Scuttling

A ship is scuttled when its crew deliberately sinks it, typically by opening holes in its hull.[1]
Scuttling may be performed to dispose of an abandoned, old, or captured vessel; to prevent the vessel from becoming a navigation hazard; as an act of
Notable historical examples
Skuldelev ships (around 1070)
The Skuldelev ships, five Viking ships, were sunk to prevent attacks from the sea on the Danish city of Roskilde. The scuttling blocked a major waterway, redirecting ships to a smaller one that required considerable local knowledge.[2]
Cog near Kampen (early 15th century)
In 2012, a cog preserved from the keel up to the decks in the silt was discovered alongside two smaller vessels in the river IJssel in the city of Kampen, in the Netherlands.[3] The ship, dating from the early 15th century, was suspected to have been deliberately sunk into the river to influence its current.[4][5]
Hernán Cortés (1519)
The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, who led the first expedition that resulted in the fall of the Aztec Empire, ordered his men to strip and scuttle his fleet to prevent the secretly planned return to Cuba by those loyal to Cuban Governor Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar. Their success would have halted his inland march and conquest of the Aztec Empire.
HMS Sapphire (1696)
HMS Sapphire was a 32-gun, fifth-rate sailing frigate of the Royal Navy in Newfoundland Colony to protect the English migratory fishery. The vessel was trapped in Bay Bulls harbour by four French naval vessels led by Jacques-François de Brouillan. To avoid its capture, the English scuttled the vessel on 11 September 1696.
HMS Endeavour (1778)
HMS Endeavour was Captain James Cook's ship upon which he travelled to Australia. After being sold into private hands, she was finally scuttled in a blockade of Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island in 1778.
Siege of Yorktown (1781)
The British sank one ship on 10 October 1781 to prevent it from being captured by the French fleet. Furthermore, the York River, while protected by the French Navy, also contained a few scuttled ships, which were meant to serve as a blockade should any British ships enter the river.
HMS Bounty (1790)
HMS Bounty, after her crew mutinied, was scuttled by the mutineers in Bounty Bay off Pitcairn Island on 23 January 1790.
Chesapeake Bay Flotilla (1814)
During the War of 1812, Commodore Joshua Barney, of the U.S. Navy, Chesapeake Bay Flotilla, sank all nineteen of his fighting vessels, to prevent them from being captured by the British, as he and his men marched, inland, in the unsuccessful defense of Washington D.C.
Jan van Speijk (1831)
During the
Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol (1854)

During the Crimean War, in anticipation of the siege of Sevastopol, the Russians scuttled ships of the Black Sea Fleet to protect the harbour, to use their naval cannon as additional artillery, and to free up the ships' crews as marines. Those ships that were deliberately sunk included Grand Duke Constantine, City of Paris (both with 120 guns), Brave, Empress Maria, and Chesme.
The Clotilda
The Clotilda (slave ship) (often misspelled Clotilde) was the last known U.S. slave ship to bring captives from Africa to the United States, arriving at Mobile Bay, in autumn 1859 or on July 9, 1860, with 110 African men, women, and children. The ship was a two-masted schooner, 86 feet (26 m) long with a beam of 23 ft (7.0 m). U.S. involvement in the Atlantic slave trade had been banned by Congress through the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves enacted on March 2, 1807 (effective January 1, 1808), but the practice continued illegally, especially through slave traders based in New York in the 1850s and early 1860. In the case of the Clotilda, the voyage's sponsors were based in the South and planned to buy Africans in Kingdom of Whydah, Dahomey. After the voyage, the ship was burned and scuttled in Mobile Bay in an attempt to destroy the evidence.
USS Merrimack/CSS Virginia (1861)

