Naval/Maritime History 8th of May - Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History

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Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
19 December 1796 - HMS Courageux (1753/1761 - 74), Lt. John Burrows (Act.), struck on rocks under Apes' Hill, coast of Barbary.


Courageux was a heavy 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy, launched in 1753. She was captured by the Royal Navy in 1761 and taken into service as HMS Courageux. She was wrecked in 1796.

Class and type: 74-gun third-rate ship of the line
Tons burthen: 1,721 bm
Length: 140 ft 10 3⁄8 in (42.9 m) (gundeck)
Beam: 48 ft (14.6 m)
Depth of hold: 20 ft 10 1⁄2 in (6.4 m)
Sail plan: Full-rigged ship
Armament:

• French Navy: 74 guns
• Gundeck: 28 × 36-pounders
• Upper gundeck: 30 × 24-pounders
• Quarterdeck: 16 × 8-pounders
• Royal Navy: 74 guns
• Gundeck: 28 × 32-pounders
• Upper gundeck: 28 × 18-pounders
• Quarterdeck: 18 × 9-pounders

Design
Courageux was a 74-gun ship-of-the-line of the French Royal Navy. Her keel of 140 feet 1 1⁄8 inches (42.7 m) was laid down at Brest in April 1751 and her dimensions as built were: 172 feet 3 inches (52.5 m) along the gun deck, with a beam of 48 feet 0 3⁄4 inch (14.6 m) and a depth in the hold of 20 feet 10 1⁄2 inches (6.4 m). At 1,721 30⁄94 tons burthen she was of a typical size for a French 74 which were at least 100 tons heavier than their British equivalents. She was considered heavy because she carried 24-pounder guns on her upper deck rather than the normal 18 pounders. and when fully manned, she would have carried a complement of 650 men.

While in Royal Navy service, she was armed with up to twenty-eight 18-pound guns on her upper deck and the same amount of 32-pounders on the lower deck. Her upper works carried 9-pound guns; fourteen on the quarterdeck and four on the forecastle.



Scale: 1:48. Plan showing the body plan with stern board decoration and name in a cartouche on the counter, the sheer lines with inboard detail and figurehead, and the longitudinal half-breadth for 'Courageux' (1761), a captured French Third Rate, as taken off prior to fitting as a 74-gun Third Rate, two-decker at Portsmouth Dockyard. Signed by Edward Allin [Master Shipwright, Portsmouth Dockyard, 1755-1762] Reverse: Scale: 1:96. Plan showing the roundhouse, quarterdeck and forecastle, upper deck, gun (lower) deck, and orlop deck with fore and aft platforms for 'Courageux' (1762).


Service
Main article: Action of 14 August 1761
On 13 August 1761, Courageux was off Vigo in the company of two frigates, when she was captured by the 74-gun British ship HMS Bellona. Courageux sighted Bellona in company with the frigate Brilliant. The British ships pursued, and after 14 hours, caught up with the French ships and engaged, the Brilliant attacking the frigates, and Bellona taking on Courageux. The frigates eventually got away, but Courageux struck her colours.

She was purchased by the Admiralty on 2 February the following year, for £9,797.16.4, and taken into the Royal Navy as the third rate HMS Courageux. Another £22,380.11.4d was invested in July when a large repair was made at Portsmouth and which took until the middle of June 1764 to complete. A further substantial repair was made between January 1772 and July 1773, the price for which was £16,420.19.10d.

In July 1776, Courageux was commissioned under Captain Samuel Hood and in November, £10,132.6.2d was spent having her fitted out as a guardship at Portsmouth. Between April and May 1779, she underwent another refit, which included the sheathing of her hull with copper, and cost £7,468.7.0d. An £8,547.17.7d refit was carried out in April 1782. Then in June 1787 a great repair was required, costing £30,369.13.4d and taking until July 1789. Following a dispute with Spain over territorial rights along the Nootka Sound, Courageux was commissioned in April 1790, under George Countess for the Spanish Armament. The crisis was largely resolved through a series of agreements signed between October 1790 and January 1794. In February 1791, Alan Gardner was in command, when Courageux was recommissioned for the Russian Armament. Again, the matter was settled before she was called into action and she paid off in September that year.

Toulon
Main article: Siege of Toulon
France declared war on Britain and the Dutch Republic in February 1793, and in the Spring Courageux, under William Waldegrave, was sent with other British ships to blockade the French fleet in Toulon. By the middle of August, this British force, under Hood in the 100-gun HMS Victory, had grown to 21 ships-of-the-line. On 23 August, a deputation of French royalists came aboard Victory to discuss the conditional surrender of the town and on 27 August 1500 troops were landed to remove the republicans occupying the forts guarding the port. Hood's fleet, accompanied by 17 Spanish ships-of-the-line which had just arrived, then sailed into the harbour.

In September, French troops laid siege to the city and in December, the allied force within was driven out. When the order to withdraw was given, Courageux was being repaired and was without a rudder, but was able to warp out of the harbour and assist in the evacuation of allied troops from the waterfront. A replacement rudder was brought out, suspended between two ship's boats, and fitted later.

Corsica
Main article: Invasion of Corsica (1794)
In September 1793, during the occupation of Toulon, Courageux joined a squadron under Robert Linzee, which was sent to Corsica to support an insurrection there. General Pasquale Paoli, the leader of the insurgent party, had assured Hood that a small show of strength was all that was needed to force the island's surrender. This turned out not to be the case however, and Linzee's appeals to the French garrisons there were rejected. His force, of three ships-of-the-line and two frigates, was too small to blockade the island and starve it into submission, so an attack on San Fiorenzo was decided upon.

The two frigates, Lowestoffe and Nemesis, were charged with destroying a Martello tower at Forneilli, two miles from the town, which guarded the only secure anchorage in the bay. After taking a few salvos from the ships, the French garrison deserted and the British landed men to secure the fort. Linzee's squadron entered the bay but was prevented from engaging the batteries of San Fiorenzo by contrary winds. During the night, HMS Ardent was warped into a position where, at 03:30 on 1 October, she was able to attack the batteries and cover the approach of the other British ships. Half-an-hour later, HMS Alcide tried to take up a station nearby but was blown towards some rocks by a sudden change of wind and had to be towed clear.Courageux in the meantime covered Alcide's stern by coming between it and the gunfire from a redoubt on the shore. Alcide, eventually got into a position where she could join in the action and the three ships bombarded the redoubt until 08:15 when, there being little sign of damage, Linzee gave the order to withdraw. Courageux bore the brunt of the action, having been exposed to a raking fire from the town, and had been on fire four times, after being hit by heated shot.

Battle of Genoa
Main article: Battle of Genoa
Courageux was one of 13 ships-of-the-line which, together with seven frigates, two sloops and a cutter, were anchored in the roads of Livorno on 8 March 1795. The following day, a British scout, the 24-gun sloop Moselle, brought news that a French fleet of 15 ships-of-the-line, six frigates and two brigs, had been seen off the islands of Sainte-Marguerite. Hotham immediately set off in pursuit and on 10 March the advanced British frigates spotted the French fleet at some distance, making its way back to Toulon against the wind. Two days later, on the night of 12 March, a storm developed which badly damaged two French ships-of-the-line. These ships were escorted to Gourjean Bay by two French frigates, leaving the opposing fleets roughly equal in strength and number.

The next morning, Hotham attempted to get his ships into a form line but seeing no response from the French fleet, changed his orders to general chase. At 08:00 the 80-gun Ça Ira at the rear, collided with Victoire and her fore and main topmasts collapsed overboard. The leading British ship was the 36-gun frigate, HMS Inconstant under Captain Thomas Fremantle, which reached the damaged Ça Ira within an hour of the collision and opened fire at close range, causing further damage. Seeing the danger, the French frigate, Vestale fired upon Inconstant from a distance before taking the limping Ça Ira in tow.

Throughout the day and the following night, the British van sporadically engaged the French rearguard, with Ça Ira dropping further behind the main body of the French force. In order to better protect the damaged ship, the French admiral, Pierre Martin ordered the ship of the line, Censeur to replace Vestale as the towing ship. By morning the fleets were 21 nautical miles (39 km) south-west of Genoa with the British rapidly gaining ground. Ça Ira and Censeur had fallen further behind, and Hotham sent his two fastest ships after them. Captain and Bedford did not arrive simultaneously however, and were both repulsed, although further damage was inflicted on the French stragglers in the process. Martin, ordered his line to wear in succession and get between the British fleet and the badly damaged Ça Ira and Censeur, which in the meantime had come under a new threat from the recently arrived Courageux and HMS Illustrious. A sudden drop in wind made manoeuvres difficult and the leading French ship Duquesne under Captain Zacharie Allemand, found itself sailing down the other side of the British vanguard.

At 08:00, Duquesne was in a position to engage Illustrious and Courageux which, in their efforts to reach Ça Ira and Censeur, were now far ahead and to leeward of their line. Two other French ships, Victoire and Tonnant, joined the action and for an hour, the French and British vanguards exchanged heavy fire. Both British ships were heavily damaged: Illustrious had drifted out of the battle having lost her main and mizzen mast over the side, while Courageux also had two masts down, and her hull much holed by French shot. The Duquesne, Victoire, and Tonnant, then exchanged passing shots with the British ships coming up, before turning away and leaving Ça Ira and Censeur to their fate. Hotham, considering that his van-ships were not in a condition to, and content with his prizes, did not pursue.

Action off Hyeres
The fleet was re-victualling in San Fiorenzo bay on 8 July 1795, when a small squadron under Commodore Horatio Nelson approached, followed by the French Fleet from Toulon. The British fleet was not able to put to sea immediately due to contrary winds but was spotted by the French, who abandoned their chase. Hotham finished refitting and supplying his ships, and finally managed to set off after his quarry at 21:00; almost twelve hours later. On the night of 12 July, the British ships were hit by a storm and were still carrying out repairs the following morning when the French fleet was sighted. At 03:45 Hotham gave the order to make all possible sail in pursuit of their enemy, which by then was 5 nautical miles (9.3 km) away, bearing towards Fréjus.

By 08:00, the French had formed a tight line-of-battle but the British ships were strung out over an 8 nmi (15 km) distance. The leading British ships, Victory, Culloden, and Cumberland, at 3⁄4 nmi (1.4 km), were within range and opened fire. After six hours, as more ships were arriving, one of the rearmost French ships, Alcide struck. Before the British could take possession of her however she caught fire and exploded. Courageux, under the command of Benjamin Hallowell, and some way back, was unable to get into the action before Hotham, believing the fleet to be running out of sea-room, signalled to disengage.

Fate
In December 1796, Courageux was with Jervis' fleet, anchored in the bay of Gibraltar, when a great storm tore her from her mooring and drove her onto the rocks. Sources differ as to when this occurred and the number of lives lost. William James records that on 10 December a French squadron under Admiral Villeneuve, left the Mediterranean but the British were unable to pursue due to a strong leeshore wind. The weather took a turn for the worse and that very night, several ships cut or had their cables snapped, including HMS Culloden and HMS Gibraltar.

When Courageux parted from her anchor, Captain Benjamin Hallowell was ashore at Gibraltar, serving on a court-martial, and Lieutenant John Burrows was in command. She drifted across the bay and under the guns of the Spanish batteries and from there, under close-reefed topsails, made her way towards the Barbary coast; Burrows reluctant to run through the Straits for fear of falling in with Villeneuve's ships. Towards evening, the wind and rain increased to hurricane force, and soon after 20:00, the crew, who had been exhausted from trying to sail the ship out of trouble, were sent to dinner. The officers, except a lieutenant of the watch, also retired below. At 21:00, when land was sighted, there were too few men available to prevent the Courageux hitting the rocks at the foot of Ape's hill (Mons Abyla), on the coast of Barbary. She broadsided, lost her masts over the side, and water entered at a rapid rate as waves and winds battered her. Of the 593 officers and men that were on board, 129 only effected their escape; five by means of the launch that was towing astern, and the remainder by passing along the fallen mainmast to the rugged shore.

Lloyd's List stated that she had been lost in a gale on 12 December that also resulted in several transport vessels and merchant ships being driven on shore, with the Spaniards capturing the transports. Lloyd's List reported that only five people had been saved from Courageux. In the first printings of his book, "The Naval History of Great Britain, Volume I, (1793-1796)", James gave the date of the wrecking as 17 but this is changed to 10 from the second edition on. David Hepper says it occurred on 18, as does David Steel in "Steel's Naval Remembrancer: From the Commencement of the War in 1793 to the End of the Year 1800". John Marshall in his "Royal Naval Biography (Volume I, Part II)" says 19.


Scale 1:48. Plan showing the body plan, sheer lines, and longitudinal half-breadth for 'Colossus' (1787), 'Leviathan' (1790), 'Carnatic' (1783), and 'Minotaur' (1793), all 74-gun Third Rate, two-deckers based on the lines for the captured French Third Rate 'Courageux' (captured 1761). Signed by John Williams [Surveyor of the Navy, 1765-1784] and Edward Hunt [Surveyor of the Navy 1778-1784].


Scale: 1:48. Plan showing the body plan, sheer lines, and longitudinal half-breadth for Blake (1809) and Saint Domingo (1808), both 74-gun Third Rate, two-decker. These two ships were a lenghtened version of the Courageux (captured 1761), a captured French 74-gun Third Rate. Signed by John Henslow [Surveyor of the Navy, 1784-1806] and William Rule [Surveyor of the Navy, 1793-1813].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Courageux_(1753)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
19 December 1870 - Coxswain William Halford, the lone survivor of five, reaches Hawaii after a month at sea in a 22-foot boat and seeks help for the crew of the side-wheel steamer USS Saginaw, wrecked near Midway Island.


The first USS Saginaw was a sidewheel sloop-of-war in the United States Navy during the American Civil War.

History
The first vessel built by the Mare Island Navy Yard, Saginaw was laid down on 16 September 1858; launched as Toucey on 3 March 1859; sponsored by Miss Cunningham, daughter of the commandant of the Navy Yard; renamed Saginaw; and commissioned on 5 January 1860, Commander James F. Schenck in command.


Side wheel steamer USS Saginaw, built at the Navy Yard, Mare Island, California, in 1859. Depicted at at Mare Island Naval Yard, circa 1860.

The new side-wheel ship sailed from San Francisco Bay on 8 March 1860, headed for the western Pacific, and reached Shanghai, China on 12 May. She then served in the East India Squadron, for the most part cruising along the Chinese coast to protect American citizens and to suppress pirates. She visited Japan in November but soon returned to Chinese waters. On 30 June 1861, she silenced a battery at the entrance to Qui Nhon Bay, Cochin China, which had fired upon her while she was searching for the missing boat and crew of American bark Myrtle.





On 3 January 1862, Saginaw was decommissioned at Hong Kong and returned to Mare Island on 3 July for repairs.

Relaunched on 3 December 1862 and recommissioned on 23 March 1863, saginaw was attached to the Pacific Squadron and operated along the United States West Coast to prevent Confederate activity. She visited Puget Sound in the spring of 1863 to investigate reports that Confederate privateers were being outfitted in British Columbia, but returned after learning that the scheme had no chance of success.

Her cruises in 1864 took Saginaw to ports in Mexico and Central America to protect the interests of the United States endangered by Confederate activity and by European interference in Mexico. During the closing months of the year, she escorted steamers of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company carrying rich cargoes of bullion from the California gold fields. In the spring of 1865, the ship was assigned to the United States Revenue Cutter Service but was returned to the Navy on 2 June 1865. She spent the remainder of 1865 protecting American citizens at Guaymas and other Mexican ports during the unrest and disorder which beset Mexico during the struggle between Emperor Maximilian I and Benito Juárez.


A model of the three-masted side-wheeler USS Saginaw is on display at the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum in Vallejo, Calif.

In March 1866, Saginaw returned to Mare Island. She sailed in August 1866 for Puget Sound to support settlers in the Pacific Northwest. While there, she aided the Western Union Company in laying a cable which brought the first telegraphic service to the region. After returning to Mare Island in December 1866, the ship remained at the navy yard through 1867.

In April 1868, a year after the United States purchased Alaska from Russia, Saginaw got underway for the Alaska Territory and, with the exception of a run home late in the year for replenishment, spent the next year exploring and charting the Alaskan coast. In the February 1869 Kake War the USS Saginaw destroyed three deserted villages and two forts near present-day Kake, Alaska. Prior to the conflict, two white trappers were killed by the Kake in retribution for the death of two Kake departing Sitka village in canoe. Sitka was the site of a standoff between the Army and Tlingit due to the army demanding the surrender of chief Colchika who was involved in an altercation in Fort Sitka. While no Kake, or possibly a single old woman, died in the destruction of the villages, the loss of winter stores, canoes, and shelter led to the death during the winter of some of the Kake.

After steaming back to San Francisco Bay in April 1869, Saginaw departed her home port on 28 July 1869 and operated along the coast of Mexico until arriving back at Mare Island on 11 November 1869.

