HMS Captain (1869)
History | |
---|---|
United Kingdom | |
Ordered | November 1866 |
Builder | Laird Brothers, Birkenhead |
Laid down | 30 January 1867 |
Launched | 27 March 1869 |
Commissioned | April 1870 |
Fate | Sunk; 7 September 1870 |
General characteristics [1] | |
Displacement |
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Length | 320 ft (97.54 m) pp |
Beam | 53 ft 3 in (16.23 m) |
Draught | 24 ft 10 in (7.57 m) |
Propulsion |
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Sail plan | Ship rig: 37,990 sq ft (3,529 m2) of sail (max) |
Speed | 15.25 kn (28.24 km/h; 17.55 mph) (steam power) |
Complement | 500 crewmen and officers |
Armament |
|
Armour |
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HMS Captain was a major warship built for the
Background
The trials with the Trusty impressed the Admiralty, and it ordered a coastal defence vessel,
Both ships were
In early 1863 the Admiralty gave Coles permission to work with Nathaniel Barnaby, head of staff of the Department of Naval Construction, on the design of a rigged vessel with two turrets and three tripod masts. In June 1863 the Admiralty suspended progress on the vessel until the Royal Sovereign finished her trials.
In 1864, Coles was allowed to start a second project: a rigged vessel with only one turret and based on the design of
The next year, 1865, a committee established by the Admiralty to study the new design concluded that while the turret should be adopted, Coles' one-turret warship design had inadequate fire arcs.[8] The committee proposed a two-turret fully rigged vessel with either two 9-inch (12 ton) guns per turret, or one 12-inch (22 ton) gun per turret. The committee's proposal was accepted by the Admiralty, and construction was started on Monarch. Monarch's two turrets were each equipped with two 12-inch (25-ton) guns.
Stunned by the committee's decision to cancel his single-turret ship and his proposal for a two-turret vessel, and objecting to the Monarch's design, Coles launched a strong campaign against the project, attacking Vice Admiral Robert Spencer Robinson, Controller of the Navy, and various other members of the committee and the Admiralty. So vociferously did Coles complain that in January 1866 his contract as a consultant to the Admiralty was terminated. At the end of January, his protestations that he had been misunderstood led to his being re-employed from 1 March 1866.[9] Further, Coles lobbied the press and Parliament, who were increasingly convinced that foreign powers—namely the United States—were pressing ahead with turret ships and thereby leaving Britain at a disadvantage at sea.[10] On 17 April 1866, Coles submitted to the Admiralty his critique of the proposed Monarch (designed by the Controller's department and the Chief Constructor), stating that he could not publicly endorse a vessel which did not represent "my views of a sea going Turret-ship, nor can she give my principle a satisfactory and conclusive trial." Sensing that such an increasingly acrimonious and high-profile debate would only continue, the First Naval Lord, Admiral Sir Frederick Grey, minuted four days later (21 April) that Coles should at last be allowed to build what he felt would be a 'perfect' seagoing turret-ship.[11]
Design and construction
On 8 May 1866, Coles informed the Admiralty of his selection of
The design called for the ship to have a low freeboard, and Coles' figures estimated it at 8 feet (2.4 m). Both the Controller and the Chief Constructor
In November 1866, the contract for HMS Captain was approved,[12] and the design was finished. She was laid down 30 January 1867 at Laird's yard at Birkenhead, England, launched 27 March 1869[1] and completed in March 1870.[15]
Insufficient supervision during the building, owing partly to Coles' protracted illness,[16] meant that she was 735 long tons (747 t) heavier than planned.[17] The designed freeboard was just 8 feet (2.4 m), and the additional weight forced her to float 22 inches (0.56 m) deeper than expected, bringing the freeboard down to just 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 m).[18] This compares with 14 feet (4.3 m) for the two-turret Monarch.[19] The centre of gravity of the vessel also rose by about ten inches during construction. Reed raised havoc over the problems with the freeboard and the centre of gravity, but his objections were over-ruled during the Captain's trials.[17]
She was
Gunnery trials
A trial was undertaken in 1870 to compare the accuracy and rate of fire of turret-mounted heavy guns with those in a centre-battery ship. The target was a 600 feet (180 m) long, 60 feet (18 m) high rock off Vigo. The speed of the ships was 4–5 knots (4.6–5.8 mph; 7.4–9.3 km/h) ("some accounts say stationary").[20] Each ship fired for five minutes, with the guns starting "loaded and very carefully trained".[20] The guns fired Palliser shells with battering charges at a range of about 1,000 yards (0.91 km).[20] Three out of the Captain's four hits were achieved with the first salvo; firing this salvo caused the ship to roll heavily (±20°); smoke from firing made aiming difficult.[20] Note that the Captain could be expected to capsize if inclined 21°.[21] The Monarch and the Hercules also did better with their first salvo, were inconvenienced by the smoke of firing, and to a lesser extent were caused to roll by firing.[20] On the Hercules the gunsights were on the guns, and this worked better than the turret roof gunsights used by the other ships.[20]