In April 1861, the
Stone Fleet (1861–1862)
In December 1861 and January 1862, Union forces scuttled a number of former whalers and other merchant ships in an attempt to block access to Confederate ports during the American Civil War. Loaded with stone before being scuttled, the scuttled ships were known as the "Stone Fleet". Those scuttled in December 1861 sometimes are called the "First Stone Fleet", while those sunk in January 1862 sometimes are termed the "Second Stone Fleet".
Peruvian fleet at El Callao (1881)
During the
USS Merrimac (1898)

During the
Port Arthur (1904–1905)
In 1904, during the
During the siege of Port Arthur, the Russians scuttled the surviving ships of their Pacific Squadron that were trapped in port at Port Arthur in late 1904 and early January 1905 to prevent their capture intact by the Japanese.
SMS Dresden (1915)
In December 1914, SMS Dresden was the only German warship to escape destruction in the Battle of the Falkland Islands. She eluded her British pursuers for several more months, until she put into Más a Tierra in March 1915. Her engines were worn out and she had almost no coal left for her boilers. There, she was trapped by British cruisers, which violated Chilean neutrality and opened fire on the ship. Dresden's Executive Officer – the future Admiral Wilhelm Canaris – negotiated with the British and bought time for his crew to scuttle the Dresden.
Zeebrugge Raid (1918)
The
German fleet at Scapa Flow (1919)

In 1919, over 50 warships of the
Washington Naval Treaty (1922)
Under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, the great naval powers were required to limit the size of their battlefleets, resulting in the disposal of some older or incomplete capital ships. During 1924 and 1925, the treaty resulted in the scuttling of the Royal Australian Navy battlecruiser HMAS Australia and the incomplete Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Tosa, while four old Japanese battleships, the Royal Navy battleship HMS Monarch, and the incomplete United States Navy battleship USS Washington (BB-47) all were disposed of as targets.
Admiral Graf Spee (1939)
Following the
San Giorgio at Tobruk (1941)
When British and Commonwealth land forces attacked Tobruk on 21 January 1941, the Italian cruiser San Giorgio turned its guns against the attacking force, repelling an attack by tanks. As British forces were entering Tobruk, San Giorgio was scuttled at 4:15 AM on 22 January. San Giorgio was awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valor for her actions in the defence of Tobruk. The ship was salvaged in 1952, but while being towed to Italy, her tow rope failed and she sank in heavy seas.
Blockade of Massawa (1941)
As the Allies advanced toward
The British seized the harbor and initiated
Bismarck (1941)
In 1941, the battleship Bismarck, heavily damaged by the Royal Navy, leaking fuel, listing, unable to steer and with no effective weapons, but still afloat and with engines running, was scuttled by its crew to avoid capture. This was supported by survivors' reports in Pursuit: the Sinking of the Bismarck, by Ludovic Kennedy, 1974 and by a later examination of the wreck itself by Dr. Robert Ballard in 1989. A later, more advanced examination found torpedoes had penetrated the second deck, normally always above water and only possible on an already sinking ship, thus further supporting that scuttling had made the final torpedoing redundant.[14]
Coral Sea and Midway (1942)
After the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, the heavily damaged American aircraft carrier Lexington and the Japanese carriers Hiryū, Sōryū, Akagi, and Kaga were all scuttled to prevent their preservation and use by their respective enemies.
French fleet at Toulon (1942)
In November 1942, in an operation codenamed
Danish fleet (1943)
Anticipating a German seizure of all units of the Danish Navy as part of Operation Safari, mostly in Copenhagen but also at other harbours and at sea in Danish waters, the Danish Admiralty had instructed its captains to resist, short of outright fighting, any German attempts to assume control over their vessels, by scuttling if escape to Sweden was not possible and suitable preparations were made. Of the fifty-two vessels[15] in the Danish Navy on 29 August, two were in Greenland, thirty-two were scuttled, four reached Sweden and fourteen were taken undamaged by the Germans. Nine Danish sailors lost their lives and ten were wounded. Subsequently, major parts of the Naval personnel were interned for a period.
Allied landing in Normandy (1944)
Old ships code-named "Corn cobs" were sunk to form a protective reef for the
Operation Deadlight (1945–1946)
Of the 156 German
Japanese submarines (1946)
To prevent a
Contemporary era