Fate


The Captain's depiction of Saginaw's fate

Saginaw's next assignment took her to Midway Atoll to support dredging operations to deepen the entrance to the harbor. She reached Midway on 24 March 1870 and completed her task on 21 October 1870. A week later, she sailed for San Francisco, intending to touch at Kure Atoll (at that time known as Ocean Island) en route home to rescue any shipwrecked sailors who might be stranded there. The next day, 29 October 1870, as she neared this rarely visited atoll, Saginaw struck an outlying reefand grounded. Before the surf battered the ship to pieces, her 93 crew managed to transfer much of her gear and provisions to the atoll.

On 18 November, a party of five men, headed by Lieutenant John G. Talbot, the executive officer, set out for Honolulu in a small boat to get relief for their stranded shipmates. As they neared Kauai, 31 days and some 1,500 mi (2,400 km) later, their boat was upset by breakers. Only Coxswain William Halford survived to obtain help. He landed on Kauai, where Captain Dudoit of the schooner Wainona offered to take him straight to Honolulu leaving his return freight for a later trip. They sailed on Tuesday Dec 20th and arrived at Honolulu on Saturday 24 December and was taken to the United States Consulate there.

The US Consul authorised the despatch of a fast sailing coaster, the Kona Packet, which departed on Sunday 25 December, and the King of Hawaii, Kamehameha V, sent the inter-island steamer, Kilauea under Captain Thomas Long, to rescue the shipwrecked sailors. After loading with coal for 20 days and food and copious fresh water they departed on Monday 26 December. The Kilauea arrived at Kure on 4 January 1871, and the Kona Packet a day later. Due to uncertainty over the coal required for the return journey they steamed to Midway Island loading 40 tons of coal and left on 7 January, arriving back in Honolulu on 14 January, a round trip of 2350 miles. Captain Long was presented with a heavy gold-cased chronometer watch by the U.S. Government as thanks for successfully undertaking the rescue mission.

The Saginaw's gig survived being capsized in the breakers, and was sold at auction in January 1871. The purchaser presented it to the rescued crew of the Saginaw, whereupon it was transported back to San Francisco on the A.P. Jordan. It survives as part of the Curator Collection at the Castle Museum of Saginaw County History in Saginaw, Michigan.

The crew of the Saginaw may have been aware of the loss of the whaler Gledstanes on the same reef on 9 July 1837, as they faced the same predicament and constructed a schooner Deliverance from the wreckage over many months. Captain Brown with 8 men sailed for Hawaii on 15th Dec to secure a rescue ship which took the remaining men off the atoll in February. The wreck of Saginaw was discovered in 2003 and remains under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command.

The book A Civil War Gunboat in Pacific Waters: Life on Board USS Saginaw (by Hans Van Tilburg, University Press of Florida, 2010) covers the ship's construction, her ten years of service in the Pacific, and her loss at Kure Atoll. Van Tilburg led the team which discovered the wreck site in 2003.


William Halford (August 18, 1841 – February 7, 1919) was a sailor, and later an officer, in the United States Navy. He also received the Medal of Honor.



Born in Gloucestershire, England, Halford enlisted in the United States Navy in 1869. He was serving on board USS Saginaw, when she ran aground near Kure Atoll on October 29, 1870. Halford was one of four sailors who volunteered to sail the ship's boat 1,500 miles to Honolulu for help, along with the ship's executive officer, Lieutenant John G. Talbot. After great suffering, and 31 days at sea, the party reached the island of Kauai on December 19, 1870. In attempting to land through the heavy surf, all but Halford were drowned, but he managed to reach shore and bring help to his shipmates. He received the Medal of Honor for his bravery.

Halford was promoted to the warrant officer rank of gunner on April 14, 1871, and to chief gunner on March 3, 1899. He served in the Navy until 18 August 1903 when, after reaching mandatory retirement age, he retired after 34 years of active service.

When the United States entered the First World War, the Navy had a dire need for experienced officers like Halford. Military law at the time provided for retired officers, if placed on active duty during time of war, to be returned at the rank they would have achieved had they remained on active duty. Halford was recalled up to duty and promoted to lieutenant on July 1, 1918 and continued to serve until he died on February 7, 1919 at Oakland, California. He was buried at the Mare Island Navy Yard cemetery in Vallejo, California.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Halford
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Saginaw_(1859)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
19 December 1912 – William Van Schaick, captain of the steamship General Slocum which caught fire and killed over one thousand people, is pardoned by U.S. President William Howard Taft after three-and-a-half-years in Sing Sing prison.


The PS General Slocum was a sidewheel passenger steamboat built in Brooklyn, New York, in 1891. During her service history, she was involved in a number of mishaps, including multiple groundings and collisions.



On June 15, 1904, General Slocum caught fire and sank in the East River of New York City. At the time of the accident, she was on a chartered run carrying members of St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church (German Americans from Little Germany, Manhattan) to a church picnic. An estimated 1,021 of the 1,342 people on board died. The General Slocum disaster was the New York area's worst disaster in terms of loss of life until the September 11, 2001 attacks. It is the worst maritime disaster in the city's history, and the second worst maritime disaster on United States waterways. The events surrounding the General Slocum fire have been explored in a number of books, plays, and movies.

Construction and design


Drawing by Samuel Ward Stanton

General Slocum was built by Divine Burtis, Jr., a Brooklyn boatbuilder who was awarded the contract on February 15, 1891. Her keel was 235 feet (72 m) long and the hull was 37.5 feet (11.4 m) wide constructed of white oak and yellow pine. General Slocum measured 1,284 tons gross, and had a hull depth of 12.3 feet (3.7 m).[4] General Slocum was constructed with three decks, three watertight compartments, and 250 electric lights.

General Slocum was powered by a single-cylinder, surface-condensing vertical-beam steam engine with a 53-inch bore and 12-foot stroke, built by W. & A. Fletcher Company of Hoboken, New Jersey. Steam was supplied by two boilers at a working pressure of 52 psi. General Slocum was a sidewheel boat. Each wheel had 26 paddles and was 31 feet (9.4 m) in diameter. Her maximum speed was about 16 knots (30 km/h). The ship was usually manned by a crew of 22, including Captain William H. Van Schaick and two pilots.

Service history
General Slocum was named for Civil War General[7] and New York Congressman Henry Warner Slocum. She operated in the New York City area as an excursion steamer for the next 13 years under the same ownership.

General Slocum experienced a series of mishaps following her launch in 1891. Four months after her launching, she ran aground off Rockaway. Tugboats had to be used to pull her free.


The great catastroph of the passenger steamboat General Slocum (Angelo Agostini, O Malho, 1904).


Firefighters working to put out the fire on the listing General Slocum.


Victims of General Slocum washed ashore at North Brother Island.

A number of incidents occurred during 1894. On July 29, while returning from Rockaway with about 4,700 passengers, General Slocum struck a sandbar with enough force that her electrical generator went out. The next month, General Slocum ran aground off Coney Island during a storm. During this grounding, the passengers had to be transferred to another ship. In September 1894, General Slocum collided with the tug R. T. Sayre in the East River, with General Slocum sustaining substantial damage to her steering.

In July 1898, another collision occurred when General Slocum collided with Amelia near Battery Park. On August 17, 1901, while carrying what was described as 900 intoxicated anarchists from Paterson, New Jersey, some of the passengers started a riot on board and tried to take control of the vessel. The crew fought back and kept control of the ship. The captain docked the ship at the police pier, and 17 men were taken into custody by the police.

In June 1902, General Slocum ran aground with 400 passengers aboard. With the vessel unable to be freed, the passengers had to camp out overnight while the ship remained stuck.

1904 disaster
General Slocum worked as a passenger ship, taking people on excursions around New York City. On Wednesday, June 15, 1904, the ship had been chartered for $350 by St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Little Germany district of Manhattan. This was an annual rite for the group, which had made the trip for 17 consecutive years, a period when German settlers moved out of Little Germany for the Upper East and West Sides. Over 1,400 passengers, mostly women and children, boarded General Slocum, which was to sail up the East River and then eastward across the Long Island Sound to Locust Grove, a picnic site in Eatons Neck, Long Island.

The ship got underway at 9:30 am. As it was passing East 90th Street, a fire started in the Lamp Room in the forward section, possibly caused by a discarded cigarette or match. It was fueled by the straw, oily rags, and lamp oil strewn around the room. The first notice of a fire was at 10:00 am; eyewitnesses claimed the initial blaze began in various locations, including a paint locker filled with flammable liquids and a cabin filled with gasoline. Captain Van Schaick was not notified until 10 minutes after the fire was discovered. A 12-year-old boy had tried to warn him earlier, but was not believed.


Carrying away a body from North Brother Island.

Although the captain was ultimately responsible for the safety of passengers, the owners had made no effort to maintain or replace the ship's safety equipment. The fire hoses had been allowed to rot, and fell apart when the crew tried to put out the fire. The crew had never practiced a fire drill, and the lifeboats were tied up and inaccessible. (Some claim they were wired and painted in place.) Survivors reported that the life preservers were useless and fell apart in their hands. Desperate mothers placed life jackets on their children and tossed them into the water, only to watch in horror as their children sank instead of floating. Most of those on board were women and children who, like most Americans of the time, could not swim; victims found that their heavy wool clothing absorbed water and weighed them down in the river.



It has been suggested that the manager of the life preserver manufacturer placed iron bars inside the cork preservers to meet minimum weight requirements at the time. Many of the life preservers had been filled with cheap and less effective granulated cork and brought up to proper weight by the inclusion of the iron weights. Canvas covers, rotted with age, split and scattered the powdered cork. Managers of the company (Nonpareil Cork Works) were indicted but not convicted. The life preservers had been manufactured in 1891 and had hung above the deck, unprotected from the elements, for 13 years.

Captain Van Schaick decided to continue his course rather than run the ship aground or stop at a nearby landing. By going into headwinds and failing to immediately ground the ship, he fanned the fire. Van Schaick later argued he was trying to avoid having the fire spread to riverside buildings and oil tanks. Flammable paint also helped the fire spread out of control.

Some passengers jumped into the river to escape the fire, but the heavy women's clothing of the day made swimming almost impossible and dragged them underwater to drown. Many died when the floors of the overloaded boat collapsed; others were battered by the still-turning paddles as they tried to escape into the water or over the sides.

By the time General Slocum sank in shallow water at North Brother Island, just off the Bronx shore, an estimated 1,021 people had either burned to death or drowned. There were 321 survivors. Five of the 40 crew members died.


The St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church, built in 1857 for the German immigrant community of Little Germany, was converted to a synagogue in 1940 due to demographic changes in the neighborhood.

The 1904 Coast Guard Report estimated the following figures for casualties of a total of 1,388 persons in the disaster:

Status Passengers Crew Total1,35830Adults613Children745Dead8932Missing/unidentified62Injured1755Uninjured22823

The captain lost sight in one eye owing to the fire. Reports indicate that Captain Van Schaick deserted General Slocum as soon as it settled, jumping into a nearby tug, along with several crew. Some say his jacket was hardly rumpled, but other reports stated that he was seriously injured. He was hospitalized at Lebanon Hospital.

Many acts of heroism were committed by the passengers, witnesses, and emergency personnel. Staff and patients from the hospital on North Brother Island participated in the rescue efforts, forming human chains and pulling victims from the water.

Aftermath
Eight people were indicted by a federal grand jury after the disaster: the captain; two inspectors; and the president, secretary, treasurer, and commodore of the Knickerbocker Steamship Company. Only Captain Van Schaick was convicted. He was found guilty on one of three charges: criminal negligence, for failing to maintain proper fire drills and fire extinguishers. The jury could not reach a verdict on the other two counts of manslaughter. He was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. He spent three years and six months at Sing Sing prison before he was paroled. President Theodore Roosevelt declined to pardon Captain Van Schaick. He was not released until the federal parole board under the William Howard Taft administration voted to free him on August 26, 1911. He was pardoned by President Taft on December 19, 1912; the pardon became effective on Christmas Day. After his death in 1927, Schaick was buried in Oakwood Cemetery (Troy, New York).

The Knickerbocker Steamship Company, which owned the ship, paid a relatively small fine despite evidence that they might have falsified inspection records. The disaster motivated federal and state regulation to improve the emergency equipment on passenger ships.

The neighborhood of Little Germany, which had been in decline for some time before the disaster as residents moved uptown, almost disappeared afterward. With the trauma and arguments that followed the tragedy and the loss of many prominent settlers, most of the Lutheran Germans remaining in the Lower East Side eventually moved uptown. The church whose congregation chartered the ship for the fateful voyage was converted to a synagogue in 1940 after the area was settled by Jewish residents.

The victims were interred in cemeteries around New York, with 58 identified victims buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn. Many victims were buried at Lutheran Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens (now Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery) where an annual memorial ceremony is held at the historical marker.

In 1906, a marble memorial fountain was erected in the north central part of Tompkins Square Park on Manhattan by the Sympathy Society of German Ladies, with the inscription: "They are Earth's purest children, young and fair."

The sunken remains of General Slocum were salvaged and converted into a barge named Maryland, which sank without loss of life in the Atlantic Ocean off the southeast coast of New Jersey near Strathmere and Sea Isle City during a storm on December 4, 1911, while carrying a cargo of coal.



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

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
19 December 1941 – World War II: Raid on Alexandria - Limpet mines placed by Italian divers heavily damage HMS Valiant and HMS Queen Elizabeth in Alexandria harbour.


The Raid on Alexandria was carried out on 19 December 1941 by Italian Navy divers of the Decima Flottiglia MAS, who attacked and disabled two Royal Navy battleships in the harbour of Alexandria, Egypt, using manned torpedoes.


An Italian manned torpedo

Background
On 3 December, the submarine Scirè of the Italian Royal Navy (Regia Marina) under the command of lieutenant Junio Valerio Borghese left the naval base of La Spezia carrying three manned torpedoes, nicknamed maiali (pigs) by the Italians. At the island of Leros in the Aegean Sea, the submarine secretly picked up six crewmen for them: Luigi Durand de la Penne and Emilio Bianchi (maiale nº 221), Vincenzo Martellotta and Mario Marino (maiale nº 222), and Antonio Marceglia and Spartaco Schergat (maiale nº 223).

Raid
On 19 December, Scirè—at a depth of 15 m (49 ft)—released the manned torpedoes 1.3 mi (1.1 nmi; 2.1 km) from Alexandria commercial harbour, and they entered the naval base when the British opened their defenses to let three of their destroyers pass. There were many difficulties for de la Penne and his crewmate Emilio Bianchi. First, the engine of the torpedo stopped and the two frogmen had to manually push it; then Bianchi had to surface due to problems with the oxygen provider, so that de la Penne had to push the Maiale alone to where HMS Valiant lay. There he successfully placed the limpet mine, just under the hull of the battleship. However, as they both had to surface, and as Bianchi was hurt, they were discovered and captured.

Questioned, both of them kept silent, and they were confined in a compartment aboard Valiant, under the sea level, and coincidentally just over the place where the mine had been placed. Fifteen minutes before the explosion, de la Penne asked to meet with Valiant's captain Charles Morgan and then told him of the imminent explosion but refused to give further information, so that he was returned to the compartment. When the mine exploded just beneath them, neither was severely injured by the blast, de la Penne only receiving a minor injury to the head by a ship chain.

Meanwhile, Marceglia and Schergat had attached their device five feet beneath the battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth's keel as scheduled. They successfully left the harbour area at 4:30 am, and slipped through Alexandria posing as French sailors. They were captured two days later at Rosetta by the Egyptian police while awaiting rescue by Scirè and handed over to the British.

Martellotta and Marino searched in vain for an aircraft carrier purportedly moored at Alexandria, but after some time they decided to attack a large tanker, the 7,554 gross register ton Norwegian Sagona. Marino fixed the mine under the tanker's stern at 02:55. Both divers managed to land unmolested, but were eventually arrested at an Egyptian police checkpoint.

In the end, all the divers were made prisoners, though they succeeded in severely damaging both Queen Elizabeth and Valiant, disabling them for nine months and six months respectively. Eight members of Queen Elizabeth's crew were killed. Sagona lost her stern section and the destroyer HMS Jervis, one of four alongside her refuelling, was badly damaged. Neither of the two capital ships sank but they were out of action for some time.

Aftermath
This represented a dramatic change of fortunes against the Allies from the strategic point of view during the next six months. The Italian fleet had temporarily wrested naval supremacy in the east-central Mediterranean from the Royal Navy.

Valiant was towed to Admiralty Floating Dock 5 on the 21st for temporary repairs and was under repair at Alexandria until April 1942 when she sailed to Durban. By August, she was operating with Force B off Africa in exercises for the defence of East Africa and operations against Madagascar.

Queen Elizabeth was in drydock at Alexandria for temporary repairs until late June, when she sailed for the United States for refit and repairs, which ended the following June. The refit was completed in Britain.

Jervis was repaired and operational again by the end of January.


HMS Valiant was a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship built for the Royal Navy during the early 1910s. She participated in the Battle of Jutland during the First World War as part of the Grand Fleet. Other than that battle, and the inconclusive Action of 19 August, her service during the war generally consisted of routine patrols and training in the North Sea. She saw further action during the Second World War in the Mediterranean and Far East.