Ship | Weapons firing | Rounds fired | Hits | Rate of fire (rounds per minute) |
---|---|---|---|---|
Hercules | 4 x 10 inch MLR
|
17 | 10 | 0.65 |
Monarch | 4 x 12 inch MLR
|
12 | 5 | 0.40 |
Captain | 4 x 12 inch MLR | 11 | 4 | 0.35 |
Source:[20] |
Sinking
On the afternoon of 6 September 1870 Captain was cruising with the combined Mediterranean and Channel Squadrons comprising 11 ships off Cape Finisterre. The ship made 9.5 knots under sail in a force six wind, which was increasing through the day. The commander in chief, Admiral Sir Alexander Milne,[22] was on board to see her performance, and speed had risen to 11–13 knots before he departed. Not being accustomed to ships with such low freeboard, he was disturbed to note that at this speed with the strengthening sea, waves washed over the weather deck. The weather worsened with rain as the night progressed, and the number of sails was reduced. The wind was blowing from the port bow so that sails had to be angled to the wind, speed was much reduced, and there was considerable force pushing the ship sideways. As the wind rose to a gale, sail was reduced to only the fore staysail and fore and main topsails.[23]
Shortly after midnight when a new watch came on duty, the ship was heeling over 18 degrees and was felt to lurch to starboard twice. By then other ships in the combined squadron reported winds of Force 9 to 11 (on the
Court-martial
The subsequent investigation on the loss of Captain, in the form of a
The inquiry concluded that "the Captain was built in deference to public opinion expressed in Parliament and through other channels, and in opposition to views and opinions of the Controller and his Department".[31]
This was a stunning (and unprecedented) rebuke of the mid-Victorian British public. For years they had demanded that Coles be allowed to produce a super-ironclad—armed with turrets—which could restore confidence in the primacy of the Royal Navy in a way which neither broadside ironclads like the partially armoured HMS Warrior nor Reed's central-battery versions seemed able to. Coles fatally added the requirement that a fully-rigged, seagoing turret-ship like HMS Monarch also be as low in the water as possible, like the low-freeboard (though mastless) American monitor USS Miantonomoh; which had crossed the Atlantic under escort in June 1866, and which both Coles and the Board of Admiralty toured when she was anchored at Spithead.[32]
Memorials
There are memorials to the crew in St Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, London, and St Anne's church in Portsmouth.
The conclusion of the 1870 Court Martial is engraved on the Memorial to HMS Captain, in the north aisle of St Paul’s Cathedral:
- Before the Captain was received from her contractors a grave departure from her original design had been committed whereby her draught of water was increased about two feet and her freeboard was diminished to a corresponding extent, and that her stability proved to be dangerously small, combined with an area of sail, under those circumstances, excessive. The Court deeply regret that if these facts were duly known and appreciated, they were not communicated to the officer in command of the ship, or that, if otherwise, the ship was allowed to be employed in the ordinary service of the Fleet before they had been ascertained by calculation and experience.
Hunt for the wreck of HMS Captain
In 2021 Dr. Howard Fuller, a Reader in War Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, initiated a Find the Captain project. This aims to raise funds in an effort to discover the wreck of the Captain, whose sinking was the worst disaster suffered by the Royal Navy in the 'Pax Britannica' era. In company with a Galician-based documentary company, four wrecks were discovered by multibeam echosounder-scan off Cape Finisterre, Spain on 30 August 2022.[33] The fourth wreck has a general configuration and dimensions closely corresponding with HMS Captain's. A follow-up expedition to deploy a ROV for positive visual identification is planned for 2023.
An interview with Dr Fuller and Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Captain Cowper Coles great-grandson, was published on YouTube by Drachinifel on June 7, 2023. The interview suggests that the chances of finding the wreck are good and that fund raising has reached the half-way mark.[34]
See also
- HMS Serpent: another Royal Navy ship sunk off the Galician coast in 1890
Notes
- ^ a b c Chesneau and Kolesnik 1979, p. 21.
