HMS Lutine
|
|
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Type | frigate |
| Shipyard |
Toulon naval shipyard |
| Order | October 23, 1778 |
| Keel laying | March 1779 |
| Launch | September 11, 1779 |
| 1. Period of service |
|
| Commissioning | November 1779 |
| Whereabouts | Captured December 18, 1793 in Toulon |
| 2. Period of service |
|
| Commissioning | December 18, 1793 |
| Whereabouts | Sunk in a storm off Terschelling on October 9, 1799 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
600 t (empty) |
| length |
44.2 m |
| width |
11.2 m |
| Draft |
5.2 m |
| Armament |
26 long 12 pounders |
| Rigging |
3-masted frigate ship |
The HMS Lutine was a French frigate that was captured by the Royal Navy in 1793 and sank in 1799. It is best known to this day for its ship's bell , which was recovered in 1858 and is still hung in the headquarters of Lloyd's of London to this day .
history
France
The Lutine was originally ordered by the French Navy on October 23, 1778 as the fourth unit of a total of twelve frigates of the Magicienne class from a shipyard in Toulon and laid down there in March 1779. The launch of the 32-gun ships took place on September 11, 1779, the commissioning followed in November of the same year.
In the course of the French Revolution , the city of Toulon with the port and shipyard facilities was handed over to the English by Girondists and Royalists on September 27, 1793 . After a six-week siege by French revolutionary troops, French royalists surrendered the Lutine , along with fifteen other ships, to Vice Admiral Lord Hood on December 18 , before Toulon was retaken the following day.
Great Britain
The British then put the ship into service as a Lutine and had it converted into a frigate with 38 cannons in 1795 . As such, she then served in the North Sea and was involved in the blockade of Amsterdam , among other things . In October 1799, the Lutine was under the command of Royal Navy Captain Lancelot Skynner on a voyage from Great Yarmouth to Cuxhaven . The ship ran aground on October 9 during a strong north- westerly storm on a sandbank off Terschelling and was lost with its gold and silver cargo. Around 240 sailors were killed in the accident, only one man survived. The day after the accident, the commander of the two British ships Arrow and Wolverine stationed off Vlieland , Commander Nathaniel Portlock, reported to the Admiralty in London:
|
|
After the accident three officers, including Captain Skynner were buried in the cemetery of a Vlielander Church, about 200 more victims were laid to rest in an unmarked mass grave near the Brandaris - lighthouse on Terschelling. A lake on Terschelling is known to this day as "Doodemanskisten" (in German, coffin / coffins), allegedly because the wood for the coffins required came from this area. Another explanation could be a modification of "d'Earmeskisten" for "poor people's grave" .
The wreck of the Lutine
The Lutine stranded in Ijzergat , a small passage between the islands of Vlieland and Terschelling, which no longer exists today . The sea area known as Vlie is full of changing sandbanks and shoals and was notorious for its strong currents.
Immediately after the stranding, the wreck of the Lutine began to silt up, which ultimately made the recovery efforts from 1804 impossible. The wreck that was exposed by the current was discovered by chance in 1857, but it was completely silted up again in 1859.
The charge
The charge of the Lutine consisted of gold and silver in the form of bars and coins in the then value of 1.2 million pounds . The information on the value of the cargo is based on an estimate by Lloyd's in 1858, as the original documents were destroyed in a fire in 1838. According to an unconfirmed newspaper report from 1869, Dutch crown jewels were also on board. The cargo was intended to secure the liquidity of several Hamburg banks and to prevent an impending collapse of the stock exchange . The cargo was insured with Lloyd's of London , who paid for the damage in full and thus became the owner of the cargo.
The lack of the gold cargo destined for Hamburg triggered the crisis there that it should have prevented.
The gold was stored in simple wooden barrels with thin iron rings, the silver in barrels with wooden rings. Within a year of being stranded, the wreck and cargo were mostly smashed.
The rescue attempts
Both the British Admiralty as the shipowner, the underwriters of Lloyd's, who received the cargo through abandon , and the Dutch government, which was at war with Great Britain and viewed the wreck as spoil, made efforts to salvage the valuable cargo.
Captain Portlock received an order from the British Admiralty on October 29th to salvage the cargo for the benefit of the persons to whom it belongs . In addition, Lloyd's also sent its own agents to get an overview of the wreck. The third party involved was commissioned by the Dutch side, FPRobbé from Terschelling, with the recovery in December. However, all those involved had to deal with difficulties due to the unfavorable season and the location of the wreck, which was then about 7.5 m deep.
In 1821, Robbé's successor on Terschelling, Pierre Eschauzier, dealt with a petition to King Wilhelm I and obtained the right to salvage the cargo of the lutine by royal decree , of which, if successful, he would have to cede half of the salvaged goods to the Dutch Crown. Eschauzier's attempts in turn forced Lloyd's to urge the British government to defend their rights to the Lutine wreck . As a result of British efforts, Wilhelm I issued a follow-up decree in 1823 in which he ceded the right to the cargo to King George of England as proof of the friendly disposition, but denied Great Britain's right to the wreck. This right to the cargo was then given back to Lloyd's.
