HMS Victoria (1887)
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|---|---|
 HMS Victoria |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Battleship |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | July 30, 1885 |
| Launch | April 9, 1887 |
| Namesake | the British Queen Victoria |
| Commissioning | March 19, 1890 |
| Whereabouts | Sunk June 23, 1893 after collision |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
10,509 tn.l. |
| length |
overall: 109.6 m (359.5 ft ) |
| width |
21.3 m (70 ft) |
| Draft |
8.1 m (26.75 ft) |
| crew |
550 men |
| drive |
8 cylinder boilers |
| speed |
16 kn , with fan up to 17.5 kn |
| Armament |
2 × 16.25 "(413-mm) L / 30 Mk.I gun |
| Coal supply |
900 tn.l., maximum 1200 tn.l. |
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Armor armor belt deck tower command tower battery |
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HMS Victoria was a Victoria- class battleship commissioned in 1890 and the flagship of the world's largest sea squadron at the time, the British Mediterranean Fleet . On 22 June 1893, the rammed Camperdown the Victoria during a maneuver before Tripoli (Lebanon) . 358 of the 715 people on board the Victoria died, including the squadron commander, Vice Admiral Sir George Tryon . The later commander of the British Grand Fleet in the Battle of the Skagerrak , John Jellicoe , survived the accident as first officer of the Victoria .
The downfall
Commander in Chief Sir George Tryon
The Commander-in-Chief, Vice Admiral Sir George Tryon, was known for giving extremely succinct and precise orders, the meaning of which his subordinates could only understand after a little thought. He loved to discuss his orders, but only after they were carried out. His misunderstood orders of June 22, 1893 led to the collision with the Camperdown .
The commands
June 22, 1893 was a hot and quiet day off Tripoli. The fleet was divided into two divisions: the first division consisted of the flagship Victoria and four other battleships ( Nile , Dreadnought , Inflexible and Collingwood ) and a cruiser ( Phaeton ), the second division of a total of three battleships ( Camperdown , Edinburgh and Sans Pareil ), two cruisers ( Edgar and Amphion ) and two light cruisers ( Fearless and Barham ) under the leadership of Camperdown , the flagship of Rear Admiral Albert Markham.
Around 2 p.m. Tryon explained - quite unusual for him - to Captain Maurice Bourke, the commanding officer of the Victoria , and Commander Hawkins-Smith, the naval navigation officer, his plan to anchor off Tripoli. The fleet should initially form in two lines, with the first division on starboard. The distance should be “6 cable lengths”, i.e. around 1,000 m (a British cable length = 185.3184 m). The two lines should then turn inwards at the same time - the ships, however, had a turning circle of 5 cable lengths with normal rudder and 4 cable lengths with full rudder. The navigational officer Hawkins-Smith pointed out to George Tryon the apparent impossibility of the maneuver and said "We need at least eight lengths of cable for it." George Tryon replied, "Yes, it should be eight lengths of cable." And dismissed his subordinates. The Vice Admiral then called his signal officer, Lieutenant Lord Gillford, and ordered him, "Give a signal that the divisions should be in line with the second division on port and six cable lengths between the lines." then took a piece of paper and wrote explicitly "6" on it and handed it to Gillford.
When the flags were hoisted at 2:10 p.m., Hawkins-Smith rushed to Gillford to tell him that he had agreed eight lengths of cable with Tryon. Gillford showed him the slip of paper with the "6" on it and, at Hawkins-Smith's insistence, went back to Tryon's cabin. Tryon replied in a sharp voice: "Let it be six cable lengths!"
At 2:20 p.m. the flags were brought in, which corresponds to the command to execute. The fleet was traveling at 8.8 knots.
Shortly after 3 p.m. Vice Admiral Tryon appeared on deck and gave the order for the previously announced maneuver. Since this unusual maneuver had no equivalent in the signal manual, the order had to be conveyed to the other ships with a double signal. So at 3:24 p.m. two orders were issued:
- Second division: change of course 180 degrees to starboard, while maintaining the fleet formation.
- First division: change of course 180 degrees to port, while maintaining the fleet formation.
The maneuver could be carried out with a time offset if one flag signal were caught before the other. Still, Rear Admiral Markham hesitated on the Camperdown to acknowledge the signal. Tryon then asked “What are you waiting for?” - a public compromise by the rear admiral in front of the entire fleet. At 3:31 p.m. the order was carried out.
The maneuver
Tryon had ordered the 1st Division to carry out the maneuver with "full rudder". That was unusual for him. Markham, however, ordered the 2nd Division to take a course that was only slightly less harsh. The Camperdown and the Victoria grew closer and closer. The captain of the Victoria , Bourke, anxiously watched the approaching Camperdown , but Tryon looked stubbornly aft at his division because, as he once told Bourke, "an admiral's gaze must be backward, that of a captain's forward."
The commandant warned the vice admiral three times, but he did not look away. Only last time did he look at the Camperdown and confirm to Bourke that he could give the order to reverse. At the same moment, the command "Bulkhead tight" was given on the main bridge. The Camperdown was now also backing up. But the collision could not be avoided: at 3:34 p.m., just three minutes after the start of the maneuver, the Camperdown, equipped with a ram ram , rammed the Victoria at a speed of six knots. The Victoria sank in ten minutes.
analysis
The maneuver initially assumed for those involved with the same turning circle of both divisions would lead the ships into a position rotated 180 degrees in two parallel lines, but would not have "maintained the fleet formation", as the 1st division would then be on the port side of the fleet would have been. By reducing it to six cable lengths, this maneuver was also completely impossible. Tryon usually only gave "normal oars". Markham knew that, so he thought he saw Tryon's intention. He obviously wanted to cross the course of the 1st Division with the almost “full rudder” and the thus smaller turning circle. What Markham ignored in the eight minutes between the command and the collision was the old British nautical custom that a ship should never cross the ship's course with the commander in chief without express permission. Furthermore, there was a royal service regulation, according to which "two ships under steam that are in danger of colliding should avoid the ship with the other on the starboard side". So Markham should have stayed outside the turning circle of the 1st Division with a normal rudder - the behavior that, vice versa, Tryon had assumed. A naval court, which first formally indicted the officers of the Victoria , named Tryon's orders as the cause, Markham rose thereafter and reached the rank of admiral in 1903. Captain Bourke was acquitted of all charges and in turn deputy commander of the Mediterranean fleet.
wreck
The diver Christian Francis discovered the wreck of the HMS Victoria after ten years of searching in August 2004 off the coast of what is now Lebanon. When it went down, the ship bored its bow vertically into the seabed and has since stood in this vertical position in the water.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The ship was originally supposed to be called Renown , but the name was changed before it was launched in 1887 to honor Queen Victoria's golden jubilee.
- ^ Nicholas Blanford: Divers discover British ship wreck after 111 years. The Daily Star (Lebanon) , September 4, 2004, accessed on May 31, 2016 (English): "HMS Victoria was discovered last week by Christian Francis, a Lebanese-Austrian who has been searching for the wreck since 1994."
- ↑ Ibrahim K. Msallam: The World's only Vertical Wreck - HMS Victoria. In: Sea World. August 14, 2013, accessed May 31, 2016 .