On 19 December 1941, Valiant was seriously damaged by limpet mines placed by Italian frogmen of Decima Flottiglia MAS, who entered Alexandria harbor riding two-man "human torpedoes" ("maiali"). Her sister ship Queen Elizabeth was also damaged. Lieutenant Durand de la Penne placed the mines on Valiant. The other two teams attached their mines and escaped, but de la Penne's maiale broke down. De la Penne pushed the maiale under Valiant and left it on the bottom. Then he and his companion Corporal Emilio Bianchi emerged and were captured. They were interrogated by Captain Charles Morgan, but told him nothing, despite being locked in a compartment below the waterline. A few minutes before detonation, when it was too late to find and deactivate the mines, he informed Captain Morgan to allow the British to evacuate. They were returned to the locked compartment, which was just above where the mine would explode. De la Penne and Bianchi were injured by the explosion, but survived.

The mine attached to Valiant was not actually in contact with her hull, so the damage was far less severe than to Queen Elizabeth. Despite having a heavy trim forward, her decks were above water, and she remained clear of the harbour bottom. Although nearly immobilised she was able, although only for few days, to give the impression of full battle readiness. This appearance was exploited by the Royal Navy. They allowed photographs of the seemingly undamaged ship to appear in the British press. Valiant was repaired in Durban, South Africa, and returned to the Mediterranean in 1943.


HMS Queen Elizabeth was the lead ship of her class of dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy in the early 1910s, and was often used as a flagship. She served in the First World War as part of the Grand Fleet, and participated in the inconclusive Action of 19 August 1916. Her service during the war generally consisted of routine patrols and training in the North Sea. She and the other super-dreadnought battleships were the first of their type to be powered by oil instead of coal. Queen Elizabeth later served in several theatres during the Second World War, and was ultimately scrapped in 1948.



When her reconstruction was complete, Queen Elizabeth rejoined the Mediterranean Fleet, covering the evacuation of Crete in June 1941.[7] She, along with HMS Valiant, was mined and seriously damaged by Italian frogmen (Antonio Marceglia and Spartaco Schergat), operating human torpedo craft in a attack on 19 December 1941 in shallow water in the harbour at Alexandria, Egypt, with the loss of nine men of her complement.

Although badly damaged, with her draught increased to 41.8 feet (12.5m), Queen Elizabeth was not grounded on the harbour bottom,[9][10] her decks were clear and the Italian crews were captured. For this reason, the British maintained the illusion of full operational status, to conceal the weak British position in the Mediterranean during the period the two ships were patched and refloated. However, this concealing action lasted through a few days only. The Valiant went back into service after many months and the Queen Elizabeth after more than a year and half. Following completion of temporary repairs in an Alexandria drydock in June 1942, she steamed through the Suez Canal and around Africa to the Navy Yard in Norfolk, Virginia in the United States. From September of that year until June 1943, she was comprehensively repaired.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_Alexandria_(1941)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Valiant_(1914)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Queen_Elizabeth_(1913)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
19 December 1941 – HMS Neptune sunk by mines off Tripoli, 736 of the crew perished, only one survived


HMS Neptune was a Leander-class light cruiser which served with the Royal Navy during World War II.

Neptune was the fourth ship of its class and was the ninth Royal Navy vessel to carry the name. Built by Portsmouth Dockyard, the vessel was laid down on 24 September 1931, launched on 31 January 1933, and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 12 February 1934 with the pennant number "20".



Operational history
During World War II, Neptune operated with a crew drawn predominantly from the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy. The ship also carried a large contingent of seconded South African personnel.

In December 1939, several months after war was declared, Neptune was patrolling in the South Atlantic in pursuit of German surface raider pocket battleship (heavy cruiser) Admiral Graf Spee. Neptune, with other patrolling Royal Navy heavy units, was sent to Uruguay in the aftermath of the Battle of the River Plate. However, she was still in transit when the Germans scuttled Graf Spee off Montevideo on 17 December.

Neptune was the first British ship to spot the Italian Fleet in the battle of Calabria, on 9 July 1940, marking also the first time since the Napoleonic Wars that the Mediterranean Fleet received the signal "enemy battle fleet in sight". During the subsequent engagement, she was hit by the Italian light cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi. The 6-inch shell splinters damaged her floatplane beyond repair, its wreckage being thrown into the sea. Minutes later her main guns struck the heavy cruiser Bolzano three times, inflicting some damage on her torpedo room, below the waterline and the "B" turret. During 1941, she led Force K, a raiding squadron of cruisers. Their task was to intercept and destroy German and Italian convoys en route to Libya. The convoys were supplying Rommel's Afrika Korps in North Africa with troops and equipment.



Sinking
Force K was sent out on 18 December 1941, to intercept a convoy bound for Tripoli, right after the brief fleet engagement at sunset known as First Battle of Sirte.

On the night of 19–20 December, Neptune, leading the line, struck two mines, part of an Italian minefield laid by an Italian cruiser force in June 1941. The first struck the anti-mine screen, causing no damage. The second struck the bow hull. The other cruisers present, Aurora and Penelope, also struck mines.

While reversing out of the minefield, Neptune struck a third mine, which took off her propellers and left her dead in the water. Aurora was unable to render assistance as she was already down to 10 knots (19 km/h) and needed to turn back to Malta. Penelope was also unable to assist.

The destroyers Kandahar and Lively were sent into the minefield to attempt a tow. The former struck a mine and began drifting. Neptune then signalled for Lively to keep clear. (Kandahar was later evacuated and scuttle with a torpedo by the destroyer Jaguar, to prevent her capture.)

Neptune hit a fourth mine and quickly capsized, killing 737 crew members. The other 30 initially survived the sinking but they too died. As a result, only one was still alive when their carley float was picked up five days later by the Italian torpedo boat Achille Papa. The sole survivor, Norman Walton, spent 15 months in an Italian prisoner of war camp. In 1991 Walton travelled to the small city of Nelson, New Zealand, to unveil a memorial to Neptune. Of the 736 that perished, 150 were New Zealand sailors, including four from Nelson. A memorial service to Neptune and her crew is held each year in Nelson.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Neptune_(20)
http://www.hmsneptune.com/history1.htm

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
19 December 1944 - USS Redfish (SS 395) sinks the Japanese carrier Unryu - 200 nautical miles southeast of Shanghai, China. In the course of this engagement, Redfish is damaged and terminates her patrol early - Casualties were very heavy with 1,238 officers, crewmen and passengers losing their lives. Only 145 men survived.


The Japanese aircraft carrier Unryū (雲龍 Cloud Dragon) was the lead ship of her class of fleet aircraft carriers built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during World War II. She was commissioned in mid-1944, but fuel and aircrew shortages limited her use to Japanese waters. The impending American invasion of Luzon caused the IJN to order her to transport aircraft and supplies to the Philippines in December. The ship was torpedoed and sunk by the American submarine USS Redfish in the East China Sea during the voyage.



Design and description
The last purpose-built Japanese carrier construction during World War II was a group of vessels based on an improved Hiryū design, but with individual units differing in detail reflecting the changing circumstances as the conflict in the Pacific approached its conclusion. Unryū was ordered, under the provisional name of #302, as part of the Rapid Naval Armaments Supplement Programme of 1941. The ship was one of 16 Unryū-class aircraft carriers planned, although only three were completed before the end of the war.

Unryū had a length of 227.35 meters (745 ft 11 in) overall. She had a beam of 22 meters (72 ft 2 in) and a draft of 8.73 meters (28 ft 8 in). She displaced 20,450 metric tons (20,130 long tons). Her crew consisted of 1,595 officers and men.

The ship used the same turbines and boilers as used in the heavy cruiser Suzuya. These consisted of four geared steam turbine sets with a total of 152,000 shaft horsepower (113,000 kW), each driving one shaft, using steam provided by eight Kampon Type B water-tube boilers. The ship had a designed speed of 34 knots (63 km/h; 39 mph). Unryū carried 3,670 metric tons (3,610 long tons) of fuel oil which gave her a range of 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km; 9,200 mi) at 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). She had two funnels on the starboard side, each angled below the horizontal. They were fitted with a water-cooling system to reduce the turbulence caused by hot exhaust gases.

Flight deck arrangements
Unryū's flight deck was 216.9 meters (711 ft 7 in) long and had a maximum width of 27 meters (88 ft 7 in). A small island was mounted well forward on the starboard side and contained the ship's bridge and air operations control center. It was fitted with a small tripod mast that mounted one of the ship's radar antennas. The ship was designed with two superimposed hangars that were served by two aircraft elevators, each 14 by 14 meters (46 by 46 ft); the center elevator as used in Hiryū was deleted to simplify construction and reduce stress in the hull. The elevators had a maximum capacity of 7,000 kilograms (15,000 lb) and took 19 seconds to go from the lower hangar to the flight deck. Unryū was fitted with hydraulically operated Type 3 arresting gear with nine cables. She also mounted three Type 3 crash barricades. No aircraft catapult was fitted. The ship mounted a retractable crane on the starboard side of the flight deck, just aft of the rear elevator.[6] Unryū carried 397,340 liters (87,400 imp gal; 104,970 U.S. gal) of aviation gasoline for her aircraft.

The ship's air group was originally intended to consist of 12 Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters, plus 3 in storage, 27 Aichi D3A Val dive bombers, plus 3 in reserve, and 18 Nakajima B5N "Kate" torpedo bombers plus 2 in crates. Amagi's hangars could not accommodate so many aircraft so 11 planes were planned to be permanently carried on the flight deck. In 1943 the air group was revised to consist of 18 Mitsubishi A7M "Sam" fighters (+2 in storage), 27 Yokosuka D4Y "Judy" dive bombers and 6 Nakajima C6N "Myrt" reconnaissance aircraft. Of these, the C6Ns were intended to be carried on the flight deck. When the ship commissioned in 1944, neither the A7M nor the C6Ns were yet in service, so the air group was reconfigured to consist of 27 Zeros, 12 D4Ys, 3 of which were to be the reconnaissance version, and 9 Nakajima B6N "Jill" torpedo bombers. By this time, however, the shortage of carrier-qualified aircrew was such that they were ordered to operate from shore bases and Unryūnever embarked her full air group.

Armor, armament and sensors
Unryū's waterline armored belt was 46 millimeters (1.8 in) thick over her machinery spaces, but this increased to 140 millimeters (5.5 in) over her magazines. Her deck armor above the machinery was 25 millimeters (0.98 in) thick, but the armor above the magazines was 56 millimeters (2.2 in) thick.

The ship's primary armament consisted of a dozen 40-caliber 12.7 cm (5 in) Type 89 anti-aircraft (AA) guns in twin mounts on sponsons on the ship's sides. Unryū was initially equipped with 16 triple 25 mm (1 in) Type 96 and 3 single Type 96 AA gun mounts, most on sponsons along the sides of the hull. These guns were supplemented by six 28-round AA rocket launchers. Shortly after completion, another 4 triple and 13 single 25 mm mounts were added. For defense against submarines, the carrier was fitted with six depth charge throwers and carried between six and ten depth charges for them. A Type 3 sonar and a Type 93 hydrophone were fitted to detect any submarines.

Two Type 94 high-angle fire-control directors, one on each side of the ship, were fitted to control the Type 89 guns. Each director mounted a 4.5-meter (14 ft 9 in) rangefinder. Six Type 95 directors controlled the 25 mm guns and the 12 cm rocket launchers. Early warning was provided by two Type 2, Mark 2, Model 1 air search radars. One of these was mounted on the top of the island while the other retracted into the port side of the flight deck, between the two elevators. In addition, Unryū had two smaller Type 3, Mark 1, Model 3 early-warning radars, one mounted on the tripod mast on the island and the other on the starboard aft retractable radio mast.

Construction and career
Unryū was laid down at Yokosuka Naval Arsenal on 1 August 1942 and launched on 25 September 1943. Upon commissioning on 6 August 1944, she was assigned to the 3rd Fleet. She underwent shakedown and trials within Tokyo Bay through mid-September, and was then transferred to Kure Naval District, from which she made numerous training runs around the Seto Inland Sea until December. From 30 October to 7 November, she served briefly as the flagship of Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa’s Mobile Fleet. Eight days later, the Mobile Fleet was disbanded and the ship was transferred to Carrier Division 1. Later that month, some A6Ms and B6Ns were embarked.

Final voyage

Unryū sinking, December 19, 1944. Photo taken through the periscope of Redfish.

On 13 December 1944, thirty Yokosuka MXY7 Ōhka kamikaze rocket planes were loaded aboard Unryū for transport to Manila in the Philippines. Four days later, on 17 December 1944, Unryū departed Kure, Hiroshima escorted by the destroyers Shigure, Hinoki, and Momi under the overall command of Captain Konishi. Her maiden sea voyage was a vain attempt to reinforce the garrison on the island of Luzon just prior to the Allied landings there.

On 19 December 1944, Unryū was torpedoed and sunk by the submarine USS Redfish. Redfish fired four torpedoes, one of which hit directly under the carrier's bridge on the starboard side at 16:35. The hit stopped the vessel dead in the water as it severed the main steam line, flooded two boiler rooms, started several fires and gave the ship a 3-degree list. Just as the carrier began to get underway, another torpedo struck at 16:50 on the starboard side abreast the forward elevator and the highly volatile forward aviation gasoline tanks. The resulting explosion caused the warheads of the Ohka kamikaze planes stored on the lower hangar deck to detonate and essentially blew the bow off the ship. The ship listed to 30 degrees very quickly and the order to abandon ship was given. With a 90-degree list, the ship sank bow-first to the bed of the East China Sea in just seven minutes at position 29°59′N 124°03′E. Casualties were very heavy with 1,238 officers, crewmen and passengers losing their lives. Only 145 men survived to be rescued by Shigure, which returned to Sasebo, Nagasaki on 22 December. Unryū was struck from the Navy List on 20 February 1945


USS Redfish (SS/AGSS-395), a Balao-class submarine, was the first ship of the United States Navy to be named for the redfish. Her keel was laid down on 9 September 1943 at the Portsmouth Navy Yard of Kittery, Maine. She was launched on 27 January 1944 sponsored by Miss Ruth Roper, and commissioned on 12 April 1944 with Commander Louis D. McGregor in command.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Unryū
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Redfish_(SS-395)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
19 December 1981 – Sixteen lives are lost when the Penlee lifeboat goes to the aid of the stricken coaster Union Star in heavy seas.


The Penlee lifeboat disaster occurred on 19 December 1981 off the coast of Cornwall. The lifeboat Solomon Browne, based at the Penlee lifeboat station near Mousehole, went to the aid of the vessel Union Star after its engines failed in heavy seas. After the lifeboat had rescued four people, both vessels were lost with all hands; in all, sixteen people died including eight volunteer lifeboatmen.


47 ft Watson-class boats

MV Union Star
The MV Union Star was launched in Ringkøbing in Denmark just a few days before it was wrecked on the Cornish coast. A mini-bulk carrier registered in Dublin, Ireland, it sailed to IJmuiden in the Netherlands to collect a cargo of fertiliser for its maiden voyage to Arklow in Ireland. It was carrying a crew of five: Captain Henry Morton; Mate James Whittaker, Engineer George Sedgwick, Crewman Anghostino Verressimo, and Crewman Manuel Lopes. Also on board was the captain's family (his wife Dawn with teenage stepdaughters Sharon and Deanne) who had been picked up at an unauthorised stop on the east coast of England.

Near the south coast of Cornwall, 8 miles (13 km) east of the Wolf Rock, the new ship's engines failed. It was unable to restart them but did not make a mayday call. Assistance was offered by a tug, the Noord Holland, under the Lloyd's Open Form salvage contract but Morton initially refused the offer, later accepting after consulting his owners. Winds were gusting at up to 90 knots (100 mph; 170 km/h) – hurricane, force 12 on the Beaufort scale – with waves up to 60 feet (18 m) high. The powerless ship was blown across Mount's Bay towards the rocks of Boscawen Cove, near Lamorna.

Rescue attempts
FAA Sea King helicopter
As the ship was close to shore, the Coastguard at Falmouth summoned a Royal Navy Sea King helicopter from 820 Naval Air Squadron (who were providing cover for 771 Naval Air Squadron), RNAS Culdrose. It used the call sign "Rescue 80" during the mission.

The aircraft (airframe XZ574) was flown that night by United States Navy exchange-pilot LCDR Russell Smith, assisted by Lt Steve Marlow, S/Lt Kenneth Doherty and Leading Aircrewman Martin Kennie of the Royal Navy.[6] They were unable to winch anyone off the ship as the wind was too violent.

