This is a pdf about the History of the Newfoundland Fisheries;

http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/wildlife-nature/articles/pdfs/atlantic-cod-cabot-cod-and-the-colonists.pdf

A fascinating read that Trike. Particularly the suggestion of a cod war between the Icelanders and the English with attendant concerns regarding declining fish stocks in the 1400s. Plus ca change ....

Jutland veteran HMS Caroline, currently moored in Belfast, will be open to the public next year;

HMS Caroline

Painting of the three deck, 112 gun, HMS St Lawrence. What is unusual about this ship is she is not at sea, but is instead on Lake Ontario. She was the RN's largest fresh water warship. Built at the Kingston Dockyard on Lake Ontario during the War of 1812, St Lawrence dominated the lake during the final few months of the war so absolutely that she never needed to fire a shot in anger;



After the war she was sold off, ending up as a storage pier for a lakeside brewery. Here she was sunk, and is now a popular diving site:

The timbers of HMS Namur form part of the new "Command of the Oceans" exhibit at Chatham Historical Dockyard;

Command of the Oceans

22 June 1807, the Leopard- Chesapeake incident;

The Chesapeake Incident

Triceratops wrote:

The timbers of HMS Namur form part of the new "Command of the Oceans" exhibit at Chatham Historical Dockyard;

Command of the Oceans

Read the link with great interest, Triceratops.
Was a bit puzzled by the name "Namur"...and wondered if it had something to do with our "Namur" in Belgium.
On the first sight not:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Namur_(1756)


But then I found this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Namur
"Two ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Namur, after the capture of the Belgian city of Namur by William III in 1695, whilst another was launched, but never completed:"
Now I see that old fellow from the North of Belgium. One of the flock of Willems, starting with William the Silent. Read a whole book about William III from the Dutch Wouter Troost
https://goo.gl/akDGke

And it seems that that book in its description of the Dutch time from William wasn't always appreciated by some other Dutch historians, although I found when comparing with other information it was in my opinion a fair picture of that period...

Kind regards from your friend Paul.

Triceratops wrote:

22 June 1807, the Leopard- Chesapeake incident;

The Chesapeake Incident

Triceratops, thanks to you I did some quick research (Wikipedia ) on a war that I never fully had knowledge from...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812

Reading all this, I became aware how Britain dominated the world already in that time. In the middle of the struggle of the Napoleontic Wars they had still time and resources to counter the USA...?

Kind regards, Paul.

Paul, one of the American ships from this war, the USS Constitution, is still afloat in Boston Harbor;

PaulRyckier wrote:

Reading all this, I became aware how Britain dominated the world already in that time. In the middle of the struggle of the Napoleontic Wars they had still time and resources to counter the USA...?

Kind regards, Paul.

But surely the war of 1812 wasn't a separate conflict that Britain undertook in the midst of the Napoleonic wars ... it was an integral part of the Napoleonic Wars. The British were trying to blockade the trade from the US to France, and the US were trying to break this blockade and also, with French support, were threatening British possessions in Canada. In a similar vein the Wars in the Indian sub-continent were also between Britain with its Indian allies, and France with her allies. The Napoleonic Wars were truely a worldwide conflict.

Meles meles wrote:

PaulRyckier wrote:

Reading all this, I became aware how Britain dominated the world already in that time. In the middle of the struggle of the Napoleontic Wars they had still time and resources to counter the USA...?

Kind regards, Paul.

But surely the war of 1812 wasn't a separate conflict that Britain undertook in the midst of the Napoleonic wars ... it was an integral part of the Napoleonic Wars. The British were trying to blockade the trade from the US to France, and the US were trying to break this blockade and also, with French support, were threatening British possessions in Canada. In a similar vein the Wars in the Indian sub-continent were also between Britain with its Indian allies, and France with her allies. The Napoleonic Wars were truely a worldwide conflict.

 Meles meles,

you are quite right and I realized it by looking more in depth to the whole story. And it is a welcome addition to my thread about the Napoleontic wars...

Kind regards from your friend Paul.

Remnants:

The mock Tudor frontage of Liberty Department Store on Great Marlborough Street in London is made from timbers re-cycled from the Line of Battle Ships Hindostan and Impregnable ( previously Howe )


Coincidentally, the timbers of an earlier Impregnable ( subsequently renamed Kent then Caledonia ) were used in the cloisters of St Conan's Kirk on Loch Awe:

28 March 1814; the USS Essex and the Essex Junior are captured by the Royal Navy in Valparaiso:

Battle of Valparaiso

In Salutem Omnium

The semi submerged reef known as the Bell Rock, was, by the late 18th century, one of the most notorious hazards to shipping to be found around the British Isles, claiming on average 6 ships each winter.
Things reached a head in January 1804, when the 64 gun HMS York was lost along with her entire crew. It was now decided to build a lighthouse on the Rock.
The job was fraught with difficulty as work could only be carried out at low tide and in the summer months. None the less, between 1807 and 1811, the work was completed and the Bell Rock Lighthouse commenced operations:
Work in progress, the wooden structure on the right doubled as a temporary beacon and as workers' accommodation;



The success of the light was shown as no ships were lost on the Bell Rock for the remainder of the century.