In August 1800 Robbé hid a barrel with seven gold bars, each weighing 37 kg, and a small chest with 4,606 Spanish Piasters . On September 4th and 5th, further, partly broken kegs with twelve bars of gold were recovered. Although the year 1800 was the most successful of all recovery attempts with a few other small finds, the recovered equivalent of 3241 guilders was not enough to even cover the recovery costs. In the following year, a few more finds were made, but the condition of the increasingly silting wreck destroyed further attempts at recovery. By 1804, Robbé reported that the salvage had become impossible in the part of the ship in which parts of the valuable cargo had previously been found, as it was covered by a large part of the ship's side that was previously at a more favorable angle . In 1814, Pierre Eschauzier received 300 guilders from the Dutch king for his rescue work and found 8 Louis d'or and 7 Spanish piastres in the wreck of the Lutine.In 1821, Eschauzier founded a consortium to make further rescue attempts with a British manned diving bell . But Mr. Rennie, the engineer involved, died that same year. The diving bell arrived at the end of June of the following year; however, the efforts were negated by the persistently bad weather and the silting up of the wreck. At this point the wreck was already about three feet under the sand. Although further attempts were made until 1829, these brought almost nothing to light, so that the diving bell was finally sold to the Dutch Navy.
When the sandbar that enclosed the Lutine became smaller in 1835 and migrated southwards, the water depth was again 9-10 m. A few more half-hearted rescue attempts were then made. Further attempts to raise capital for a continuation were also made, but these were ultimately largely unsuccessful.
In 1857 it was discovered that a fairway had formed directly above the Goudplaat sandbank, in which the lutine was hidden. As a result, the wreck was largely exposed, but also sunk deeper, so that the stern, stern and sides of the ship had disappeared and only the keel, keel and a few frames of the hull remained. Immediately afterwards, they began again with salvage operations, with helmet divers ( helmduikers ) and bell divers ( klokduikers were made), the latter as a Dutch diver ( Hollandsche Duiker were called). During this period, numerous other parties showed their interest, which led the government to station a gunboat in the area. During this time, cargo worth around 20,000 guilders was recovered. The recovery attempts in 1858 were again hampered by adverse weather conditions and produced 32 gold bars and 66 silver bars. In the course of 1859 it became apparent that the cargo she was looking for had been stowed in the rear of the Lutine . The stern lay on its side, buried portside in the sand and starboard side up, exposing four gold bars, one silver bar and over 3,500 piastres. By 1860 the wreck had sunk to about 14 meters water depth, which reduced the number of attempts at recovery. Despite this, cargo worth half a million guilders was recovered over the four years, including 41 gold bars, 64 silver bars and 15,350 different coins. The salvage consortium was able to come up with a return of 136%. By 1863 the wreck had been sent back in.
Willem Hendrik ter Meulen, an inventor, announced a further rescue attempt in 1867 using a sand drill ( zandboor ), a device that was supposed to push water into the sandy sea bed to create a path for a helmet diver there and signed a first three-year contract and extended it this for a further three years to finally conclude a contract for a further twenty years. The plan was to dig the sand with the device by the same amount at a water depth of seven meters in order to get to the wreck. Ter Meulen bought the steel paddle steam tractor Antagonist with 50 hp. Its machine was modified so that it could be decoupled from the paddle wheel drive and driven a kind of centrifugal pump , which delivered up to 21.5 cubic meters of water per minute. Tests showed, however, that a full 1.5 cubic meters of water was enough to allow the sand drill to penetrate to the wreck within a few minutes. The created cavities with the diver in them did not collapse either. Unfortunately, the lutine remained heavily silted up with water depths of 2 to 5 meters for the next few years (1868 and 1884). Ter Meulen also provided the position of the wreck of 53 ° 21 '34 " N , 5 ° 4' 41.8" O firmly.
The ship's bell and other salvaged parts of the lutine
The Lutine 's ship's bell was recovered on July 17, 1858 and has been hanging from the ship insurance company Lloyd’s since that year, attached to a raised platform in the so-called Underwriting Room .
Interestingly, on the 48 kg bell there is not the name of the lutine , but the inscription "ST. JEAN - 1779" . This contradiction has not yet been clarified.
Traditionally, the bell was struck once when a ship was lost and twice when a ship believed lost reappeared. This was originally done so that all underwriters and brokers in the room would be made aware of the news at the same time. Because the bell got a crack over the years, this is no longer the practice today. The bell announced the last loss of a ship in 1979, and announced the last return of a ship in 1989.