RNLB Solomon Browne


The original Penlee Lifeboat Station, from which Solomon Browne was launched

The Coastguard had difficulties contacting the secretary of the nearest lifeboat station, Penlee Lifeboat Station at Mousehole on the west side of the bay. They eventually contacted Coxswain Trevelyan Richards and asked him to put the lifeboat on standby in case the helicopter rescue failed. He summoned the lifeboat's volunteer crew and picked seven men to accompany him in the lifeboat. They were Second Coxswain/Mechanic Stephen Madron, Assistant Mechanic Nigel Brockman, Emergency Mechanic John Blewett, and crewmembers Charlie Greenhaugh, Kevin Smith, Barrie Torrie and Gary Wallis. Neil Brockman, the son of Nigel Brockman, got to the lifeboat station on time, but was turned down for the trip by Trevelyan Richards, who was reluctant to take out two members of the same family that night.

The lifeboat launched at 8:12 pm and headed out through the storm to the drifting coaster. The lifeboat was the Solomon Browne, a wooden 47-foot (14 m) Watson-class boat built in 1960 and capable of 9 knots (17 km/h). After it had made several attempts to get alongside, four people managed to jump across; the captain's family and one of the men were apparently safe. The lifeboat radioed that 'we’ve got four off', but that was the last heard from either vessel.

Lt Cdr Smith USN, the pilot of the rescue helicopter, later reported that:

The greatest act of courage that I have ever seen, and am ever likely to see, was the penultimate courage and dedication shown by the Penlee [crew] when it manoeuvred back alongside the casualty in over 60 ft breakers and rescued four people shortly after the Penlee had been bashed on top of the casualty's hatch covers. They were truly the bravest eight men I've ever seen, who were also totally dedicated to upholding the highest standards of the RNLI.​

Other lifeboats
Lifeboats were summoned from Sennen Cove, The Lizard and St Mary's to try to help their colleagues from Penlee. The Sennen Cove Lifeboat found it impossible to make headway round Land's End. The Lizard Lifeboat found a serious hole in its hull when it finally returned to its slipway after a fruitless search.

Aftermath

The memorial garden at Penlee
In the aftermath of the disaster, wreckage from the Solomon Browne was found along the shore, and the Union Star lay capsized onto the rocks, west of Tater Du Lighthouse. Some, but not all, of the 16 bodies were eventually recovered.

The inquiry into the disaster determined that the loss of the Union Star and its crew was because of:

1. the irreparable failure of the ship's engines due to contamination of fuel by sea water while off a dangerous lee shore;
2. the extreme severity of the weather, wind and sea; and
3. the capsize of the vessel on or shortly after stranding.

The loss of the Solomon Browne was:

in consequence of the persistent and heroic endeavours by the coxswain and his crew to save the lives of all from the Union Star. Such heroism enhances the highest traditions of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in whose service they gave their lives.​

Coxswain Trevelyan Richards was posthumously awarded the Royal National Lifeboat Institution's gold medal, while the remainder of the crew were all posthumously awarded bronze medals. The station itself was awarded a gold medal service plaque. The disaster prompted a massive public appeal for the benefit of the village of Mousehole which raised over £3 million (equivalent to £10.6 million in 2016), although there was an outcry when the government tried to tax the donations.


Penlee Lifeboat Memorial

Two nights before the disaster, Charlie Greenhaugh, who in civilian life was the landlord of the Ship Inn on the quayside in Mousehole, had turned on the village's Christmas lights. After the storm the lights were left off but three days later his widow Mary asked for them to be repaired and lit again. The village has been lit up each December since then, but on the anniversary of the disaster they are turned off at 8:00 pm for an hour as an act of remembrance. A plaque was also erected on the Ship Inn on behalf of the tenants, managers, directors and employees of the St Austell Brewery, the pub's owner.

Within a day of the disaster enough people from Mousehole had volunteered to form a new lifeboat crew. In 1983 a new lifeboat station (still known as 'Penlee') was opened nearby at Newlyn where a faster, larger boat could be kept moored afloat in the harbour. Neil Brockman later became the coxswain of the station's Severn-class lifeboat. The old boathouse at Penlee Point with its slipway is kept the same as it was when the lifeboat launched and a memorial garden was created beside it in 1985 to commemorate the crew of the Solomon Browne.

The Sea King helicopter involved in the rescue attempt, Airframe XZ574, is today preserved at the Fleet Air Arm Museum at RNAS Yeovilton, primarily due to it having been flown by Prince Andrew, Duke of York during the Falklands War.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penlee_lifeboat_disaster
http://www.rnli-penleelifeboat.org.uk/About us/PastLifeboats

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
Other Events on 19 December


1664 - British squadron of 7 ships, under Cptn.Thomas Allin, attacked Dutch Smyrna fleet of 34 merchantmen and escorts off Cadiz.

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


1743 – Launch of Spanish Invencible (San Jose) 70 at Havana - Burnt 1750

1744 – Launch of French Diane, (one-off 30-gun design of 1743 by François Coulomb jr., with 4 x 12-pounders on the lower deck, 22 x 8-pounders on the gun deck and 4 x 4-pounders above; at Toulon - fitted "en flûte" with reduced armament of 20 x 8-pounders in 1758, captured by the British Navy an foundered the same year.

8-pounder armed frigates (frégates du deuxième ordre)


1809 - Cormorant-class ship-sloop HMS Rosamond (1807 – 18), Benjamin Walker, captured French national brig corvette Le Papillon (1807 - 16), Cptn. De La Genetiere off St. Croix.

http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collec...el-344411;browseBy=vessel;vesselFacetLetter=R
https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=6243
https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=22918
https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=5692


1812 - HMS Albacore (18), Cptn. Henry Thomas Davies, HMS Pickle (14), Lt. William Figg , HMS Borer (12), Richard Coote, and HMS Landrail (4), Lt. John Bill, engaged Gloire (40), Cptn. Albin-Réné Roussin, off the Lizard

Lieutenant Andrew Crawford relinquished command of Pickle in July 1811. She was subsequently commanded by Lieutenant William Figg. During the night of 17 December 1812 Pickle and the 18-gun ship-sloop Albacore were becalmed off the Lizard with six merchantmen. At dawn they found that they were also in company with the French 40-gun frigate Gloire. When a wind came up the Frenchman made all sail to escape, pursued by the British ships, who were joined later by the 12-gun brig-sloop Borer and 4-gun schooner Landrail. In the exchange of fire Albacore suffered one man killed and six or seven wounded before she pulled back. Eventually, the frigate managed to outrun the four small vessels. In the engagement Landrail did not actually fire her guns. As James put it, "for the Landrail to have fired her 12-pounders would have been a farce."

HMS Albacore (1804) was an 18-gun sloop launched in 1804 and sold in 1815.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Eclair_(1801)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Landrail_(1806)


1819 – Death of Thomas Fremantle, English admiral and politician (b. 1765)

Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Francis Fremantle, GCB, GCH (20 November 1765 – 19 December 1819) was a British naval officer in the Royal Navy whose accolades include three separate fleet actions, a close friendship with Lord Nelson, and a barony in Austria.
Thomas Fremantle's son was Sir Admiral Charles Howe Fremantle and Fremantle in Western Australia was named after him.



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


1941 - The U.S. Naval Academy class of 1942 graduates six months early due to the nation's entry into World War II.


1943 - USS Grayback (SS 208) sinks the Japanese destroyer Numakaze 50 miles east-northeast of Naha, Okinawa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Grayback_(SS-208)


1944 - PB4Y-1s (VPB 104) attack a Japanese convoy in the South China Sea and sink transport Shinfuku Maru.

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
20 December 1776 - British frigate HMS Pearl (1762 - 32) captured the Continental Navy brig USS Lexington (14), Cptn William Hallock, off the Delaware capes.


HMS Pearl was a 32-gun fifth-rate frigate of the Niger-class in the Royal Navy. Launched at Chatham Dockyard in 1762, she served in British North America until January 1773, when she sailed to England for repairs. Returning to North America in March 1776, to fight in the American Revolutionary War, Pearl escorted the transports which landed troops in Kip's Bay that September. Towards the end of 1777, she joined Richard Howe's fleet in Narragansett Bay and was still there when the French fleet arrived and began an attack on British positions. Both fleets were forced to retire due to bad weather and the action was inconclusive. Pearl was then dispatched to keep an eye on the French fleet, which had been driven into Boston.

Pearl was present when the British captured the island of St Lucia in December 1778 and was chosen to carry news of the victory to England, capturing the 28-gun frigate Santa Monica off the Azores on her return journey. Pearl joined Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot's squadron in July 1780, capturing the 28-gun frigate Esperance while stationed off Bermuda in September and, in the following March, took part in the first battle of Virginia Capes, where she had responsibility for relaying signals. At the end of the war in 1782, Pearl returned to England where she underwent extensive repairs and did not serve again until 1786, when she was recommissioned for the Mediterranean.

Taken out of service in 1792, Pearl was recalled in February 1793, when hostilities resumed between Britain and France. On her return to America, she narrowly escaped capture by a French squadron anchored between the Îles de Los and put into Sierra Leone for repairs following the engagement. In 1799, Pearl joined George Elphinstone's fleet in the Mediterranean where she took part in the Battle of Alexandria in 1801. In 1802, she sailed to Portsmouth where she served as a slop ship and a receiving ship before being sold in 1832.


Scale: 1:48. A plan showing the body plan, and sheer lines with inboard detail and figurehead for 'Pearl' (1762), a 32-gun Fifth Rate Frigate.

Class and type: Niger-class fifth-rate frigate
Tons burthen: 683 16⁄94 (bm)
Length:

• 125 feet 0 1⁄2 inch (38.1 m) (gundeck)
• 103 feet 4 3⁄8 inches (31.5 m) (keel)

Beam: 35 feet 3 inches (10.7 m)
Depth of hold: 12 feet 0 inches (3.7 m)
Propulsion: Sails
Sail plan: Fully Rigged Ship
Complement: 220
Armament:

• Gundeck: 26 × 12-pounder guns
• QD: 4 × 6-pounder guns
• Fc: 2 × 6-pounder guns

Broadside Weight = 177 Imperial Pound ( 80.2698 kg)

Construction and armament
Pearl was a 32-gun, Niger-class frigate built to Thomas Slade's design and ordered on 24 March 1761. Her keel was laid down at Chatham Dockyard on 6 April.

When launched on 27 March 1762, Pearl was 125 feet 0 1⁄2 inch (38.1 m) along the gun deck, 103 feet 4 3⁄8 inches (31.5 m) at the keel, had a beam of 35 feet 3 inches (10.7 m) and a depth in the hold of 12 feet 0 inches (3.7 m). She was 683 16⁄94tons burthen and by the time she had been completed, on 14 May 1762, she had cost The Admiralty £16,573.5.4d.

Niger-class frigates were fifth-rates, carrying a main battery of twenty-six 12-pounder (5.4 kg) guns on the upper deck, four 6-pounder (2.7 kg) guns on the quarterdeck and two on the forecastle. When fully manned, they carried a complement of 220.


Lines (ZAZ3010)

Service
Pearl was first commissioned in April 1762, under Captain Joseph Deane, who took her to The Downs, to be fitted-out. In March 1763 she was recommissioned under Captain Charles Saxton and on 22 May 1764, she left for Newfoundland in British North America.[2] Pearl served there under captains Patrick Drummond and, subsequently, John Elphinston, until she paid off in December 1768. She was recommissioned the following month under John Leveson-Gower, who was superseded by Captain Sir Basil Keith in November.

Between April 1770 and January 1773, Pearl spent time on and off the Newfoundland station, first under John Ruthven then James Bremer. She then sailed for Portsmouth where she underwent repairs, then a refit, at a total cost of £9,008.15.11d. The combined works took until February 1776.

American Revolutionary War


Shortly after commissioning the British ship ‘Pearl’ Captain George Montagu was cruising off Fayal in the Azores when early in the morning he saw and chased a sail. After several hours he was able to open fire and a two hour fight ensued. The other ship eventually struck and it turned out to be the Spanish frigate ‘Santa Monica’. Though the Spanish ship was less strongly armed, Montagu’s crew was very raw since only ten of the men having been in a man-of-war before. In the painting, the ‘Pearl’ is in the centre foreground and is shown in the process of raking the ‘Santa Monica’ in the left of the picture. In the right distance are two more British frigates. The painting is signed ‘Tho. Whitcombe 1805’.

John O'Hara assumed command in November 1775 but was succeeded by Thomas Wilkinson in March 1776; he returned Pearl to North America in April to fight the revolution. She was present during the landings at Kip's Bay in September, having escorted troop ships along the Hudson River. On 20 December, she captured the 16-gun sloop USS Lexington. John Elphinston was back in command towards the end of the year and from January to May 1777. Pearl made more than a dozen captures, including Batchelor on 21 March (which was suspected of piracy on account of its armament) and a whaleboat from Lewes on 29 May that was thought to be spying. In July 1777, boats from Pearl and Camilla captured and burnt the Continental schooner Mosquito in a cutting out expedition.

Read at wikipedia the long further history of this ship.....


Pearl engages the Santa Monica in the Action of 14 September 1779

American brigantine 'Lexington' (1776) was an unrated brigantine, purchased in 1776 by the Continantal Navy.

Dimensions
Dimension Measurement Type Metric Equivalent
Length of Gundeck - 86'Imperial Feet - 26.2382
Breadth - 24' 6"Imperial Feet - 7.3533

Armament
1776 Broadside Weight = 28 Imperial Pound ( 12.698 kg)
Gun Deck: 14 American 4-Pounder

Service History
Date Event
26.3.1776 Dropped down the Delware
6.4.1776 Left for sea through the blockade
7.4.1776 Took the Unrated Tender Edward
5.5.1776 Off the Delaware Capes, Roebuck (44) and Liverpool (28) chased Lexington for 8 hours and came close enough to exchange fire with the American ship before Barry managed to elude his pursuers and reach Philadelphia safely.
10.7.1776 Put to sea
27.7.1776 Took the Privateer Lady Susan
9.1776 Took the sloop Betsy
26.9.1776 ed off Philadelphia to repair damage caused by a lightning strike
20.12.1776 Taken by Pearl (32)
25.12.1776 Retaken by her crew and sailed into Baltimore
20.2.1777 Sailed for France, taking two prizes before arriving in Bordeaux
28.5.1777 Sailed from France for Ireland in company with Reprisal (18) and Dolphin (10)
18.6.1777 Off the Mull of Kintyre
13.9.1777 Left France
19.9.1777 Alert vs Lexington and captured

On September 19th, a sharp action took place in the Channel between the American brig, Lexington, 16, Captain H. Johnston, and the British cutter, Alert, 10, Lieut. John Bazely. The American was caught unprepared and brought to action early in the morning. She had a short supply of ammunition, and no match ready. After more than two hours' fighting the Lexington crippled the Alert's rigging, and managed to draw off, with scarcely a shot left in her magazines. The Alert, however, was very smartly repaired, and renewed the chase. She came up again with the enemy about 1.30, and, an hour later, was in a position to reopen fire. The Americans could now make no reply, and, after passively enduring the broadsides of the Alert for an hour, were compelled to strike. Cruising in the Channel in company with the Reprisal and Dolphin, the Lexington had in five days captured fourteen prizes.

Amongst the Lexington's killed and wounded were the master, first lieutenant, lieutenant of marines, and gunner. It should be noted that the victory of so inferior a vessel as the Alert was probably due to surprise.


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.

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.

• Alarm class 32-gun fifth rates 1758-66; designed by Thomas Slade.
  • HMS Alarm 1758 - broken up 1812.
  • HMS Eolus (or Aeolus) 1758 - hulked as receiving ship at Sheerness in 1796, renamed Guernsey in 1800, broken up in 1801.
  • HMS Stag 1758 - broken up in 1783.
  • HMS Pearl 1762 - hulked as a slop ship at Portsmouth in 1803, renamed Prothee in 1825, sold 1832.
  • HMS Glory 1763 - renamed Apollo in 1774, broken up in 1786.
  • HMS Emerald 1762 - broken up in 1793. (According to Rif Winfield - British Warships in The Age of Sail 1714 - 1792. This is a "Niger Class" ship.)
  • HMS Aurora 1766 - lost with all hands on her way to the West Indies in 1769.
• Niger class 32-gun fifth rates 1759-64; Thomas Slade design, "very similar" to the Alarm class above.
  • HMS Niger 1759 - converted to troopship in 1799, reclassed as a 28-gun Sixth Rate in 1804, sold in 1814.
  • HMS Montreal 1761 - taken by the French off Malaga on 29 April 1779.
  • HMS Quebec 1760 - caught fire and blew up while in action with the French frigate Surveillante (1778) on 5 October 1779.
  • HMS Winchelsea 1764 - converted to troopship in 1800, mooring hulk at Sheerness in 1803, sold in 1814.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Pearl_(1762)
https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=5714
http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collec...el-337994;browseBy=vessel;vesselFacetLetter=P
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger-class_frigate
https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=11072

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
20 December 1782 - Battle of the Delaware Capes
HMS Diomede (1781 - 44) took South Carolina (1778 - 30)


The Battle of the Delaware Capes or the 3rd Battle of Delaware Bay was a naval engagement that was fought off the Delaware River towards the end of the American Revolutionary War. The battle took place on 20 and 21 December 1782, some three weeks after the signing of the preliminary articles of peace between Great Britain and the former American colonies, and was an engagement between three British Royal navy frigates HMS Diomede, Quebec and Astraea on the one side, and the South Carolina Navy's 40-gun frigate South Carolina, the brigs Hope and Constance, and the schooner Seagrove on the other. The British were victorious with only Seagrove escaping capture.


