. She dropped a second anchor. By 4am she was near shore and got under way to make for the Sound. She returned three hours later to find an anchorage but a squall hit her as she went about. She let go an anchor but struck a rock off Plymouth Hoe. She fired her guns to signal distress, which brought out several boats from the dockyard. With some assistance she was refloated but she went aground again. She sank in deeper water with her starboard gunwale just clearing the surface. Boats picked up all her crew from the water. She was later broken up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Crane_(1806)
1808 - HMS Quail (1806) wrecked
HMS Quail was a Royal Navy Cuckoo-class schooner of four 12-pounder carronades and a crew of 20. Custance & Stone built her at Great Yarmouth and launched her in 1806. Her decade-long career appears to have been relatively uneventful. She was sold in 1816.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Quail_(1806)
1813 – Launch of French Couronne 74 at Amsterdam – abandoned December 1813 to Netherlands, who renamed her Prins Willem de Eerste
Couronne was a Téméraire-class 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy.
Couronne was one of the ships built in the various shipyards captured by the First French Empire in Holland and Italy in a crash programme to replenish the ranks of the French Navy.
The Dutch seized Couronne when the French evacuated Amsterdam on 14 November 1813 and commissioned her as Prins Willem de Eerste. She was decommissioned in 1829.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Couronne_(1813)
1819 - Daphne was a brig constructed in Java that arrived in Australia in 1814. Wrecked
Daphne was a brig constructed in Java that arrived in Australia in 1814. She was wrecked without loss of life on 26 October 1819 in the Kent Group in Bass Strait. She was on a voyage from Port Jackson to India.
On August 1819, Daphne, Captain Howard, sailed from Hobart for Port Jackson with wheat and potatoes.
Daphne departed Sydney bound for India on 10 October 1819 under the command of John Howard. As she passed through Bass Strait he stopped at several islands to purchase sealskins from sealers in the area. On 26 October a gale rose and Howard sheltered in the lee of East Island. Howard went ashore, probably to find sealers. On arriving on shore he noticed that Daphne was being driven towards the rocks. He returned on board but could do little to save the brig. He therefore ordered the passengers and crew to abandon ship. The passengers made it to shore safely but Daphne was totally destroyed.
The longboat was badly damaged and it took Howard and his crew some eight days to repair it. He then took his chief mate and three seamen and headed to Launceston on 4 August. Although he was blown off course, he eventually made Hobart on 14 November 1819. There he chartered the sloop Governor Sorrell to rescue the eight passengers and crew remaining on East Island.[3] Meanwhile, John Palmer arrived and took on board some of the wreck survivors and attempted to head back to Hobart. However she was wrecked too. One passenger lost her life. The survivors had to await the arrival of Governor Sorrel for their rescue.
Lloyd's List reported on 4 July 1820 based on a report from Port Jackson dated 12 December 1819, that the brig Daphne, Howard, master, had wrecked about 200 miles north of the Derwent. She was a total loss but her crew had been saved
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_(brig)
1825 – The Erie Canal opens: Passage from Albany, New York to Lake Erie.
The Erie Canal is a canal in New York, United States that is part of the east–west, cross-state route of the New York State Canal System (formerly known as the New York State Barge Canal). Originally, it ran 363 miles (584 km) from where Albany meets the Hudson River to where Buffalo meets Lake Erie. It was built to create a navigable water route from New York City and the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. When completed in 1825, it was the second longest canal in the world (after the Grand Canal in China) and greatly affected the development and economy of New York, New York City, and the United States.
The canal was first proposed in the 1780s, then re-proposed in 1807. A survey was authorized, funded, and executed in 1808. Proponents of the project gradually wore down opponents; its construction began in 1817. The canal has 34 numbered locks starting with Black Rock Lock and ending downstream with the Troy Federal Lock. Both are owned by the federal government. It has an elevation difference of about 565 feet (172 m). It opened on October 26, 1825.