During the Second World War , Lord Haw-Haw 's radio propaganda claimed that the bell was ringing incessantly because the Allies lost so many ships in the Battle of the Atlantic , in fact it was only struck once when battleship Bismarck sank.
Today the bell only rings on special occasions, such as the death of a member of the British royal family , or catastrophes of international proportions, such as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 or the tsunami disaster in 2004 .
Another occasion is the annual ringing in and out of the two minutes of silence on Remembrance Day .
The four previous hanging places or underwriting rooms of the bell were:
- 1858–1928 The Royal Exchange
- 1928–1958 The Lloyd’s Building on Leadenhall Street
- 1958–1986 The first Lloyd's of London headquarters on Lime Street
- Since 1986 The current Lloyd's of London building on Lime Street
On September 18, 1858, the rudder of the Lutine was salvaged. The result was a chair and table that used to be in Lloyd's Writing Room and used by the chairman of the annual general meeting. Today they are in the Old Library of the Lloyd's building .
In 1886 a cannon was recovered, which Lloyd’s gave to Queen Victoria . The cannon is on display at Windsor Castle to this day . Another cannon was passed on to the City of London Corporation , which exhibited it in what was then London's Guildhall . Lloyd's gave a third cannon to a sports club in Essex . Other Lutine cannons are in the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum and at least four on Terschelling .
The two front anchors , each weighing 3.9 tons, were also recovered and have been on display in Amsterdam since 1913. At Lloyd's there were considerations of installing the two anchors instead of the statue of Sir Robert Peel as a memorial behind the Royal Exchange , but the idea was dropped and only the wooden anchor sticks labeled with Lutine were brought to Lloyd's.
The Lloyd's Act of 1871
The preamble to the Lloyd's Act of 1871 gives a brief history of the loss and attempted salvage of the lutine :
“And whereas in or about the year 1799 a vessel of war of the Royal Navy, named the Lutine, was wrecked on the coast of Holland with a considerable amount of specie on board, insured by underwriters at Lloyd's, being members of the Society, and others, and Holland being then at war with this country the vessel and cargo were captured, and some years afterwards the King of the Netherlands authorized certain undertakers to attempt the further salvage of the cargo on the conditions (among others) that they should pay all expenses, and that one half of all that should be recovered should belong to them, and that the other half should go to the Government of the Netherlands, and subsequently the King of the Netherlands ceded to King George the Fourth on behalf of the Society of Lloyd's, the share in the cargo which had been so reserved to the Government of the Netherlands:
And whereas from time to time operations of salving from the wreck of the Lutine have been carried on, and a portion of the sum recovered, amounting to about twenty-five thousand pounds, is by virtue of the cession aforesaid in the custody or under the control of the Committee for managing the affairs of Lloyd's: [...]
And whereas it is expedient that the operations of salving from the wreck of the Lutine be continued, and that provision be made for the application in that behalf, as far as may be requisite, of money that may hereafter be received from those operations, and for the application to public or other purposes of the aforesaid sum of twenty-five thousand pounds, and of the unclaimed residue of money to be hereafter received as aforesaid […] ”
The division of ownership of the previously unrecovered gold between the decretal salvors and the Lloyd's insurance company is determined on page 35 of the Lloyd's Act, 1871:
"Salvage operations as to wreck of Lutine
The Society may from time to time do or join in doing all such lawful things as they think expedient with a view to further salving from the wreck of the Lutine, and hold, receive, and apply for that purpose so much of the money to be received by means of salving therefrom as they from time to time think fit, and the nett money produced thereby, and the said sum of twenty-five thousand pounds, shall be applied for purposes connected with shipping or marine insurance, according to a scheme to be prepared by the Society, and confirmed by Order of Her Majesty in Council, on the recommendation of the Board of Trade, after or subject to such public notice to claimants of any part of the money aforesaid to come in, and such investigation of claims , and any such barring of claims not made or not proved, and such reservation of rights (if any), as the Board of Trade think fit. "
literature
- Thies Völker: Lexicon of famous ships, spectacular adventures from Noah's Ark to the Titanic . Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-8218-1625-2 .
- SJ Van der Molen: The Lutine Treasure . Adlard Coles, London 1970, ISBN 0-229-97482-1 .
Web links
- Description of the wreck (English)
- Description of the rescue attempts (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ B. Ireland: The Fall of Toulon. The Last Opportunity to Defeat the French Revolution . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005, ISBN 0-297-84612-4 , pp. 301 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h S.J. Van der Molen: The Lutine Treasure . Adlard Coles, 1970, ISBN 0-229-97482-1 .
- ^ Charles P. Kindleberger: Manias, Panics, and Crashes. A History of Financial Crises . Wiley, 1978, ISBN 0-471-16192-6 .
- ↑ Lloyd's Log Magazine, March 1965
- ↑ a b Lloyd’s Act, 1871 ( Memento of the original dated December 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; English)