Now fully automated, the original granite tower is still in use;

Pax Britannica

120 years ago was the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. It can also be regarded as the high water mark of the British Empire and the Royal Navy's dominance of the oceans.
On the 1st January 1897, the Royal Navy had 21 first-line Battleships in commission with a further 8 in Reserve or nearing completion.

On that day, these vessels were deployed accordingly:
Channel Squadron
Majestic [FF]
Magnificent [F 2i/c]
Prince George
Royal Sovereign
Empress of India
Repulse
Resolution


Coast Defence
Benbow  [Greenock]
Howe  [Queenstown]
Sans Pareil  [Sheerness]


Mediterranean Fleet
Ramillies  [FF]
Revenge [F 2i/c]
Camperdown
Anson
Rodney
Collingwood
Barfleur
Hood
Trafalgar
Nile


China Station
Centurion [F]


Fleet Reserve (ships requiring between 2 and 30 days preparation for service)
Victorious [Chatham]
Royal Oak [P'mouth]

Dockyard Reserve (ships requiring more than 1 month preparation for active service)
Hannibal [Pembroke]
Caesar [Portsmouth]
Illustrious [Chatham]
Renown  [Dev]


Completing ( the final two ships of the Majestic class)
Mars  
Jupiter

Notes: First line Battleships were those ships from HMS Collingwood onwards; ie, Admiral class, Trafalgar class, Victoria class, Royal Sovereign  class, Centurion class and Majestic class

There were originally two Victoria class ships, but Victoria herself was sunk in a collision in the Mediterranean leaving Sans Pariel of this class.
Centurion and Barfleur were ordered under the Naval Defence Act of 1889, which officially promulgated that the Royal Navy was to be equal in size to the next two largest navies. Both ships were referenced as Second Class Battleships, being armed with 10-inch guns and briefed, in the event of war, to hunt down hostile ( Russian ) cruisers. A third ship of this type, HMS Renown was added in the early 1890s

22 June 1893:

As mentioned above, in one of the most infamous episodes of the Victorian Navy, Admiral Sir George Tryon, C-in-C of the Mediterranean Fleet, ordered the Fleet, which was steaming in two columns, to execute a manoeuvre without sufficient sea room for safety.

The flagship, HMS Victoria was rammed and sunk by HMS Camperdown, Tryon drowned with his ship.

Victoria sinking, photo taken from Camperdown, HMS Nile on the left


On board Victoria was Commander John Jellicoe, confined to his cabin suffering from malaria. Immersion in the water cured Jellicoe who went on to be C-in-C of the Home Fleet in 1914.

HMS Royal Sovereign in her Victorian livery of black hull, white upper works and buff funnels & masts:

As a comparison of strength, the numbers of Battleships of other Powers on 1st January 1897 was:

France 10 ( 9 in Mediterranean)

Russia 10 (6 in Baltic, 4 in Black Sea)

Italy 10

USA 6

Germany 4

Austria-Hungary 2

Japan 2

The French Battleship Charlemagne of 1895:

The 1897 Jubilee fleet review was also the occasion chosen by Charles Parsons to demonstate 'Turbinia' the first steam turbine-powered ship, when he turned up unannounced and proceeded to race up and down the lines of warships with no RN craft fast enough to catch him:





Embarrassed, though nevertheless very impressed, the Navy immediately started trials. The first two turbine-powered destroyers, HMS Viper and HMS Cobra, with engines built by the Parsons Company, were launched in 1899, and the first turbine-powered capital ship, HMS Dreadnought, was launched in 1906.

Turbinia must be the only one of those ships left.

Video of Turbinia in Newcastle Discovery Museum;

Indeed but there aren't even many WW1 era warships around. The only pre-dreadnought capital ship still in existence is, I think, the Japanese Mikasa (launched 1900), while the only existing dreadnought I know of is the USS Texas (launched 1912).

Here's Mikasa, although admittedly no longer afloat:



And the preserved USS Texas:



There's also the pre-WW1 Greek armoured cruiser Georgios Averof (launched 1910):

Meles, the Americans have preserved the USS Olympia, cruiser, from the Spanish-American War.

In dock at Philadelphia alongside the submarine Becuna;

While in St Petersburg, her participation in the October Revolution secured the survival of the cruiser Aurora:

There's also the Russian armoured cruiser, Aurora (launched 1900), preserved in St Peterburg.