Capture of the American Frigate 'South Carolina' by the British ship 'Diomede' and frigates 'Quebec' and 'Astrea' - circa 1782

Background
The inactivity of the British, American and French armies, meant that the Royal Navy was free to concentrate on enemy trade. One group of British frigates, HMS Diomede under Captain Thomas Frederick and the sister 32-gun frigates - HMS Quebec under Captain Christopher Mason, and HMS Astraea under Captain Matthew Squires, was blockading the Delaware Bay. On 20 December 1782 they spotted a number of vessels coming out of the bay and chased after them. Frederick was told by the officer of watch that one of the vessels was a large frigate. This was the forty-gun South Carolina.

South Carolina, under Captain John Joyner, was built at Amsterdam in 1780. She originally was named Indien and belonged to France but the Americans hired her. The ship was the most heavily armed warship to sail under American colors during the revolution. Joyner was attempting to dash out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, through the British blockade on 19 December with several vessels. As well as the large South Carolina, the privateer brig Hope, commanded by John Prole of ten guns and carrying tobacco and flour, another privateer brig Constance, under Commander Jesse Harding, and the six-gun schooner Seagrove, under Captain Benjamin Bradhurst, which had joined them for protection. On 19 December Seagrove hailed a merchant vessel entering the river. Her master learned that three large sail had been seen patrolling off the Cape May Channel. With this information Joyner decided to proceed down the main channel and go straight out into the ocean. On 20 December, in the early evening, the four vessels sailed down the channel and out into the Atlantic.

Battle
Between 2200 and 2230hrs the Americans sighted three large British warships; at about the same time the British sighted the Americans. Five hours out in the cruise South Carolina and the Hope turned south and two of the British frigates turned after them. Seagrove turned north, with Diomede in pursuit. She got close enough to fire a few shots, but the schooner sent out boats and towed into the wind. Eventually Diomede turned south to continue the main pursuit letting Seagrove get away. Whilst Diomede was chasing Seagrove, Constance, having never strayed from her course, had continued east and surrendered to Quebec and Astrea without pointless resistance. The British pursuit of South Carolina then continued through the night.

At sunrise the nearest British ship was about two and a half miles behind South Carolina. Hope passed South Carolina at least once during the pursuit, even though Hope was slower before the wind. Joyner suggested that Prole tow Hope around the British and make the pursuit into a rowing match, but Prole rejected the advice. By 1300hrs the British took Hope under fire and she surrendered after having nearly collided with one of the British frigates. This just now left South Carolina, which was only a mile in front of the British ships once Hope had surrendered.

The pursuers skillfully took up position to limit South Carolina's options in trying to get away, the British windward ship attempted to mask the South Carolina's wind. For eighteen hours the British chased South Carolina. When she came in range, she fired her stern chasers at Diomede, which returned fire from her bow-guns. By 1500hrs the British ships were close enough to exchange shots and could each yaw, fire a broadside and return to the chase while preventing South Carolina from doing the same. The first of the British broadsides did major damage to South Carolina, leading Joyner to call his officers together to discuss whether to fight or to continue the flight. The decision was to continue the latter. By 1700hrs Quebec and Diomedecame up alongside South Carolina, with Astrea behind in support, together with Hope and Constance. The British were soon in position to fire six broadsides, five from the Diomede and the other from the Quebec, all aimed at South Carolina's masts, sails and rigging, which within two hours were in tatters.

Joyner, now seeing the hopelessness of South Carolina's situation, decided to fire her guns one last time, not wishing to surrender with his cannons loaded. He then struck, ending the battle. The British took possession of South Carolina and transferred their prisoners over to the British ships.

Aftermath
The British had suffered no casualties and damage to their three frigates was light, most damage being to masts and rigging. South Carolina had a crew of about 466 men when captured, of whom she had lost six killed and eight wounded. Hope had 42 crewmen. Constance, with another thirty men, bought the total number of American prisoners to nearly 530. Fifty German and eight British prisoners that the Americans had recruited out of captivity in Philadelphia were released as they had once served as soldiers in General John Burgoyne's army. Because of the number of men involved, the British treated their American prisoners strictly, locking them under hatches not allowing more than two to come up on deck at the same time.

Prize crews then took South Carolina, Hope, and Constance to New York where all three vessels were tried and condemned. The Royal Navy did not purchase South Carolina; the war was ending and with it the need for a large navy, and South Carolina's design had flaws. Instead, she was sold for service as a merchantman. Prize money for the captured vessels was awarded in 1784.

Order of battle
South Carolina Navy:

• South Carolina, Frigate, flagship
• Hope, brig
• Constance, brig
• Seagrove, Schooner

Royal Navy:

• HMS Diomede, Frigate, flagship
• HMS Quebec, Frigate
• HMS Astraea, Frigate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Delaware_Capes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Diomede_(1781)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indien_(1778)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
20 December 1782 - Battle of the Delaware Capes
HMS Diomede (44), Cptn. T. L Frederick, took South Carolina (30) - The ships


HMS Diomede was a 44-gun fifth rate built by James Martin Hillhouse and launched at Bristol on 18 October 1781. She belonged to the Roebuck class of vessels specially built during the American Revolutionary War for service in the shallow American coastal waters. As a two-decker, she had two complete batteries of guns, one on the upper deck and the other on the lower deck.

Class and type: 44-gun Roebuck-class two-decker fifth rate
Tons burthen: 887 37⁄94 (bm)
Length:
140 ft (42.7 m) (overall)
115 ft 6 in (35.2 m) (keel)
Beam: 38 ft 2 1⁄2 in (11.6 m)
Depth of hold: 16 ft 4 in (5.0 m)
Sail plan: Full-rigged ship
Complement: 300
Armament:
As built:
Upper deck: 22 x 9-pounder guns
Lower deck: 20 x 18-pounder guns
Fc: 2 x 6-pounder guns
Broadside Weight = 285 Imperial Pound ( 129.2475 kg)


Lines (ZAZ2238)

Diomede participated in two major actions. The first occurred in 1782 when she captured South Carolina of the South Carolina Navy. The second took place in 1794 in the Indian Ocean. Although the action in the Indian Ocean was inconclusive and the French broke off contact after suffering much heavier casualties than the British, the French did succeed in breaking the blockade of Île de France and saved it from starvation.

Diomede was wrecked in 1795 off Trincomalee, Ceylon, during the campaign to capture Trincomalé.

Career
In October 1781 Diomede was commissioned under Captain Thomas L. Frederick. On 8 June 1782 he sailed her for North America.

Capture of South Carolina
Main article: Battle of the Delaware Capes
On 20 December 1782 the Diomede, and the sister 32-gun frigates – Quebec, Captain Christopher Mason, and Astraea, Captain Matthew Squires – captured the South Carolina Navy's frigate South Carolina in the Delaware River. South Carolina, under Captain John Joyner, was attempting to dash out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, through the British blockade. She was in the company of the brig Constance, schooner Seagrove and the ship Hope, which had joined her for protection.

The British chased South Carolina for 18 hours and fired on her for two hours before she struck. She had a crew of about 466 men when captured, of whom she had lost six killed or wounded. The British suffered no casualties.

Astraea and Quebec also captured Hope and Constance, which was carrying tobacco. Prize crews then took South Carolina, Hope, and Constance to New York. Seagrove escaped. Prize moneywas paid in 1784.

Diomede was paid off in December 1783, after the end of the war. She was recommissioned in March 1793 under Captain Matthew Smith. On 17 November 1793, Smith sailed Diomede for the East Indies.


French frigate Cybèle and Prudente battling HMS Centurion and HMS Diomede

Action of 22 October 1794
A year later Diomede was with the British 50-gun ship Centurion, Captain Samuel Osborne, in a blockade of Île de France. She took part in the Action of 22 October 1794 when the senior French naval officer there, Commodore Jean-Marie Renaud, decided to try to break the blockade.

Malacca station
On 5 February 1795 Rainier sent Diomede and Heroine to take station between Malacca and the north-west end of Banda Island. They were to stay there until all the trade from the eastward had passed. Diomede was then to return to Madras via the Sunda Straits and Heroine via the Strait of Malacca.[7]

Fate
On 23 July Diomede joined a squadron under Commodore Peter Rainier consisting of Suffolk, Hobart, Centurion, with troop-transports, and sailed for Ceylon to take Trincomalee and other Dutch settlements on the Island.

On 2 August 1795 Diomede was towing a transport brig when she struck a sunken rock in Black Bay and sank. She was working into the bay against a strong land wind when she hit the rock, which her charts showed as being a half-mile further north. She went down with all her stores on board and there was barely enough time for her crew to save themselves.

Although the loss of Diomede delayed the landing by a day, on 31 August the British captured Fort Ostenburg, and with it Trincomalee. The British would go on to capture other Dutch settlements in India and Ceylon, but denying Trincomalee to the French was the most important objective.

Post script
In his report on the action of 22 October 1794, Osborne wrote critically of Smith’s conduct. Smith asked Osborne for an explanation. Osborne replied even more critically and demanded a court martial to examine Smith's command of the two frigates. The resulting court martial dismissed Smith from the Navy. The issue was not a lack of courage but rather Smith's dislike and jealousy of Osborne. When Smith returned to Britain in 1798 he appealed the sentence. His dismissal was rescinded due to irregularities in the proceedings and he was restored to his rank. However, the Admiralty never again called him into service.



Indien (1778), often L'Indien, was a frigate built for the U.S. Commissioners in France — Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee — to a design by the French naval architect Jacques Boux. She was laid down early in 1777 by a private shipyard in Amsterdam and launched in February 1778. Apparently she was built with the scantlings and lines of a small 74-gun Third Rate ship of the line but was a frigate in construction. In 1780 the Duke of Luxembourg chartered her to the navy of South Carolina and she sailed as South Carolina.

Her armament consisted of 28 Swedish long 36-pounder guns on her main deck, and 12 long 12-pounders on her forecastle and her quarterdeck. Perhaps her greatest significance is that the marine architect Joshua Humphreys studied her sleek hull and used her lines in designing the United States Navy's first frigates, especially USS Constitution and USS Constellation.

Type: Frigate
Tons burthen: 1430 (bm)
Length: 170 ft (52 m)
Beam: 43 ft 3 in (13.18 m)
Draft: 16 ft 6 in (5.03 m)
Complement: 550 officers and men
Armament: 28 × 36-pounder guns + 12 × 12-pounder guns
Broadside Weight = 520 Imperial Pound ( 235.82 kg)

Construction history
Late in the year John Paul Jones sailed for France, hoping to assume command of Indien; but, before his arrival, financial difficulties and opposition from the still-neutral Dutch government, under pressure from Great Britain, had forced the Commissioners to sell the new frigate to Louis XVI, King of France.

For over three years the ship remained idle while several American and European agents schemed to obtain her. Finally, on 30 May 1780 the King granted her to the Duke of Luxembourg, who simultaneously chartered her to South Carolina, represented by Commodore Alexander Gillon of the South Carolina Navy, for a quarter-share of her prizes. Gillon renamed the frigate South Carolina.

Service as South Carolina and capture
Main article: Battle of the Delaware Capes
In 1781 South Carolina, manned by American officers and a group of European seamen and marines, sailed from Texel via Scotland and Ireland. On the way she captured a privateer. She then stopped at Corunna and Santa Cruz before sailing across the Atlantic toward Charleston. On the way to Tenerife she captured the brig Venus, loaded with a cargo of salt fish from Newfoundland for Lisbon. When she found that the British had already occupied Charleston she sailed for the West Indies. On the way she captured five Jamaican vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. She then took her prizes to Havana, Cuba.

South Carolina arrived at Havana on 12 January 1782. At Havana, after negotiations between Gillon and the Spanish, the South Carolina joined a force of 59 vessels sent to capture the British colony of New Providence in the Bahamas. On 22 April the expedition sailed and by 5 May the whole fleet had reached New Providence. On 8 May the colony surrendered. This was the third capture of New Providence during the American Revolutionary War.

South Carolina then sailed north, arriving at Philadelphia on 28 May. On the way, on 25 May a British privateer, the Virginia of New York, trailed her, firing the occasional cannon to try to draw the attention of any vessels of the Royal Navy that might be cruising in the area. South Carolina sustained no damage.

She remained in Philadelphia nearly six months. While she was there the Duke of Luxembourg dismissed Gillon and replaced him as captain with Captain John Joyner. She sailed in November but not very far. Most of her crew had never been out to sea and began to have regrets. Fortunately she had some 50 Hessian marines and eight British soldiers aboard who had been captured from General John Burgoyne’s army at the Battle of Saratoga and who had been recruited from prison. Ironically, they remained loyal, thus forestalling the brewing mutiny.

On 20 December, while she was attempting to dash out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, through the British blockade she ran into a squadron of three British frigates. South Carolina was in the company of the brig Constance, schooner Seagrove and the ship Hope, which had joined her for protection. The three British vessels were the 44-gun fifth rate two-decker HMS Diomede, Captain Thomas L. Frederick and the two 32-gun Fifth Rate frigates HMS Quebec, Captain Christopher Mason, and HMS Astraea, Captain Matthew Squires.

The British chased South Carolina for 18 hours and fired on her for two hours before she struck her colours in the Delaware River. She had a crew of about 466 men when captured, of whom she lost six men killed and eight wounded. The British suffered no casualties.


Astraea and Quebec captured Hope and Constance, which was carrying tobacco. Prize crews then took South Carolina, Hope and Constance to New York. Seagrove escaped.

The British did not take South Carolina into service because she was too lightly framed for the Royal Navy. The problem was that South Carolina's hull had hogged as a consequence of the weight of her guns. (American warship designers subsequently put much more longitudinal strength into the design of their frigates.)

Fate
The British put South Carolina up for sale to private parties for use as a merchantman. Her last recorded trip was to Deal, Kent in 1783 as part of the British evacuation of New York. She carried some 600 German soldiers, some of whom may well earlier have served on her as marines. There is no information about what happened to South Carolina thereafter though the discovery during World War II of a ship's bell with the name South Carolina on it in a jute mill between Calcutta and the coast on the Ganges River in India suggests that she may have reached the Indian Ocean.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Delaware_Capes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Diomede_(1781)
http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collec...el-307360;browseBy=vessel;vesselFacetLetter=D
https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=3923
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indien_(1778)
https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=13341

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
20 December 1788 – Launch of Spanish San Francisco de Paula, 74 gun ship of the line, at Cartagena


San Ildefonso class

Design
San Ildefonso class has been described as a technical milestone in 18th-century Spanish shipbuilding. Having fought the Royal Navy in various wars the Spanish admirals were concerned that their ships could not match equivalent British vessels for speed. The San Ildefonso incorporated many amendments from traditional Spanish designs in order to improve her speed. Instead of traditional iron bolts holding the hull together the vessel utilised much lighter wooden treenails, the upper parts of the ship were made from pine and cedar instead of oak to reduce weight and lower the centre of gravity and the vessel was constructed shorter in length than a traditional Spanish seventy-four would be.


Plans for a ship of the San Ildefonsino class



Data from the Europa
Class and type: Third-rate ship of the line
Type: Ship of the line
Tons burthen: 1640 tons
Length:190 ft
Beam:52 ft
Depth:25 ft
Armament:

• 28 x 24-pounder cannon
• 30 x 18-pounder cannon
• 16 x 8-pounder cannon

Scale: Unknown. A model of a Spanish warship made in plaster with wood, metal, paper, and cotton fittings which has been realistically painted. The model depicts the vessel at 1.40pm on 21st October 1805 at the height of the Battle of Trafalgar. The model shows damage to the ship, there is dark grey cotton wool on the bow and on the deck of the ship and some of the sails show shot damage. The ship is three masted, ship rigged with set sails. The hull is painted black with white stripes along the two gun decks, white on the deck, and black on the deck fittings. A Spanish flag is flying from the peak of the gaff. On a paper label: "3".


“San Ildefonso” (Rafael Gómez)

With 2400 copper plates on her hull, she was much faster than other ships of the same era, reaching 14 (rather than the average 10) knots downwind and 10 (rather than 8) knots upwind.

Though considered a seventy-four (or third-rate) ship, in common with other vessels of the time, the San Ildefonso actually carried more guns. She was equipped with 80 in total comprising 16 eight pounder cannons on the fore-deck and 6 eight pounder cannons, 10 thirty pounder howitzers and six twenty-four pound howitzers on the aft deck. However unlike most other Spanish ships of the line (including all those present at the Battle of Trafalgar) the San Ildefonso did not carry any four pounder anti-personnel "pedrero" cannons.


