Royal George (ship)
 Painting featuring a fictional model of the Royal George
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The Royal George was a British first class ship of the line with a nominal 100 guns that was launched in 1756 , participated in the Seven Years War and the American War of Independence , and sank in 1782 in the Eastern Solent , known as Spithead . The accident, which claimed between 800 and 950 dead, is considered to be the largest non-war ship disaster in British waters.
History of the ship
construction
The construction of the first Royal Anne -called full ship began in 1746 in the naval dockyard of Woolwich and was completed 1756th Over 100,000 cubic feet (2,830 cubic meters ) of oak were used , which corresponds to around 3,840 trees. The ship of the line, renamed Royal George , could carry 100 cannons on three decks , of which 28 were 42-pounders on the lower deck, the heaviest ship artillery at the time. In strong winds, the Royal George could reach a speed of about 11 knots. With a displacement of over 2,000 tons, she was the largest warship in the world at the time of her commissioning. The design of the Victory , which later became famous, is based on plans by the Royal George .
Seven Years War
After the outbreak of the Seven Years' War , the Royal George was assigned to the Canal Fleet under Admiral Sir Edward Hawke and was mostly used in the blockade of the French fleet in Brest . Their captain was John Campbell. In November 1759, Hawke moved to the Royal George , as his flagship Ramillies had to return to England for repairs . Shortly thereafter, a series of storms forced the British fleet to briefly abandon their blockade, allowing the French under Conflans to sail out. The French fleet headed for Quiberon Bay , where a 40,000-strong French army was ready for simultaneous landings in Essex and Scotland . The chasing British fleet caught up with the French on November 20 when they entered the bay. Despite a dangerous fairway, the lack of pilots familiar with the area and an increasing north-west storm, Hawke decided to follow the French and attack them. In the sea battle in Quiberon Bay , the Royal George was the sixth ship in the British battle line. Together with Magnanime , she first put the French ship of the line Héros out of action, which, after the loss of over 400 dead and wounded, dropped the flag, drove to the coast and was destroyed there. Around 4 p.m. Hawke attacked the enemy flagship Soleil Royal with the Royal George and sank the 70-gun ship of the line Superbe, which was hurrying to help, with a single broadside. When the Soleil Royal ran aground the next morning in an attempt to escape and was set on fire by its own crew, a command of the Royal George managed to capture the figurehead of the opposing ship as a trophy . With the British victory (France lost seven ships and 2,500 men, the British two ships, whose crews were rescued) the invasion of Great Britain was prevented.
After the end of the Seven Years War, the Royal George was decommissioned and hung up in Plymouth from 1763 to 1777 .
American War of Independence
After the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War , the Royal George was returned to service in 1777 and assigned to the Home Fleet in British waters. In 1779 this association faced another Spanish-French invasion project aimed at destroying the fleet and bringing a French army across for an attack on Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight and a subsequent advance on London . The Royal Navy was largely paralyzed by fragmentation into various theaters of war and massive political tensions. Fleet commander Sir Charles Hardy therefore felt compelled to pursue a wait-and-see strategy vis-à-vis the far superior enemy unit and to hope that the enemy fleets would be decimated by diseases and storms. Hardy's association, which had the most powerful warships of its time with the three 100-gun ships of the line Royal George , Victory and Britannia and the 90-gun ship Prince George , therefore limited itself to withdrawing from direct combat and to time play. This strategy was ultimately successful, as the French abandoned the invasion project in September 1779 and returned to Brest with 8,000 sick on board their ships. But she was so hated by the crew members of the Royal George that they covered the figurehead of their ship with their jackets so that they would not see the shame of avoiding a fight.
The ship of the line played a more active role in the sea battle at Cape St. Vincent on January 16, 1780, in which a British fleet under Sir George Rodney defeated a Spanish unit under Don Juan de Lángara . The Royal George achieved her last success in January 1781 when she captured two Spanish liners on the way to Gibraltar off Portugal . She was then overtaken in Plymouth and sailed from there to Spithead in August 1782 to join a fleet of 50 warships and 300 merchant ships under Admiral Richard Howe , which was supposed to break the Spanish blockade of Gibraltar. For this operation, the ship of the line led by Captain Martin Waghorn was to serve as the flagship of Rear Admiral Richard Kempenfelt .