In a time when bulk goods were limited to pack animals (a 250-pound (113 kg) maximum), and there were no railways, water was the most cost-effective way to ship bulk goods.
The canal was denigrated by its political opponents as "Clinton's Folly"[5] or "Clinton's Big Ditch". It was the first transportation system between the Eastern Seaboard and the western interior of the United States that did not require portage.
It was faster than carts pulled by draft animals and cut transport costs by about 95%. The canal gave New York City's port an incomparable advantage over all other U.S. port cities and ushered in the state's 19th century political and cultural ascendancy. The canal fostered a population surge in western New York and opened regions farther west to settlement. It was enlarged between 1834 and 1862. The canal's peak year was 1855, when 33,000 commercial shipments took place. In 1918, the western part of the canal was enlarged to become part of the New York State Barge Canal, which also extended to the Hudson River running parallel to the eastern half of the Erie Canal.
In 2000, the United States Congress designated the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor[9] to recognize the national significance of the canal system as the most successful and influential human-built waterway and one of the most important works of civil engineering and construction in North America.[9] The canal has been mainly used by recreational watercraft since the retirement of the last large commercial ship, Day Peckinpaugh, in 1994. The canal saw a recovery in commercial traffic in 2008.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal
1966 - Tragedy strikes USS Oriskany (CVA 34) when a fire erupts on the starboard side of the ship's forward hangar bay and races through five decks, killing 44 members of her crew and air group.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Oriskany_(CV-34)
Other Events on 26 October
1740 – Launch of French Sérieux 64 at Toulon, designed and begun by René, completed by Pierre-Blaise Coulomb – captured by the British in the First Battle of Cape Finisterre in May 1747
1768 – Launch of French Impérieuse at Bordeaux, renamed Amphitrite after her launch.
Dédaigneuse class (32-gun design by Leon-Michel Guignace, with 26 x 12-pounder and 6 x 6-pounder guns).
1781 - HMS Hannibal (1779 - 50) took Neckar.
HMS Hannibal was a 50-gun fourth rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built by Adams of Bucklers Hard and launched on 26 December 1779. She was subsequently captured by the French ship Héros off Sumatra, on 21 January 1782.
She was called Petit Annibal to distinguish her from the eponymous 74-gun Annibal, which was in the same fleet. English-language histories often refer to her as Hannibal for this reason. Admiral the Bailli de Suffren took her into his fleet, and she saw service in his five battles with British Admiral Sir Edward Hughes in 1782 and 1783.
She was decommissioned in 1787 and used as a hulk from 1792.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hannibal_(1779)
1788 - HMS Bounty, Cptn. William Bligh, arrived at Matavai Bay at Tahiti.
1794 – Spanish San Isidoro 64 (ex-Neapolitan, transferred 1776) - Wrecked
1803 - Boats of HMS Osprey (18), George Younghusband, captured French schooner La Ressource (4) off Trinidad
1807 - HMS Subtle (8), Lt. William Dowers, wrecked off Bermuda
The French schooner Impériale was a 3-gun mercantile schooner-aviso of the French Navy commissioned at Guadeloupe on 23 September 1805. The Royal Navy captured her on 24 May 1806 and named her HMS Vigilant. The Navy renamed her HMS Subtle on 20 November 1806. She wrecked at Bermuda on 20 October 1807.
Capture
On 23 May 1806, Impériale left Saintes to capture some merchant vessels at Roseau. The former British cutter HMS Dominica, which mutineers had taken four days earlier and delivered to the French at Basse-Terre, joined her. (The French had immediately commissioned Dominica under the name Napoléon, and put 75 men aboard her. At Roseau they managed to take one vessel that the British later recaptured.
The next day, His Majesty's sloop Cygnet was anchored at Prince Rupert's Bay, Dominica, when Robert Bell Campbell, Cygnet's captain, received information that a cutter and a schooner were nearby. He immediately made the appropriate signals to HMS Wasp, which was entering the bay.