Spanish ship of the Line San Telmo by Alejo Berlinguero, Madrid Naval Museum

Ships of the class

San Ildefonso 74 (launched 22 January 1785 at Cartagena) - Captured by Britain at the Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805, retaining same name, BU 1816
San Telmo 74 (launched 20 June 1788 at Ferrol) - Lost off Cape Horn 1819
San Francisco de Paula 74 (launched 20 December 1788 at Cartagena) - BU 1823
Europa 74 (launched 19 October 1789 at Ferrol) - Stricken 1801
Intrépido 74 (launched 20 November 1790 at Ferrol) - transferred to France 1 July 1801, renamed Intrépide, captured by Britain at the Battle of Trafalgar and sank in storm, 1805
Conquistador 74 (launched 9 December 1791 at Cartagena) - transferred to France 23 April 1802, renamed Conquérant, stricken 1804
Infante Don Pelayo 74 (launched 22 November 1792 at Havana) - transferred to France 23 April 1802, renamed Desaix, stricken 1804
Monarca 74 (launched 17 March 1794 at Ferrol) - Captured by Britain at the Battle of Trafalgar and wrecked in storm, 23 October 1805




Spanish ensign captured with their warship, 'San Ildefonso', 74 guns, by the 'Defence' at Trafalgar (see PAD5735). It was hung in the crossing of St Paul's Cathedral during Nelson's funeral service on 9 January 1806 (see PAH7332) and was presented to Greenwich Hospital for display in the former Royal Naval Museum in the Royal Naval College at Greenwich by the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's in 1907. It passed to the NMM with much of the rest of that collection in 1936. This design of ensign was in use from 1785 to 1931. The field is divided into three horizontal stripes; red, yellow, red. On an applied patch in the central stripe is an oval containing the arms of Castile (a yellow/gold castle on a red field) and Leon (a white field with a red lion rampant ), a crown above. The arms appear to have been printed or stencilled. Inscribed on the hoist in ink: 'SAN ELDEFONSO'. The flag is of wool bunting, woven 29 threads to the inch (warp), 28 threads to the inch (weft) and made of 21 x 405 mm-wide breadths, hand-sewn horizontally with overstitched seams. There is a narrower band of fabric at the top and bottom edge. There are some rectangular holes apparently cut by souvenir hunters at the hoist end and neat patches indicating repairs nearly contemporary with the date of manufacture. The rope hoist is frapped in a linen binding sleeve, stitched to the body of the flag. In 1962 this ensign was suspended for photography from the parapet of the Queen's House, Greenwich - producing an instructive though not now repeatable demonstration of the great size of these flags: this one is 32 feet long, English measure (NMM neg. A3391). A very similar ensign, worn by the 'San Juan Nepomuceno' during the Battle of Trafalgar, is in the Museo de Ejército, Madrid.


An action during the Napoleonic War, 1803-15. On 15 September 1805 Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson re-hoisted his flag in the 'Victory', 100 guns, at Portsmouth and sailed to join Vice-Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood and re-assume command of the Mediterranean fleet off Cadiz on 28 September. On the same day Vice-Admiral Villeneuve was ordered to sail from Cadiz for the Mediterranean with just his French ships. However, the Spanish were determined to accompany him. On the morning of 21 October the British found the Franco-Spanish Allied fleet, which reversed its course northwards towards Cadiz, forming into a somewhat disordered single column on the port tack in a light wind. The British fleet was in two parallel lines, the left-hand or windward column being led by Nelson in the 'Victory', the right-hand or leeward one by Collingwood in the 'Royal Sovereign', 100 guns. Both lines intercepted the enemy at an angle from slightly astern of their beam, Collingwood engaging about one-third from the rear of the enemy line and Nelson just ahead of the centre. The action quickly became general and continued for over three hours, by which time 17 Allied ships had struck and one blown up. Although no British ship was lost, the battle is important because of its conclusive nature and the fact that Nelson was among the dead. While the war continued for nearly ten more years, it was its last fleet action of major strategic import. This painting shows the two fleets at the end of the action at about 5.00 pm and is a bird's eye view from the south-east. In the foreground the most shattered of the British ships lie with their prizes. Beyond, the remaining ten enemy ships are making their escape. In the left foreground is the British 'Tonnant', 80 guns, in port-bow view, her topmast shot away, and astern of her the British 'Defiance', 74 guns, in port-bow view, having lost her main and mizzen topmasts. To the right of her is the French 'L'Intrepide', 74 guns, with her fore and mizzen topmast gone. In the middle of the foreground is the British 'Bellerophon', 74 guns, in port-bow view, her main and mizzen topmasts gone. Just astern of her, in port-quarter view, is the captured Spanish ship 'Monarca', 74 guns. In the right foreground is the captured Spanish 'Bahama', 74 guns, in starboard-quarter view, with the British 'Mars', 74 guns, beyond her and starboard broadside across her bows. In the extreme right, in starboard-quarter view and half out of the picture is the British 'Conqueror', 74 guns. In the middle distance, left to right and bow on, the French 'Achille', 74 guns, is burning. There is also a group of three British ships; the nearest is the 'Sirius', 36 guns, in starboard-quarter view, while beyond her is the 'Prince', 98 guns, also in starboard-quarter view and the schooner 'Pickle', 10 guns, in port-broadside view. To the right of these and nearer the viewer are two three-deckers, in starboard-quarter view, the left hand one being the dismasted Spanish 'Santa Ana', 112 guns, and the other Collingwood's 'Royal Sovereign' with only her foremasts standing. To the right of these, in port-bow view, is a cluster of three ships all more or less dismasted. Left to right, these are the French 'Fougeux', 74 guns, the British 'Téméraire', 98 guns, and French 'Redoubtable', 74 guns. Both the French ships have been captured. Beyond this last group is the 'Victory' with only her foremasts standing, in starboard quarter view and almost masking Villeneuve's flagship 'Bucentaure', also in starboard-quarter view. In the right and beyond these two are the captured 'Santissima Trinidad', 140 guns, and the British 'Neptune', 98 guns, in starboard-quarter and stern view. On the right of the picture is a crowd of ships mostly under way. The nearest is the dismasted Spanish 'San Augustin', 74 guns, alongside the British 'Leviathan', 74 guns, which is firing a starboard gun, and the French 'Intrepide', 74 guns, escaping to the right with a Spanish ship. Beyond are more British ships to the right. The painting is one of a pair (see BHC0548) and one of a series of six paintings created for a two-volume 'Life of Nelson', begun shortly after Nelson's death in 1805 by Clarke and McArthur and published in 1809. They were engraved by James Fittler to be reproduced in the biography with lengthy explanatory texts. Accompanying the engraving is a plan with a key and a description. The artist placed considerable importance on accuracy, referring to his annotated drawings and sketch plans in the production of his oil paintings. Pocock was born and brought up in Bristol, went to sea at the age of 17 and rose to command several merchant ships. Although he only took up painting as a profession in his early forties, he became extremely successful, receiving commissions from naval commanders anxious to have accurate portrayals of actions and ships. By the age of 80, Pocock had recorded nearly 40 years of maritime history, demonstrating a meticulous understanding of shipping and rigging with close attention to detail. The painting is signed and dated 'N Pocock 1807'.


Occre has a model kit of the Ildefonso




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_ship_San_Ildefonso
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_ship_Monarca_(1794)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
20 December 1790 – Launch of French Indomptable ("Indomitable"), a Tonnant-class 80-gun ship of the line


Indomptable ("Indomitable") was a Tonnant-class 80-gun ship of the line in the French Navy, laid down in 1788 and in active service from 1791. Engaged against the Royal Navy after 1794, she was damaged in the Battle of Trafalgar and wrecked near the Spanish city of Cadiz on 24 October 1805.


Indomptable (centre) at Trafalgar, between Fougueux and HMS Belleisle (left) and Santa Ana and HMS Royal Sovereign (right)

Class and type: Tonnant class
Type: 80-gun ship of the line
Displacement: 1800 tonnes
Length: 59.3 m (195 ft)
Beam: 15.3 m (50 ft)
Draught: 7.8 m (26 ft)
Propulsion: Sail
Sail plan: Full rigged ship
Complement: 780
Armament: 80 guns

• 30 36-pounder long guns
• 32 24-pounder long guns
• 18 12-pounder long guns
• 4 obusiers de vaisseau

Early service
Indomptable was designed by naval engineer Jacques-Noël Sané and laid down in Brest in September 1788. She was launched on 20 December 1790, and completed in February 1791.

Her first engagement was on 29 May 1794 against HMS Barfleur and HMS Orion during the Glorious First of June campaign. Following the battle the dismasted Indomptable was towed back to Brest by Brutus.

In 1795, she served in the Mediterranean under Admiral François Joseph Bouvet and took part in the landing attempt in Ireland planned by General Louis Lazare Hoche. In 1801, she was engaged in the campaign in Egypt, but was unable to break the English blockade and stayed in Toulon. Other elements of the fleet managed to reach Elba.

Indomptable fought in the battle of Algeciras in 1801 when she was again badly damaged. In 1802 and 1803, she served in Toulon under Admiral Latouche Tréville.


HMS Sans Pareil

Trafalgar campaign
Main article: Trafalgar Campaign
On 17 January 1805, she went to sea under Admiral Villeneuve, together with ten other ships of the line and eight frigates, and on 20 January the fleet sailed for the French Caribbean. Off Cadiz, the fleet was joined by the 74-gun Aigle, and six Spanish ships of the line under Vice-Admiral Federico Gravina. When the fleet reached the West Indies, Villeneuve sent Commodore Cosmao-Kerjulien with the Pluton and the Berwick to attack the British position on Diamond Rock, which surrendered on 2 June. Villeneuve returned to Europe on hearing that Horatio Nelson had arrived in the West Indies.

Cape Finisterre and Trafalgar
On 22 July 1805, in the battle of Cape Finisterre the quartermasters of Indomptable spotted the British fleet under Sir Robert Calder. After a violent artillery exchange, the fleets became separated in the fog. Exhausted after six months at sea, the fleet anchored in Ferrol before sailing to Cádiz to rest and refit. With his command under question and planning to meet the British fleet to gain a decisive victory, Villeneuve left Cádiz and met the British fleet near Cape Trafalgar.

Indomptable was in the Spanish line between San Justo and Santa Ana at the opening of the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805. She engaged Vice-Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood's flagship HMS Royal Sovereign off her lee beam as she approached, then raked William Hargood's HMS Belleisle as that ship passed Indomptable's stern. Later, she engaged HMS Revenge, HMS Dreadnought and HMS Thunderer, losing her place in the line but regrouping behind the Spanish flagship Principe de Asturias.

Downwind of the British and effectively out of range, Indomptable turned towards the bay of Cadiz. At about two in the morning of 22 October, her crew heard distress calls from the French ship Bucentaure which had struck a reef off Santa Catalina fort. The ship's boat was run out and brought alongside Bucentaure, whose crew requested an anchor and hawsers to secure their vessel. This became impractical as Bucentaure settled deeper onto the rocks and began to sink: instead, Indomptable's boats began ferrying sailors off the vessel and back to their own. Rescue efforts continued until mid-afternoon on 23 October, by which time Bucentaure was completely submerged.

Wreck
On the following night, a storm broke Indomptable's anchor chains and she was carried onto rocks offshore from Cadiz. Contemporary accounts estimate between 1,000 and 1,400 people were on board, including around 500 rescued from Bucentaure the previous night, and two men from HMS Conqueror who had been aboard Bucentaure as prize crew. Around 150 men survived the wreck, including just two of the twenty-four officers on board.


A Tonnant-class ship of the line, HMS Canopus, the former Franklin

The Tonnant class was a series of eight 80-gun ships of the line designed in 1787 by Jacques-Noël Sané. From 1802 a new group (the Bucentaure class) was begun of slightly modified design, of which more than 24 were begun.

Tonnant class (8 ships)

• Tonnant

Builder: Toulon
Begun: December 1787
Launched: 24 October 1789
Completed September 1790
Fate: Captured 2 August 1798, added to Royal Navy as HMS Tonnant, broken up 1821

• Indomptable

Builder: Brest
Begun: September 1788
Launched: 20 December 1790
Completed: February 1791
Fate: Ran aground after the Battle of Trafalgar October 1805

• Sans Pareil

Builder: Brest
Begun: October 1790
Launched: 8 June 1793
Completed: September 1793
Fate: Captured 1 June 1794 by the Royal Navy, broken up October 1842

• Formidable

Builder: Toulon
Begun: August 1794
Launched: 17 March 1795
Completed: October 1795
Fate: Captured 3 November 1805 during Battle of Cape Ortegal, renamed HMS Brave, broken up April 1816

• Guillaume Tell

Builder: Toulon
Begun: September 1794
Launched: 21 October 1795
Completed: July 1796
Fate: Captured 30 March 1800, renamed HMS Malta, broken up August 1840

• Franklin

Builder: Toulon
Begun: November 1794
Launched: 25 June 1797
Completed: March 1798
Fate: Captured 2 August 1798 in the battle of the Nile, renamed HMS Canopus, broken up October 1887

• Indivisible

Builder: Brest
Begun: May 1793
Launched: 8 July 1799
Completed: October 1799
Fate: Renamed Alexandre 1802, captured by Britain 1805, broken up May 1822

• Foudroyant

Builder: Rochefort
Ordered: December 1793
Launched: 18 May 1799
Completed: August 1800
Fate: Broken up 1834



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Indomptable_(1789)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonnant-class_ship_of_the_line

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
20 December 1797 - Launch of HMS Cruizer (often Cruiser), a Royal Navy Cruizer-class brig-sloop built by Stephen Teague of Ipswich


HMS Cruizer (often Cruiser) was a Royal Navy Cruizer-class brig-sloop built by Stephen Teague of Ipswich and launched in 1797. She was the first ship of the class, but there was a gap of 5 years between her launch and the ordering of the next batch in October 1803; by 1815 a total of 105 other vessels had been ordered to her design. She had an eventful wartime career, mostly in the North Sea, English Channel and the Baltic, and captured some 15 privateers and warships, and many merchant vessels. She also participated in several actions. She was laid up in 1813 and the Commissioners of the Navy sold her for breaking in 1819.

Class and type: Cruizer-class brig-sloop
Type: Rated for 18 guns
Tonnage: 382 41⁄94 (bm)
Length:

• 100 ft 0 in (30.5 m) (gundeck)
• 77 ft 3 1⁄2 in (23.6 m) (keel)

Beam: 30 ft 6 in (9.3 m)
Depth of hold: 12 ft 9 in (3.9 m)
Sail plan: Brig rigged
Complement: 121
Armament:

• As built: 18 x 6-pounder guns
• Later: 16 x 32-pounder carronades + 2 x 6-pounder chase guns

An earlier USS Wasp boards the Cruizer-class HMS Frolic, 1812

Design
Cruizer was a prototype brig-rigged sloop-of-war designed in 1796 by Sir William Rule, the Surveyor of the Navy. Her hull was identical to the Snake-class ship-sloop, but she carried a pair of square-rigged masts instead of the three masts fitted in the Snake class. The original design had an armament of eighteen 6-pounder long guns but it was soon decided to replace the broadside weapons with sixteen 32-pounder carronades, leaving two 6-pounders as chase guns. The net effect was to increase the broadside weight of shot massively, at the cost of reducing her broadside's effective range. This mix became the pattern for all the other, later members of her class.

Construction
Cruizer was ordered by the Admiralty on 19 December 1796 to be built in the commercial yard of Stephen Teague at Ipswich.[3][Note 2] She was laid down in February 1797 and launched on 20 December the same year.

Service history
read about her long and intensive career at wikipedia.....





Scale: 1:48. Plan showing the body plan with stern board outline, sheer lines, and longitudinal half-breadth for building Epervier (1812), an 18 gun Brig Sloop at Rochester by Mrs Ross. Signed by William Ruke [Surveyor of the Navy, 1793-1813] and Henry Peake [Surveyor of the Navy, 1806-1822].


The Cruizer class was an 18-gun class of brig-sloops of the Royal Navy. Brig-sloops were the same as ship-sloops except for their rigging. A ship-sloop was rigged with three masts whereas a brig-sloop was rigged as a brig with only a fore mast and a main mast.

The Cruizer class was the most numerous class of warships built by the British during the Napoleonic wars, with 110 vessels built to this design, and the second most numerous class of sailing warship built to a single design for any navy at any time, after the smaller 10-gun Cherokee-class brig-sloops.

Of the vessels in the class, eight (8%) were lost to the enemy, either destroyed or taken. Another was taken, but retaken. Fourteen (13%) were wrecked while in British service. Lastly, four (4%) foundered while in British service. In all cases of foundering and in many cases of wrecking all the crew was lost. Many of the vessels in the class were sold, some into mercantile service. One at least was wrecked. The fate of the others is generally unknown.

Design
In December 1796, the Navy Board placed new orders for four flush-decked sloops, to differing designs by the two Surveyors of the Navy — Sir William Rule and Sir John Henslow. In order to compare the qualities of ship-rigged and brig-rigged vessels, one vessel to each design was to be completed as a ship-sloop and the other as a brig-sloop. While the Henslow-designed vessels (the brig-sloop Busy and the ship-sloop Echo) would see no further sister ships built, the Rule-designed vessels (the brig-sloop Cruizer and the ship-sloop Snake) would each have a single sister ship ordered in the following March, and Rule's Cruizer design would subsequently see 106 constructed during the Napoleonic War. The hull design was exceeding fine (narrow as compared to length), a noted deadrise amidships, and a sharp sheer, giving away the design that had origins in the smaller cutter-type designs.

