HMS Captain

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DuncaninFrance
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HMS Captain

Post by DuncaninFrance » Sat Dec 17, 2022 3:06 pm

Missing Victorian battleship set for recovery after 150 years
The sinking of HMS Captain off the northwest coast of Spain in 1870 was the greatest maritime disaster of its age

HMS Captain capsized off the coast of northwest Spain, killing about 480 sailors CREDIT: luka
HMS Captain was intended as a supership that would secure Britain’s naval supremacy in a turbulent Victorian world.

Instead it became the greatest maritime disaster of its age and was expunged from national memory.

More than 150 years after it sank, claiming the lives of nearly 500 men, academics and descendants of its designer believe they may have located the Captain’s wreck and finally can bring closure to a traumatic story.

Among those hoping to be there when it is identified is Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, a former diplomat and great-grandson of the ship’s designer, Captain Cowper Coles.

The Captain was commissioned in 1869 at a time when Victorian Britain was suffering self-doubt over its superpower status and naval designers were split over the future of warship technology.

By the 1870s, ironclad ships were becoming commonplace, but the shift towards turret guns over traditional broadsides of multiple cannon had only just begun.

The United States, which Britain feared being dragged into a war with, had developed low-sitting monitors with turrets and no sails, but these were not capable of crossing the open ocean and relied on coal power.

Captain Coles, a pioneering naval inventor, came up with a radical design that combined a low-sitting iron ship and rotating gun turrets with the masts and sails of a traditional ship.

The Royal Navy proved sceptical, but Captain Coles stirred up support from the public and the press and successfully lobbied the Navy for his design to be built.

While initial trials of the Captain proved successful, she was caught in heavy seas off the coast of northwest Spain and capsized, killing about 480 sailors, including Captain Coles, and triggering horror and outrage in Britain.

Unstable design
The court-martial over the disaster blamed the public for pressuring the Navy into building the ironclad, which was found to be unstable. The use of sails meant it was liable to heel in high winds, but its low freeboard left little margin for error.

“The ship was controversial from the get-go,” said Dr Howard Fuller of the war studies department at the University of Wolverhampton, who is leading the project to find the wreck.

“Engraved into the memorial at St Paul's for all time is the verdict of the court-martial, which condemned, very oddly, the British public for having that ship built in the first place.”

The loss of the Captain was deeply traumatic to British society and it was effectively expunged from the national memory.

“The cream of the Royal Navy was aboard, she was the newest ship in the fleet. It really was like HMS Queen Elizabeth [the aircraft carrier] going down,” said Sir Sherard. “[The memory] was sort of suppressed and the Navy has never called another ship Captain.”

The desire to repress the memory of the Captain meant that, despite being the greatest naval disaster of its age, there was very little interest in finding the wreck.

That was until Dr Fuller began researching a book on the subject.

Dr Fuller combed through the surviving ship’s logs tracing the final route of the Captain and coming up with a small search area. He then teamed up with a group of Spanish documentary makers, and they interviewed local fishermen who have identified what is thought to be the Captain.

“They have been going out, dragging their nets on the seafloor for centuries and they have compiled unofficial maps of the wrecks,” said Dr Fuller. That included a metal wreck which they called “El Capitan”, which the fisherman are certain is Captain Coles’s lost ship.

Expedition to the wreck
The team are now looking to secure the final funding, around £35,000, needed to pay for an expedition to the wreck to examine it with a remote submersible.

If it’s not the Captain, Dr Fuller is certain that it can’t be more than a few miles away.

If it is her, the ship can be fully documented and properly protected from scavengers and it will bring a close to a painful tale, for Britain and the Coles family.

Answering what went wrong “is not really the point anymore,” said Sir Sherard, instead, he said, it was about documenting and preserving a major military grave.
Duncan

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Re: HMS Captain

Post by Niner » Sat Dec 17, 2022 3:53 pm

A photo of the ship. So says the internet.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... m_1869.jpg
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Re: HMS Captain

Post by DuncaninFrance » Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:08 am

Yes, that's her.
She was the 7th HMS Captain the first being a third rate 70 built at Woolwich in 1678.
Duncan

What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch? -- W.C. Fields
"Many of those who enjoy freedom know little of its price."
You can't fix Stupid, but you can occasionally head it off before it hurts something.
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