By 2p.m. Wasp had recaptured Dominica. As Cygnet chased Impériale, the packet ships Duke of Montrose joined the chase and at 8pm engaged Impériale. As Cygnet came up, Impériale surrendered to Duke of Montrose. Impériale was armed with three guns and had a crew of 65 men under the command of a lieutenant de vaisseau.
Impériale was carrying General Hortrade, not in uniform, and 50 soldiers of the 26th Brigade. Duke of Montrose, Captain Birt Dynely (or Dyneley), which had been with the convoy in Roseau roads, and had sailed out in pursuit of the two French vessels, had taken on board Lieutenant Wallis and 40 soldiers from the 46th Regiment of Foot.
Loss
The Royal Navy took Impériale into service as HMS Vigilant, and commissioned her under the command of Lieutenant William Dowers. However, there was already a schooner Vigilantin service, so on 20 November the Navy renamed the ex-Impériale Subtle.
Subtle was sailing from the Delaware Capes to Barbados when Lieutenant Dowers decided to make for Bermuda as she was short of fresh water and had developed an annoying leak in her breadroom. On 25 October 1807, as Subtle sailed through the St George's Channel, sounding her way continuously, she nevertheless grounded. Despite attempts to lighten her, Subtle was soon on her side. She had run onto a reef eight miles WNW of Somerset Island, Bermuda. A current had driven her some 20 miles from where Dowers had believed her to be. The wreck occurred at approximately 32°16′40″N 65°02′20″W. The crew used Subtle's boats to save themselves and no lives were lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_schooner_Impériale_(1805)
1808 - HMS Crane Brig (4), Lt. Joseph Tindale, wrecked running on a rock to the W. of the Hoe, Plymouth.
HMS Crane was a Royal Navy Cuckoo-class schooner of four 12-pounder carronades and a crew of 20. She was built by Custance & Stone at Great Yarmouth and launched in 1806. Like many of her class and the related Ballahoo-class schooners, she succumbed to the perils of the sea relatively early in her career.
She was commissioned in 1806 under Lieutenant John Cameron for the North Sea. In May 1808 Crane sent into Plymouth the Danish vessel Justitia.
In 1808 she was under a Lieutenant Mitchell, and then under Lieutenant Joseph Tindale.
At 7:30pm on 25 October 1808 bad weather drove her from her anchorage at Plymouth. She dropped a second anchor. By 4am she was near shore and got under way to make for the Sound. She returned three hours later to find an anchorage but a squall hit her as she went about. She let go an anchor but struck a rock off Plymouth Hoe. She fired her guns to signal distress, which brought out several boats from the dockyard. With some assistance she was refloated but she went aground again. She sank in deeper water with her starboard gunwale just clearing the surface. Boats picked up all her crew from the water. She was later broken up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Crane_(1806)
1808 - HMS Quail (1806) wrecked
HMS Quail was a Royal Navy Cuckoo-class schooner of four 12-pounder carronades and a crew of 20. Custance & Stone built her at Great Yarmouth and launched her in 1806. Her decade-long career appears to have been relatively uneventful. She was sold in 1816.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Quail_(1806)
1813 – Launch of French Couronne 74 at Amsterdam – abandoned December 1813 to Netherlands, who renamed her Prins Willem de Eerste
Couronne was a Téméraire-class 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy.
Couronne was one of the ships built in the various shipyards captured by the First French Empire in Holland and Italy in a crash programme to replenish the ranks of the French Navy.
The Dutch seized Couronne when the French evacuated Amsterdam on 14 November 1813 and commissioned her as Prins Willem de Eerste. She was decommissioned in 1829.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Couronne_(1813)
1819 - Daphne was a brig constructed in Java that arrived in Australia in 1814. Wrecked
Daphne was a brig constructed in Java that arrived in Australia in 1814. She was wrecked without loss of life on 26 October 1819 in the Kent Group in Bass Strait. She was on a voyage from Port Jackson to India.