The order placed in March 1797 for the first sister ship to Cruizer was subsequently cancelled, but new orders were placed from 1802 up to 1813. A final order in 1815 (HMS Samarang) was cancelled in 1820.

The Cruizer-class brig-sloops proved to be fast sailers and seaworthy, and the 32-pounder carronade armament gave them enormous short-range firepower, exceeding the nominal broadside of a standard 36-gun 18-pounder frigate. To a Royal Navy increasingly desperate for manpower, the great attraction of the design was that — thanks to the two-masted rig and the use of carronades with their small gun crews — this firepower could be delivered by a crew only a third the size of a frigate's. The Dutch built three 18 gun-brigs — Zwaluw, Mercuur and Kemphaan — to a similar design; in one case apparently a copy, though without the square tuck stern. The Russian brig Olymp was also built to the same lines.

The naval historian C.S. Forester commented in relation to the smaller gun-brigs (brig-rigged vessels of under 200 tons) that

The type was a necessary one but represented the inevitable unsatisfactory compromise when a vessel has to be designed to fight, to be seaworthy and to have a long endurance, all on a minimum displacement and at minimum expense. Few men in the Royal Navy had a good word to say for the gun-brigs, which rolled terribly and were greatly over-crowded, but they had to be employed.​

It should be noted that later in the same book he was more complimentary as regards the larger brigs such as the Cruizer class HMS Penguin.

Perhaps the most salient aspect of his statement is that the Cruizer class and its smaller sister class, the Cherokee class, highlight the huge expansion of the Royal Navy. Whatever else one may say of the class, the Cruizer-class brig-sloops were both fast and provided serious firepower for minimal crewing, characteristics that appealed to a Navy suffering serious and ever increasing staffing shortages. The class proved to be ideal for many of the shallow water commitments in the Baltic and Ionian Seas, as well as around Danish waters.

Manning
Prior to 1808, the complement of officers, men, and boys for a Cruizer-class brig-sloop included 15 Royal Marines. After 1808, the vessels carried 20 marines comprising 1 sergeant, 1 corporal and 18 privates (the marine contingent on unrated vessels did not include a commissioned officer).

Service in the War of 1812


HMS Epervier (right), a Cruzier class sloop, fighting against the larger USS Peacock (left) during the War of 1812.

During the Anglo-American War of 1812, several ships of the class fell victim to larger American ship-rigged sloops of war of nominally the same class. The American vessels enjoyed an advantage in weight of broadside and number of crew. The ship-rigged sloops enjoyed the ability to back sail, and their rigging proved more resistant to damage; by contrast, a single hit to the brig-sloop's rig could render it unmanageable. In many cases, however, the American advantage was in the quality of their crews, as the American sloops generally had hand-picked volunteer crews, while the brigs belonging to the overstretched Royal Navy had to make do with crews filled out with landsmen picked up by the press gang. During a battle with the eqivlently armed and crewed American brig Hornet, HMS Penguin was unable to land a single shot from her cannons, with the only American losses being incured by Royal Marines aboard the British ship.

The comparison was made in the London press unfavorably and was not entirely fair. The American ship-rigged sloops were bigger vessels, averaging just over 500 tons (bm); the Cruizer-class vessels were not quite 400 tons (bm). The crew sizes were disproportionate at 175 to 120, and at least some of the Cruizer class in these combats were outfitted with 24-pounder carronades vice the normal 32-pounders. The rigging was often the deciding factor as the USS Peacock vs. HMS Epervier combat would highlight. When HMS Epervier lost her main topmast and had her foremast damaged she was disabled. USS Wasp, in another combat, would retain control despite the loss of her gaff, main topmast, and the mizzen topgallant. USS Wasp vs. HMS Avon provides another example. Despite being fought gallantly, Avon was crippled by loss of a gaff. She then lost her main mast, which loss rendered her immobile. The Cyrus-class vessels, built in 1813–1814, were intended as an answer to the American ship-rigged sloops





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Cruizer_(1797)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruizer-class_brig-sloop

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
20 December 1846 – Launch of French aviso Cassard was a steam corvette of the French Navy


Cassard was a steam corvette of the French Navy. Built as an aviso, she served as the imperial yacht Reine Hortense from 1853.


Photograph of the imperial yacht Reine Hortense in 1856, by Gustave Le Gray

Displacement: 1100 tonnes
Length: 62 metres
Beam: 10.8 metres
Draught: 5.7 metres
Propulsion: 1280 HP steam engine
Armour: Iron


Career
Laid down as Comte d'Eu, the ship was renamed to Patriote on 20 February 1848 after the French Revolution of 1848. In June 1853, she became the imperial yacht Reine Hortense.

In 1855, she served as a troopship to ferry forces bound for the theatre of the Crimean War.

Reine Hortense ferried Prince Napoléon Bonaparte from Marseille to Genoa in early 1859 for his marriage to Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy, and Napoléon III from Marseille to Genoa on 11 and 12 May 1859. Returned to the French Navy in 1854.

In 1862 she was in the Baltic when she gave aid to a British vessel who she towed her 80 miles from Bomarsund to Stockholm, on board had been Lord Dufferin, who she was to meet again 3 years later.

The Reine Hortense was recommissioned as the imperial yacht on 20 April 1865 for an official visit in Algeria.

In June 1865 she took Prince Napoléon on an expedition to Greenland, with the Artémise (1847), a 28-gun corvette, La Perdrix" and, the "cocyte", and two British coal tender screw steamers, the "Tasmania" and the "Saxon" of 700 tons each. On 30 June at Reykjavík in Iceland, she met again Lord Dufferin who was on his own travels that would feature in his book Letters From High Latitudes, published the next year. Dufferin's journey was taking in Iceland, Jan Mayen and Spitzbergen. He had chartered the schooner Foam for the task. Dufferin was invited to join Prince Napoleon aboard his royal steamer, and the Prince on hearing that the "Foam" had broken down offered them a tow north to Jan Mayen as they were going to the same region. On their last night in Reykavik the prince held a ball to which all the rank, fashion, and beauty of the tiny town (population 700 or 800) were invited. The "Foam" was attached with two cables and the flotilla set off on 7 July, the collier "Saxon" traveling all too slowly behind.

The fragile La Reine Hortense was soon to be in increasing danger from the ice and the French were required to abandon their journey 100 miles short of Jam Mayen, and return to Reykjavík. So on 11 July they let loose the "Foam" to carry on north by sail. This was fortuante in a sense since on their return they were to discover that the Saxon had been damaged by ice, and would have meant that the convoy would have been short of fuel. This effectively cancelled the expediton.

She Reine Hortense was again decommissioned in October.

On 14 February 1867, she was renamed to Cassard, and commissioned for the Algiers station. She served there until 1881, when she was decommissioned in Toulon before becoming a littoral defence ship.

Renamed to Faune in 1893, she was used as a hulk in Port-Vendre. She was eventually broken up in 1920.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Cassard_(1846)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
20 December 1847 - HMS Avenger Steam-frigate (10), Cptn. C. E. Napier, wrecked on the Sorelli Rocks, off the Island of Galita, Mediterranean. The captain and Lt. Marryat, son of Capt. Frederick Marryat, were among those who went down with the ship.


HMS Avenger was a wooden paddle wheel frigate of the Royal Navy launched in 1845 and wrecked with heavy loss of life in 1847.

Class and type: Frigate
Tons burthen: 1444 bm
Length:

• 210 ft (64 m) o/a
• 183 ft 2 in (55.83 m) p.p.

Beam: 39 ft (12 m)
Installed power: 650 ihp (480 kW)
Propulsion:

• 2-cylinder direct-acting steam engines
• paddle wheels

Speed: 9.5 kn (10.9 mph; 17.6 km/h)
Complement: 200 (later 250)
Armament:
2 × 8 in (200 mm) (112cwt) pivot guns,
4 × 8 in (200 mm) (65cwt) pivot guns,
4 × 32 pdr (15 kg) (25cwt) gunnades


Inscribed: "The loss of H. M. Steam Frigate Avenger, Captain Charles Napier, off the Coast of Barbary on the night of Decr 20th 1847, when all perished but four. This Print of the melancholy event is dedicated to Lieut. Rook, and the Survivors and Relatives of the ill-fated crew".


Inscribed: "The loss of Her Majesty's Steam Frigate 'Avenger' commanded by Captain Chas G. E. Napier. On the sunken rocks of Sorelli at Ten o'Clock on the night of the twentieth of Decr 1847, while on her passage from Gibraltar to Malta. When all hands perished but the four following Survivors, Francis Rooke Lieut., John Larcom Gunner, W M Hill Capns Steward, James Morley Boy. This Picture is a faithful representation of the melancholy event, taken from a drawing by W M Hill, one of the survivors and published expressly for the benefit of himself and family". Hand-coloured. Medium includes gum arabic.


Construction and commissioning
Avenger was built to a design by Sir William Symonds that was approved on 25 March 1844. She was initially ordered from Deptford Dockyard on 19 February 1844 but the order was transferred to Devonport Dockyard on 22 June 1844. She was laid down there on 27 August 1844 and launched on 5 August 1845. She sailed under a jury rig to Deptford where her machinery was fitted and completed. She was then commissioned on 21 June 1846. She had cost £44,777 for the hull, £32,740 for machinery, and £11,630 for the fittings. She was armed with 10 guns and was initially rated as a first-class frigate, though this was later reduced on 31 July 1846 to a second-class.

Service
Avenger served with the Channel Fleet from 28 April 1846 to November 1847, when she was transferred to the Mediterranean.

Loss
Avenger sailed from Gibraltar on 17 December 1847 bound for Malta and commanded by Captain Charles Elers Napier, stepson of Rear Admiral Sir Charles Napier who was then commanding the Channel Fleet. On 20 December she ran onto the Sorelle Rocks, near Malta. Captain Napier drowned, and only eight crew members survived.


Mounted with PAH7371-PAH7373, PAH7375-PAH7376.; No.13. [this is a sheet of prints from Marryat's 'The Pirate and the Three Cutters', but the photo here is flipped. Turned the right way they would be: (top left), Deck of the Avenger; (top right) Destruction of the Indiaman; (centre left) The Capture [of the Indiaman]; (centre right) The Wreck of the Avenger (for which see sketch PAF6060); (bottom left) the 'Happy-go Lucky' in St Malo; (bottom right) er's Bay. PvdM 9/04]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Avenger_(1845)
http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collec...el-293813;browseBy=vessel;vesselFacetLetter=A

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
20 December 1987 – In the worst peacetime sea disaster, the passenger ferry Doña Paz sinks after colliding with the oil tanker Vector in the Tablas Strait in the Philippines, killing an estimated 4,000 people (1,749 official).

MV Doña Paz was a Philippine-registered passenger ferry that sank after colliding with the oil tanker MT Vector on December 20, 1987. Traveling from Leyte island to the Philippine capital of Manila, the vessel was seriously overcrowded, with at least 2,000 passengers not listed on the manifest. In addition, it was claimed that the ship carried no radio and that the life-jackets were locked away. However, official blame was directed at Vector, which was found to be unseaworthy, and operating without a license, lookout or qualified master. With an estimated death toll of 4,386 people and only 24 survivors, it remains the deadliest peacetime maritime disaster in history.


Built in 1963 MV Dona Paz passenger ferry sank on 20 December 1987 when collided with MT Vector, considered the worst Philippines inter-island shipping accident through loss of over 4000 lives. R.I.P.. Photo taken in Tacloban City, Eastern Visayas, Philippines (according to Flickr data)

History
Doña Paz was built in 1963 by Onomichi Zosen of Onomichi, Hiroshima, Japan, and was originally named Himeyuri Maru. During the time it travelled Japanese waters, it had a passenger capacity of 608. In 1975, she was sold to Sulpicio Lines, a Filipino operator of a fleet of passenger ferries. It was renamed by Sulpicio Lines as Don Sulpicio, and later, Doña Paz. On June 5, 1979, the vessel was gutted by fire while en route from Manila to Cebu. All 1,164 on board were rescued but the vessel was beached and declared a constructive total loss. The wreck was repurchased from the underwriters by Sulpicio Lines, and the vessel was refurbished and returned to service as Doña Paz. At the time of its sinking, the ship was sailing the route of Manila → Tacloban → Catbalogan → Manila and vice versa, making trips twice a week.



1987 disaster
Collision
On December 20, 1987, at 06:30, Philippine Standard Time, Doña Paz left from Tacloban, Leyte, for Manila, with a stopover at Catbalogan, Samar. The vessel was due in Manila at 04:00 the following day, and it was reported that it last made radio contact at around 20:00. However, subsequent reports indicated that Doña Paz had no radio. At around 22:30, the ferry was at Dumali Point, along the Tablas Strait, near Marinduque. A survivor later said that the weather at sea that night was clear, but the sea was choppy. While most of the passengers slept, Doña Paz collided with MT Vector, an oil tanker en route from Bataan to Masbate. Vector was carrying 1,050,000 litres (8,800 US bbl) or 1,041 metric tons (1,041 t) of gasoline and other petroleum products owned by Caltex Philippines.

Upon collision, Vector's cargo ignited and caused a fire on the ship that spread onto Doña Paz. Survivors recalled sensing the crash and an explosion, causing panic on the vessel. One of them, Paquito Osabel, recounted that the flames spread rapidly throughout the ship, and that the sea all around the ship itself was on fire. Another survivor, Philippine Constabulary soldier Luthgardo Niedo, claimed that the lights onboard had gone out minutes after the collision, that there were no life vests to be found on Doña Paz, and that all of the crewmen were running around in panic with the other passengers and that none of the crew gave any orders nor made any attempt to organize the passengers. It was later said that the life jacket lockers had been locked. The survivors were forced to jump off the ship and swim among charred bodies in flaming waters around the ship, with some using suitcases as makeshift flotation devices. Doña Paz sank within two hours of the collision, while Vector sank within four hours. Both ships sank in about 545 meters (1,788 ft) of water in the shark-infested Tablas Strait.



Rescue
Skippers, medics, and officers as well as the captain of a passing inter-island ship, MS Don Claudio, witnessed the explosion of the two ships and after an hour, found the survivors of Doña Paz. The officers of Don Claudio threw a net for the survivors to climb to. In all, only 26 survivors were retrieved from the water: 24 of them were passengers from Doña Paz while the other 2 were crewmen from Vector's 13-man crew. None of the crew of Doña Paz survived. Most of the survivors sustained burns from jumping into the flaming waters. Doctors and nurses aboard the vessel tended to their injuries. It reportedly took eight hours before Philippine maritime authorities learned of the accident, and another eight hours to help search-and-rescue operations.



Casualties
According to the initial announcement made by Sulpicio Lines, the official passenger manifest of Doña Paz recorded 1,493 passengers and 59 crew members aboard. According to Sulpicio Lines, the ferry was able to carry 1,424 passengers. A revised manifest released on December 23, 1987, showed 1,583 passengers and 58 crew members on Doña Paz, with 675 persons boarding the ferry in Tacloban, and 908 coming on board in Catbalogan. However, an anonymous official of Sulpicio Lines told UPI that, since it was the Christmas season, tickets were usually purchased illegally aboard the ship at a cheaper rate, and those passengers were not listed on the manifest. The same official added that holders of complimentary tickets and non-paying children below the age of four were likewise not listed on the manifest.

Survivors claimed that it was possible that Doña Paz may have carried as many as 3,000 to 4,000 passengers. They took as signs that the ferry was overcrowded the fact that they saw passengers sleeping along corridors, on the boat decks, or on cots with three or four persons on them. Of the 21 bodies that had been recovered and identified as passengers on the ship five days after the accident, only one of the fatalities was listed on the official manifest. Of the 24 passengers who survived, only five were listed on the manifest.

On December 28, 1987, Representative Raul Daza of Northern Samar claimed that at least 2,000 passengers on board Doña Paz were not on the ship's manifest. He based that figure on a list of names furnished by relatives and friends of missing people believed aboard the ferry, the names having been compiled by radio and television stations in Tacloban. The names of these 2,000+ missing passengers were published in pages 29 to 31 of the December 29, 1987, edition of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

In February 1988 the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation stated, on the basis of interviews with relatives, that there were at least 3,099 passengers and 59 crew on board, giving 3,134 on-board fatalities. In January 1999 a presidential task force report estimated, on the basis of court records and more than 4,100 settlement claims, that there were 4,341 passengers. Subtracting the 24 surviving passengers, and adding 58 crew gives 4,375 on-board fatalities. Adding the 11 dead from the Vectorcrew, the total becomes 4,386.