- ^ Printed memo-report from Vice Admiral Sir Robert Spencer Robinson (as Controller of the Royal Navy) to the Board of Admiralty, 31 May 1870 (UK National Archives, Admiralty/ADM 136/3, p. 13). Robinson thought in comparative trials of May 1870 that the Monarch was superior to the Captain except when her single screw (when disconnected) interfered with the helm "in a given position", making the Monarch "perfectly unmanageable."
- )
- ^ Preston 2002, p. 21.
- ^ Brown 2003, pp. 42–44.
- ^ This kind of vessel is often referred to as a coast defence ship, some argue there was nothing defensive about the role intended for Royal Sovereign – she was intended for attack for enemy ports such as Cherbourg But there is little evidence to support this claim. Coles himself envisaged a fleet of such vessels replacing three-decker ships-of-the-line (of which Royal Sovereign was the prototype) and 'blockships' for coast defence first and possibly as alternatives to sea-going ironclads like HMS Warrior second. Few at the Admiralty seriously considered the idea of trusting turret-ships against the multi-layered, modern coastal defences networks of 1st-class naval arsenals such as Cherbourg or Cronstadt or even New York Harbor. Royal Sovereign drew too much water, had a slow rate of fire and relatively high-profile compared with American turret varieties (the monitors) which themselves failed to blast their way into Charleston harbor in 1863.
- ^ Brown 2003, p. 44.
- ^ Preston 2002, p. 22.
- ^ Brown 2003, p. 47.
- ISBN 978-1-913336-22-6.
- ^ ibid., 176.
- ^ a b Preston 2002, p. 23.
- ^ Hawkey, Arthur: HMS Captain. G. Bell, 1963, page 52
- ^ Brown 2003, pp. 47–48.
- ^ Preston 2002, p. 24.
- ^ Dalrymple Hay, Sir John Charles: Remarks on the loss of H.M.S. "Captain". E. Stanford, 1871, page 33
- ^ a b HMS Captain
- ISBN 0-395-98414-9
- ^ a b Scott Russell, John (1870). "The Loss of the Captain". Macmillan's Magazine. p. 477.
- ^ ISBN 1861760221
- ISBN 1861760221
- (1913), Memories of the sea, Edward Arnold, pp. 278–9
- ^ Padfield p.50
- ^ Fuller, Turret versus Broadside, xxi.
- ^ Padfield p.51
- ISBN 978-1-85109-410-3.
- ^ Brown 2003, p. 51.
- ^ Reed, Edward James: A treatise on the stability of ships. C. Griffin and company, 1885, page 346
- ^ Padfield p. 50
- ^ Brown 2003, p. 50.
- ISBN 0-8047-2981-6
- ^ Fuller, Howard J. (June 2015). "'From Hampton Roads to Spithead'". Naval History. 29 (3) – via U.S. Naval Institute.
- ^ "The Telegraph - 'Missing Victorian battleship set for recovery after 150 years'". Retrieved 18 December 2022.
- ^ "Finding the wreck of HMS Captain - on the front lines of Underwater Archaeology". YouTube.
References
- Archibald, E.H.H.; Ray Woodward (ill.) (1971). The Metal Fighting Ship in the Royal Navy 1860–1970. New York: Arco Publishing Co.. ISBN 0-668-02509-3.
- ISBN 0-87021-924-3.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - Brown, David K. (1997). Warrior to Dreadnought: Warship Development 1860–1905. Barnsley, UK: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 1-86176-022-1.
- Chesneau, Roger and Eugene M Kolesnik. Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905. London: Conway Maritime Press, 1979. ISBN 0-85177-133-5.
- ISBN 978-1-68247-329-0.
- Fuller, Howard J. Turret versus Broadside: An Anatomy of British Naval Prestige, Revolution and Disaster, 1860-1870. Warwick: Helion & Company, 2020. ISBN 978-1-913336-22-6.
- Padfield, Peter, The Battleship Era. London: The military book society, 1972.
- Preston, Antony. The World's Worst Warships. London: Conway Maritime Press, 2002. ISBN 0-85177-754-6.
- Sandler, Stanley "The Emergence of the Modern Capital Ship" London, Newark, Del., 1979. ISBN 978-0874131192.