The downfall
.jpg)
On August 29, 1782, shortly before the departure of the fleet, the family members of the crew members were allowed to visit the Royal George , as the sailors were not granted shore leave for fear of desertions . Prostitutes also appear to have been on board; a total of about 400 people were there in addition to the 820 crew members. Although the ship was also fully loaded with ammunition and supplies, that morning Captain Waghorn ordered a small repair to be carried out at a point below the surface of the water. The usual practice was to heel the ship by relocating cannons to raise the point in question out of the water. Despite the prohibition to leave the ship, the sailing master, the boatswain and the “gunner” (gun master) stayed on land, which is why none of the specialists in charge supervised this maneuver.
Around 9:00 a.m., a cutter came alongside , from which rum barrels were loaded into the ship of the line through the gun hatches on the lower side. It was later suspected that the extra weight of the rum barrels pushed the gun hatches below the surface of the water, so that water began to pour in. Despite early warnings from the ship's carpenter, who was turned away twice by the officer on watch, the order given by Captain Waghorn at 9:18 a.m. to straighten the ship came too late because it was already so lopsided that the cannons could no longer be moved . The Royal George tipped on its side, filled up and sank in no time. Only 255 people on board were able to save themselves, of the hundreds of seamen below deck only three escaped through open gun ports. Rear Admiral Kempenfelt and a son of the captain were also among the victims. The exact number of casualties is unknown as it is not known how many civilians were on board. Estimates range from 800 to 950 deaths, including around 300 women and 60 children. William Laird Clewes e.g. B. names about 900 dead. To this day, the sinking of the Royal George remains the Royal Navy's worst shipwreck without the effects of war.
The court martial
The court martial on board the Warspite released Kempenfelt and Waghorn of any responsibility for the sinking of the ship and assigned the blame to the so-called Navy Board , the authority responsible for docks, supplies and repairs. Allegedly rot of the wood caused the downfall; for this reason part of the ship's bottom had broken out. There is no sound evidence or testimony to support this theory. It was probably a politically motivated saying. The Navy Board has been accused of massive embezzlement and negligence on the part of the Royal Navy, and assigning responsibility for the disaster to the Royal George may have been an appropriate leverage from the Admiralty's point of view to bring about change.
Recovery attempts
Due to its location in one of the most important anchorages of the Royal Navy, there were early unsuccessful attempts to lift the wreck . From the summer of 1832, the diving pioneers John and Charles Deane finally managed to carry out successful rescue work with helmet divers and lift 30 cannons. Army officer Charles Pasley carried out further work from 1839 , under whose direction the wreck was largely demolished until 1845 and the remaining cannons were raised. The salvage work on the Royal George thus played an important role in the early history of diving. Some of the guns were melted down and used for the Nelson Memorial in Trafalgar Square, London. In 1965, while searching for the Mary Rose , the amateur archaeologist Alexander McKee discovered the remains of the ship that had remained on the seabed, which he called the “ burial mound ”. They essentially consist of the lowest part of the hull buried in the mud and the ballast stones, the wreck can hardly be seen as a ship.
See also
- List of shipping disasters
- For other ships of the same name, see HMS Royal George
literature
- William Laird Clewes: The Royal Navy. A History from the Earliest Times to 1900. Vol. 3, Chatham Publishing, 1996 ISBN 1-86176-012-4 . (Reprint of the 1898 edition)
- Tim Ecott: Underwater. Adventure in another world. Argon, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-87024-556-5 . (about the salvage work)
Web links
- Isle of Wight shipwrecks: HMS Royal George. Archived from the original on December 3, 2015 ; Retrieved December 3, 2015 .
- Memorials & Monuments on the Isle of Wight - Ryde - Royal George memorial 1782. Archived from the original on December 3, 2015 ; Retrieved December 3, 2015 .
- HMS Royal George. ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Memorials & Monuments in St Mary's Church
Coordinates: 50 ° 45 ′ 25.8 " N , 1 ° 6 ′ 45.2" W.