Reactions and aftermath
President Corazon Aquino described the accident as "a national tragedy of harrowing proportions...[the Filipino people's] sadness is all the more painful because the tragedy struck with the approach of Christmas". Pope John Paul II, Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita and Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom conveyed their official messages of condolence. Given the estimated death toll, Time magazine and others have called the sinking of Doña Paz "the deadliest peacetime maritime disaster of the 20th century".

Sulpicio Lines announced three days after the accident that Doña Paz was insured for ₱25,000,000 (about US$550,000 in 2011 dollars), and it was willing to indemnify the survivors the amount of ₱20,000 (US$472 in 2011) for each victim. Days later, hundreds of the victims' kin staged a mass rally at Rizal Park, demanding that the ship owners likewise indemnify the families of those not listed on the manifest, as well as to give a full accounting of the missing.

According to the initial investigation conducted by the Philippine Coast Guard, only one apprentice member of the crew of Doña Paz was monitoring the bridge when the accident occurred. Other officers were either drinking beer or watching television in the crew's recreation quarters, while the ship's captain was watching a movie on his Betamax in his cabin. Nonetheless, the Board of Marine Inquiry eventually cleared Sulpicio Lines of fault in the accident. Subsequent inquiries revealed that Vector was operating without a license, lookout or properly qualified master. In 1999, the Supreme Court of the Philippines ruled that it was the owners of Vector who were liable to indemnify the victims of the collision. Some of the claims pursued against either Sulpicio Lines or the owners of Vector, such as those filed by the Cañezal family (who lost two members) and the Macasas family (who lost three members) were adjudicated by the Supreme Court, which found that even the families of victims who did not appear on the official manifest were entitled to indemnity. Caltex Philippines, which had chartered Vector, was likewise cleared of financial liability.

In popular culture
The National Geographic Channel premiered a documentary about Doña Paz entitled Asia's Titanic on August 25, 2009

Vector was a Philippine oil tanker that collided with the ferry Doña Paz on December 20, 1987 in Tablas Strait, Philippines, resulting in an estimated death toll of over 4,000 lives.

Description
MT Vector was a small motor tanker, built in Manila, Philippines in 1980 as Oil Nic-II, with a tonnage of 629 grt and length of 51.7 m (170 ft). The tanker was designed to transport petroleum products such as gasoline, kerosene and diesel. Prior to December 1987 the tanker was acquired by Vector Shipping Inc, owned by Francisco Soriano of Manila.

Collision with MV Doña Paz
On 19 December 1987 at about 8:00 p.m., Vector left Limay, Bataan en route to Masbate with a crew of 13, and loaded with 8,800 barrels of petroleum products shipped by the ship's charterer, Caltex Philippines, now Chevron. The following morning, at about 6:30 a.m., the passenger and cargo ferry Doña Paz left the port of Tacloban headed for Manila with a complement of 59 crew members, including the master and his officers, and passengers totaling 1,493 as indicated in the Coast Guard Clearance, though estimated to be over 4,000. Doña Paz was a passenger and cargo vessel owned and operated by Sulpicio Lines, plying the route of Manila/Tacloban/Catbalogan/Manila/Catbalogan/Tacloban/Manila.

At about 10:30 p.m. on 20 December 1987, the two vessels collided in the open sea in the vicinity of Dumali Point in Tablas Strait between Marinduque and Oriental Mindoro. As the two vessels collided, Vector's cargo ignited and caused a fire that spilled into the water and rapidly spread to Doña Paz, which sank within hours. Vector also sank shortly afterwards. Two of the 13 crew members aboard Vector (Franklin Bornilio and Reynaldo Taripe) survived but all 58 crew of Doña Paz died. The official death toll on the ferry is 1,565, although some reports claim that the ferry was overcrowded and that the true death toll is over 4,000. The ships would put the death toll at 4,375 although admitting that only 1,568 were on the manifest (still more than the licensed maximum of 1,518). The 21 (or 24) survivors from the ferry had to swim, as there was no time to launch lifeboats.

All the crew members and most of the passengers on Doña Paz died. Only 24 passengers survived the tragedy by swimming away as there was no time to launch lifeboats. They were rescued from the burning waters by vessels that responded to distress calls. There were two survivors from Vector's crew, who claimed that they were sleeping at the time of the incident.

Judgment
Vector Shipping was found liable for the crash, while the chartering company, Caltex, was absolved of responsibility. In a judgement on 24 July 2008, The Supreme Court of the Philippines absolved Caltex Philippines (now Chevron) from any liability in the collision between Doña Paz and Vector. The decision affirmed the Court of Appeals' ruling against Vector Shipping and its owner Francisco Soriano.[6] Vector was ordered to reimburse and indemnify Sulpicio Lines Php 800,000.00. This was the total amount due the Macasa family whose kin were among the passengers of MV Doña Paz. The Court ruled that "MT Vector was unseaworthy at the time of the accident and that its negligence was the cause of the collision that led to the sinking of the Sulpicio vessel."

An inquiry also found that members of the crew of Vector were underqualified and that the vessel's licence had expired.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Doña_Paz
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doña_Paz_(Schiff)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MT_Vector

 

[Uwek]

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


1687 – Launch of French François 52 guns (designed and built by Étienne Salicon) at Le Havre – classed as 4th Rank with 40 guns in 1688, then raised to 52 guns in 1691 and reclassed as 3rd Rank; broken up 1736.


1691 – Launch of French Juste 64 guns (designed and begun by Étienne Salicon, completed by Philippe Cochois) at Le Havre – broken up 1719


1752 – Launch of French Heroine at Brest – deleted 1766.

Topaze class, (24/26-gun design by Jean-Joseph Ginoux, with 24/26 x 8-pounder guns).
Topaze, (launched 30 October 1750 at Brest) – deleted 1775.
Thétis, (launched 17 November 1751 at Brest) – deleted 1777.
Heroine, (launched 20 December 1752 at Brest) – deleted 1766.


1752 – Launch of French Comète at Brest – captured by British Navy 16 March 1761, becoming HMS Comet.

Comète class, (30-gun design by Joseph-Louis Ollivier, with 26 x 8-pounder and 4 x 4-pounder guns).
Comète, (launched 20 December 1752 at Brest) – captured by British Navy 16 March 1761, becoming HMS Comet.
Fleur de Lys, (launched 1 June 1754 at Brest) – burnt to avoid capture 1760.
Concorde, (launched 15 November 1755 at Brest) – wrecked 1756.


1761 - HMS Biddeford (20), Cptn. Thomas Gordon, totally wrecked on the Hazeborough Sand near Yarmouth due to the ignorance of the pilot

HMS Bideford (1756) was a 20-gun sixth rate launched in 1756 and wrecked in 1761.


1797 - HMS Growler gunboat (12), Lt. John Hollingsworth (Killed in Action), captured off Dungeness by two French privateer luggers Spiègle (10), Cptn Duchesne, and Rusé (8), Cptn Denis Fourmentin.


1799 - HMS Lady Nelson (10) taken by French privateers off Cabrita point and retaken by boats of HMS Queen Charlotte (100), Capt. J. Irwin, which witnessed the event whilst lying at Gibraltar.

His Majesty's Armed Survey Vessel Lady Nelson was commissioned in 1799 to survey the coast of Australia. At the time large parts of the Australian coast were unmapped and Britain had claimed only part of the continent. The British Government were concerned that, in the event of settlers of another European power becoming established in Australia, any future conflict in Europe would lead to a widening of the conflict into the southern hemisphere to the detriment of the trade that Britain sought to develop. It was against this background that Lady Nelson was chosen to survey and establish sovereignty over strategic parts of the continent.

Lady Nelson left Portsmouth on 18 March 1800 and arrived at Sydney on 16 December 1800 after having been the first vessel to reach the east coast of Australia via Bass Strait. Prior to that date all vessels had sailed around the southern tip of Tasmania to reach their destination.

Lady Nelson's survey work commenced shortly after her arrival at Sydney, initially in the Bass Strait area. She was involved in the discovery of Port Phillip, on the coast of Victoria, in establishing settlements on the River Derwent and at Port Dalrymple in Tasmania, at Newcastle and Port Macquarie in New South Wales, and on Melville Island off the north coast of the continent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Lady_Nelson_(1798)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Queen_Charlotte_(1790)


1804 - HMS Tartarus bomb, Thomas Withers, wrecked on the sands in Margate Roads.

HMS Tartarus (1797) was an 8-gun bomb vessel, formerly the civilian Charles Jackson. She was purchased in 1797 and wrecked in 1804. Because Tartarus 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


1811 - Sir Peter Parker, Admiral of the Fleet of England, died

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


1822 - US Congress authorizes the 14-ship West Indies Squadron to suppress piracy in the Caribbean.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Indies_Squadron_(United_States)


1827 – Launch of HMS Africaine, a Seringapatam-class frigates, were a class of British Royal Navy 46-gun sailing frigates.

The Seringapatam-class frigates, were a class of British Royal Navy 46-gun sailing frigates. The first vessel of the class was HMS Seringapatam. Seringapatam's design was based on the French frigate Président, which the British had captured in 1806. Seringapatam was originally ordered as a 38-gun frigate, but the re-classification of British warships which took effect in February 1817 raised this rating to 46-gun.


Body plan of HMS Nemesis a sistership

The Admiralty ordered six further ships to this design – including three ships which had originally been ordered as Leda-class frigates, but the Seringapatam design was subsequently altered to produce a Modified version which was labelled the Druidsub-class, and three of the ships formerly ordered to the Seringapatam original design (Madagascar, Nemesis and Jason) were re-ordered to this modified design. Subsequently a further modification of the design was produced, which was labelled the Andromeda sub-class, and the remaining three of the ships formerly ordered to the Seringapatam original design (Manilla, Tigris and Statira) were re-ordered to this modified design. Further vessels were ordered to both modified designs, but the majority of these were subsequently cancelled. Both modified types are listed below.

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


1832 – HMS Clio under the command of Captain Onslow arrives at Port Egmont under orders to take possession of the Falkland Islands

HMS Clio was Cruizer-class brig-sloop of the Royal Navy, launched at James Betts' shipyard in Mistleythorn in Essex on 10 January 1807. Her establishment was 71 officers and men, 24 boys and 20 marines. She served in the Baltic during the Napoleonic Wars, accomplished the re-establishment of British rule on the Falkland Islands in 1833, and participated in the First Opium War. She was broken up in 1845.


Sketch of a brig-sloop, probably HMS "Clio", by Cmdr. William Farrington, ca. 1812, Peabody Essex Museum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Clio_(1807)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reassertion_of_British_sovereignty_over_the_Falkland_Islands_(1833)


1941 - Adm. Ernest J. King is announced as the designated Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet, in charge of all operating naval fleets and coastal frontier forces, reporting directly to the President.


1943 - TBF aircraft (VC-19) from escort carrier USS Bogue (CVE 9) attacks German submarine U-850, which responds with anti-aircraft fire. TBFs and FMs (VC-19) reinforce the TBF and sink U-850 as it tries to submerge 530 miles southwest of Fayal, Azores.


1964 - USS Richard E. Kraus (DD 849) completes a successful emergency mission in aiding the disabled American merchant ship SS Oceanic Spray in the Red Sea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Richard_E._Kraus_(DD-849)

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
21 December 1522 – Launch of Santa Anna, an early 16th-century carrack of the navy of the Knights Hospitaller.


Santa Anna was an early 16th-century carrack of the navy of the Knights Hospitaller. The war ship was celebrated for her many modern features. While some authors view her lead sheathed hull as an early form of ironclad, others regard it primarily as a means to improve her watertightness.



Career
Santa Anna was launched in Nice on 21 December 1522, one day before the Knights Hospitaller surrendered at the siege of Rhodes (1522) under honorable terms.

Santa Anna's underwater hull was completely sheathed with lead plates. Above the waterline two of the six decks were also armoured with lead plates, which were fastened by bronze nails to the wooden hull. Santa Anna was designed to accommodate 500 marines besides her sailors and she featured large below-deck cabins and messes for her officers. The carrack housed a forge, where three weapon smiths could do maintenance work at sea. The ship even called several ovens and a mill its own, in order to provide the crew with fresh bread. The ship also featured a garden on board with flowers hanging down from the stern gallery in boxes.

In 1531, Santa Anna routed on its own an Ottoman squadron of 25 ships. One year later, the carrack took part in the expedition against the Peloponnese under the command of Andrea Doria, during which Koroni, Patras and the Turkish fortresses protecting the entry to the Gulf of Corinth were seized. In 1535 Santa Anna fought in the successful campaign of the Spanish fleet under Charles V against Tunis, where the Spaniards managed to capture over 100 ships of the Barbary corsairs. Her firepower contributed significantly in the assault on the fortress La Goulette which controlled the entry to the harbour.

Temporarily, the carrack was also employed as a wheat freighter, with an impressive capacity of up to 900 tons. Only eighteen years after her launch, Santa Anna was stripped and abandoned in 1540 on the order of Grand Master Juan de Homedes y Coscon.



List of ships of the line of the Order of Saint John

The Order of Saint John was small but competent and constantly involved naval power from before 1500. In 1522 they were expelled from Rhodes by the Turks, ending up in Malta in 1530. Their independence (and fleet) lasted until 12 June 1798, when Napoleon, on his way to conquer Egypt, captured the entire remaining Maltese navy. Some of these ships were later captured by the British when they recaptured Malta in 1800, and Malta remained under British control until 1964.

This is a list of the Order's ships of the line while based in Malta:

• Santa Anna (1522) - Decommissioned 1540
• ? 40 (ex-Tunisian, captured 1628)
• ? 46 (ex-Tunisian, captured 1640)
• ? (ex-Turkish, captured 1644)
• ? 54 (ex-Turkish, captured 1654) - Sank soon after capture 1654
• Beneghem 66 (ex-Turkish Sultana Berenghemi, captured 1700)
• San Giovanni 64/70 (c. 1703)
• San Giacomo 64/70 (c. 1703)
• Santa Croce 44/46/50 (ex-Tunisian La Rosa/Rose of Tunis, captured 1706)
• San Raimondo 46 (possibly same as Santa Croce, above)
• Santa Caterina 64/70
• ? 56? (ex-Tripolitan, captured 1709)
• ? (ex-Algerine Half Moon 40, captured 1713)
• San Giovanni 60/64 (1718) - BU 1753
• San Giorgio 60/64 (1719)
• San Vicenzo 50 (1720)
• ? 48 (ex-Tripolitan, captured 1723)
• San Antonio di Padova 52/60/64 (1727) - BU 1765
• ? 48 (ex-Turkish ?, captured 1732)
• San Giovanni (1755) - BU 1765
• San Salvatore 70/80 (ex-Turkish "Corona Ottomana", captured when her slaves mutinied 1760) - To France 1760/61, returned to Turkey 1761
• San Zaccaria 64 (1765) - Captured by France 1798 and renamed Dégo, captured by Britain 1800
• San Giovanni 60-66 (1768/69) - To Naples 1781/84
• San Giacomo/San Gioacchino/St Joachim (1769/70) - To Naples 1781/84
• San Giovanni 64 (1798) - Captured by France 1798 and renamed Athénien; captured by Britain 1800; wrecked 1806

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Anna_(1522_ship)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_of_the_line_of_the_Order_of_Saint_John

 

[Uwek]

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
21 December 1779 - Battle of Guadeloupe or the Action of 21–22 December 1779


The Battle of Guadeloupe or the Action of 21–22 December 1779 was a naval engagement that took place off the French island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean during the American Revolutionary War between three Royal Navy ships and three French Navy frigates. The Royal Navy under Joshua Rowley sighted and promptly chased the French frigates, all of which were captured after a brief fight.

Battle
On 21 December 1779, HMS Magnificent along with the 74-gun ships of the line HMS Suffolk, HMS Vengeance, and the 64-gun HMS Stirling Castle under Rear-Admiral Joshua Rowley, sighted the 32-gun French frigates Fortunée and Blanche and the 28-gun Elise, off the French island of Guadeloupe. The French ships had been part of the Comte d Estaing's fleet.

The engagement that followed was one sided - the French ships were in disorder; their crews were weak; and they could not escape the vastly superior British force. The Blanchewas defeated and captured on the evening of 21 December. The Fortunée attempted to escape by throwing her quarter-deck guns overboard, but was captured on the early morning of 22 December, an hour before the Elise had struck.

The Blanche and Fortunée were thus added to the British navy.

Rowley then led his squadron to capture a large French convoy, from Marseilles, off Martinique.


HMS Stirling Castle in 1780 by an unknown artist

The ships

The british group:
HMS Magnificent was a 74-gun Ramillies-class third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 20 September 1766 at Deptford Dockyard.
HMS Suffolk was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 22 February 1765 at Rotherhithe. She was designed by William Bateley, based on the principles of his earlier HMS Fame, and was the only ship built to her draught.
HMS Vengeance was a 74-gun Royal Oak-class third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 25 June 1774 at Rotherhithe.
HMS Stirling Castle was a 64-gun Worcester-class third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 28 June 1775 at Chatham

The french group:
32-gun French frigates Fortunée and Blanche and the
28-gun Elise



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Guadeloupe_(1779)