Today, ships (and other objects of similar size) are sometimes sunk to help form
Ships are increasingly being scuttled as a method of disposal. The economic benefit of scuttling a ship includes removal of ongoing operational expense to keep the vessel seaworthy. Controversy surrounds the practice. The
Scuttled ships have been used as conveyance for dangerous materials. In the late 1960s, the
In Somalian waters,
In March 2022, Ukraine scuttled the Ukrainian frigate Hetman Sahaidachny, a Krivak-class frigate, due to encroaching Russian offensive operations that threatened to capture the frigate.[23]
In February 2023, the
In popular culture
The term "scuttling" is also used in science fiction to describe intentionally destroying a spacecraft. For example, in The Expanse, this is done by intentionally overloading the ship's fusion reactor.[25]
In the 13th episode of
References
- ^ "Definition of SCUTTLE". Merriam-Webster. 12 April 2023. Retrieved 11 June 2023.
- ^ "Viking dig reports – Roskilde". Ancient history in-depth. BBC. 2014.
- ^ "Excavation, recovery and conservation of a 15th century Cog from the river IJssel near Kampen". Ruimte voor de Rivier IJsseldelta. Rijkswaterstaat. September 2015. Archived from the original on 6 July 2017. Retrieved 14 September 2017.
- ^ Ghose, Tia (17 February 2016). "Medieval Shipwreck Hauled from the Deep". Live Science. Retrieved 14 September 2017.
- ^ "Late Medieval Cog from Kampen". Medieval Histories. 21 February 2016. Retrieved 14 September 2017.
- ^ Anonymous (1904). "The Russo-Japanese War". Kinkodo Publishing. pp. 83–86. 91–93, 251–256.
- ^ Anonymous (15 March 1905). "Harbor Blocked" (PDF). The Evening Bulletin. Maysville, Kentucky. p. 1.
- ^ Playfair, Ian Stanley Ord (1954). The Mediterranean and Middle East: The early successes against Italy (to May 1941). H.M. Stationery Office. p. 442.
- ^ a b Ellsberg, Edward (1946). Under the Red Sea Sun. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co.
- ^ "Salvage in Massawa". Shipbuilding and Shipping Record. Vol. 73. Westminster, London. 16 June 1949. p. 705.
- ISBN 9780750943482.
- ISBN 9781612514086.
- ISBN 9781580469548.
- ^ Battle of Hood and Bismarck. PBS. 2002.
- ^ Nørby, Søren. "Operation Safari - August 29th 1943". Danish Military History. Archived from the original on 13 January 2014.
- ISBN 978-1-84832-037-6.
- ^ Paterson (2009), p. 174.
- ^ Shallal, Suhair. "PCBs Released from the ex-Oriskany Following Deployment as an Artificial Reef: Approach for Assessment of Human Health and Environmental Risks". Retrieved 15 March 2010.
- ^ West, Andrew (30 March 2010). "Judge fires broadside at rush to sink warship". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 3 April 2010.
- ^ Harvey, Ellie; West, Andrew (16 September 2010). "Judge orders tough new rules for scuttling". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 20 September 2010.
- ^ McMahon, Jeanette (13 April 2011). "Dolphins delay scuttling of HMAS Adelaide". 1223 ABC Newcastle. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 14 April 2011.
- ^ Bull, John. "Special Report, Part 1: The Deadliness Below". The Daily Press. Norfolk, Virginia. Retrieved 18 June 2007.
- ^ "Hetman Sahaidachny frigate, being under repair, flooded not to get to enemy – Reznikov". Archived from the original on 8 June 2022.
- ^ "Brazil scuttles warship in Atlantic despite pollution concerns". RFI. 4 February 2023. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
- OCLC 1259540286.
Bibliography
- George, S. C. (1981). Jutland to Junkyard. Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing. ISBN 9780862280291.