Coronation (ship)
 Drawing of the coronation
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The Coronation was an English warship built in 1685. It had 90 cannons, was 140 feet long, and weighed 1,366 tons. In 1691 she sank off the Rame Peninsula in Cornwall .
The misfortune
In 1691 England and France waged war against each other (see War of Palatinate Succession ). The Coronation was then the second largest warship in the English fleet and cruised with numerous other ships of the English and Dutch navy off Plymouth in the English Channel. The aim was to block the French canal ports. The coronation was captained by Charles Skelton.
On September 3, a south-westerly storm broke out (one of an unusually large number, according to contemporary reports) and threatened to drive the ships ashore. Some captains, including Charles Skelton, decided to call the Plymouth Sound to find refuge here. Even before the bay was reached, the coronation lost its masts . She tried to save herself by anchoring, but sank between Rame Head and Penlee Point . Only 20 men out of about 550 survived the accident.
The wreck still lies at a depth of 19 meters at position 50 ° 19 '0 " N , 4 ° 11' 0" W .
Others
In 1976, the Museum chemist Bob Child wanted a couple of divers upscale cannonballs of Coronation rid of an alleged corrosion layer. At that moment the balls heated up to 400 degrees in a flash and almost set his desk on fire. At first nobody knew why. Today this property of the coronation spheres is based on the following explanation: Organic material from the sea floor settled in the pores of the spheres. This reacted with the outer layers of the iron oxide and formed a solid crust. The organic material inside the ball rotted away and acted as a reaction partner for the iron oxide, which was converted back into iron: “The balls were the same size as before, but contained less iron because the pores were left behind. When the hammer struck the airtight crust, the pores were drawn through with air. The huge surface of the porous iron led to an extremely fast rust and thus oxidation process, which immediately released the heat. "
literature
- Roger Charles Anderson, Society for Nautical Research: Mariner's Mirror. London 1937,
Web links
- Website with underwater photos of the wreck
- wrecksite.eu: HMS Coronation