On August 1819, Daphne, Captain Howard, sailed from Hobart for Port Jackson with wheat and potatoes.
Daphne departed Sydney bound for India on 10 October 1819 under the command of John Howard. As she passed through Bass Strait he stopped at several islands to purchase sealskins from sealers in the area. On 26 October a gale rose and Howard sheltered in the lee of East Island. Howard went ashore, probably to find sealers. On arriving on shore he noticed that Daphne was being driven towards the rocks. He returned on board but could do little to save the brig. He therefore ordered the passengers and crew to abandon ship. The passengers made it to shore safely but Daphne was totally destroyed.
The longboat was badly damaged and it took Howard and his crew some eight days to repair it. He then took his chief mate and three seamen and headed to Launceston on 4 August. Although he was blown off course, he eventually made Hobart on 14 November 1819. There he chartered the sloop Governor Sorrell to rescue the eight passengers and crew remaining on East Island.[3] Meanwhile, John Palmer arrived and took on board some of the wreck survivors and attempted to head back to Hobart. However she was wrecked too. One passenger lost her life. The survivors had to await the arrival of Governor Sorrel for their rescue.
Lloyd's List reported on 4 July 1820 based on a report from Port Jackson dated 12 December 1819, that the brig Daphne, Howard, master, had wrecked about 200 miles north of the Derwent. She was a total loss but her crew had been saved
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_(brig)
1825 – The Erie Canal opens: Passage from Albany, New York to Lake Erie.
The Erie Canal is a canal in New York, United States that is part of the east–west, cross-state route of the New York State Canal System (formerly known as the New York State Barge Canal). Originally, it ran 363 miles (584 km) from where Albany meets the Hudson River to where Buffalo meets Lake Erie. It was built to create a navigable water route from New York City and the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. When completed in 1825, it was the second longest canal in the world (after the Grand Canal in China) and greatly affected the development and economy of New York, New York City, and the United States.
The canal was first proposed in the 1780s, then re-proposed in 1807. A survey was authorized, funded, and executed in 1808. Proponents of the project gradually wore down opponents; its construction began in 1817. The canal has 34 numbered locks starting with Black Rock Lock and ending downstream with the Troy Federal Lock. Both are owned by the federal government. It has an elevation difference of about 565 feet (172 m). It opened on October 26, 1825.
In a time when bulk goods were limited to pack animals (a 250-pound (113 kg) maximum), and there were no railways, water was the most cost-effective way to ship bulk goods.
The canal was denigrated by its political opponents as "Clinton's Folly"[5] or "Clinton's Big Ditch". It was the first transportation system between the Eastern Seaboard and the western interior of the United States that did not require portage.
It was faster than carts pulled by draft animals and cut transport costs by about 95%. The canal gave New York City's port an incomparable advantage over all other U.S. port cities and ushered in the state's 19th century political and cultural ascendancy. The canal fostered a population surge in western New York and opened regions farther west to settlement. It was enlarged between 1834 and 1862. The canal's peak year was 1855, when 33,000 commercial shipments took place. In 1918, the western part of the canal was enlarged to become part of the New York State Barge Canal, which also extended to the Hudson River running parallel to the eastern half of the Erie Canal.
In 2000, the United States Congress designated the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor[9] to recognize the national significance of the canal system as the most successful and influential human-built waterway and one of the most important works of civil engineering and construction in North America.[9] The canal has been mainly used by recreational watercraft since the retirement of the last large commercial ship, Day Peckinpaugh, in 1994. The canal saw a recovery in commercial traffic in 2008.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal
1966 - Tragedy strikes USS Oriskany (CVA 34) when a fire erupts on the starboard side of the ship's forward hangar bay and races through five decks, killing 44 members of her crew and air group.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Oriskany_(CV-34)