SNAP! You beat me to it.

Incidentally Aurora and Mikasa both fought, on opposite sides obviously, at the Battle of Tsushima (1905).

Meles meles wrote:

Incidentally Aurora and Mikasa both fought, on opposite sides obviously, at the Battle of Tsushima (1905).

Yes, both those ships are still here today.

Japanese film about Tsushima:



As an aside, all four Japanese Battleships at Tsushima were built in British shipyards.

Going back to 1897. Although the big ships of the Japanese Navy were being constructed in Britain, there were grave suspicions in the Admiralty ( proved correct 40 years later) about Japanese intentions in the Far East and the 1896/97 Naval Estimates included the construction of 5 new battleships to form a Far Eastern Fleet to guard Hong Kong and British interests in the area.

These ships were the Canopus class. Work started on Albion in December 1896, and on Canopus herself, and Goliath on the 4th January 1897, Glory and Ocean started later that year, while a sixth ship,Vengeance was added in 1898.

Triceratops wrote:

Going back to 1897. Although the big ships of the Japanese Navy were being constructed in Britain, there were grave suspicions in the Admiralty ( proved correct 40 years later) about Japanese intentions in the Far East and the 1896/97 Naval Estimates included the construction of 5 new battleships to form a Far Eastern Fleet to guard Hong Kong and British interests in the area.

That's interesting. And yet surely towards the end of the 19th century Japan's principal rival in the Western Pacific, other than Russia , was the USA rather than the British Empire, or am I over-estimating US overseas interest/ambitions at that time? In WW1 Japan proved a loyal ally of Britain (and of France), with the Imperial Japanese Navy providing escorts for convoys across the Indian Ocean from Australia, New Zealand and India, and later (1917?) even sending IJN ships and crews to the Mediterranean to free up British and French naval forces, so that they in turn could act to counter the U-Boat blockade in the Atlantic. Although of course I'm sure Japan's support for the allies was done with a diplomatic eye to the future, with the aim of gaining influence with the allied powers (providing they were victorious) in support of Japanese territorial ambitions in Manchuria, China, and Korea, (... and in Indonesia and the Philippines too perhaps?). That policy of course got rather complicated when the US eventually entered the war and Japan found itself on the same side as its principal naval rival in the Pacific: the US.

Preserved at Chatham Historic Dockyard, along with the WW2 destroyer Cavalier and Cold War sub Ocelot, is the Victorian 'screw-sloop' HMS Gannet.



Built in 1878, she could be driven by either steam or sail (apparently she was faster under sail!) she was equipped with a mixture of rifled muzzle-loaders and state-of-the-art (for then) breech-loaders and Nordenfelt Volley Guns (a type of primitive machine-gun).  She was hulked in 1900, and converted into  training ship in 1903, when she was renamed President.  In 1913 she was converted again, this time into a dormitory ship for the training ship Mercury, a capacity she served until 1968, when she was returned to the Navy, beginning to path to restoration, returned to her appearance in 1888, the only year she actually saw combat.

In 2005 President Obama was presented with a pen-holder made from piece of wood from the Gannet, as recognition for her role in anti-slavery operations.

Triceratops wrote:

22 June 1893:

As mentioned above, in one of the most infamous episodes of the Victorian Navy, Admiral Sir George Tryon, C-in-C of the Mediterranean Fleet, ordered the Fleet, which was steaming in two columns, to execute a manoeuvre without sufficient sea room for safety.

The flagship, HMS Victoria was rammed and sunk by HMS Camperdown, Tryon drowned with his ship.

Victoria sinking, photo taken from Camperdown, HMS Nile on the left


On board Victoria was Commander John Jellicoe, confined to his cabin suffering from malaria. Immersion in the water cured Jellicoe who went on to be C-in-C of the Home Fleet in 1914.

Triceratops,

I read in a book that the rules of movements in a fleet were very strict and detailed. It was perhaps due to incidents as you mentioned that the rules in the US marine became so strict?
In fact it was in a story of WWII in the Pacific against Japan. The author had an in depth knowledge of the US marine during WWII

About the book (I read it in Dutch some sixty years ago and reread it recently during kidney dialysis)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1835865.Away_All_Boats#other_reviews
About the author:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/10/arts/kenneth-dodson-91-wrote-war-novels-about-life-at-sea.html?mcubz=1
And I saw, I think in the Fifties too, the black and white film based on the novel.

Kind regards, Paul.

It's interesting that all those warships built in the couple of decades before WW1 have forward-protruding prows, in contrast to the backward-curving prow of HMS Gannet ... and of earlier sailing ships, and of most ships built after WW1. I assume this is because they are armoured rams. Although there are quite a few instances of ships of the period being sunk accidentally by ramming - including the 1893 incident between HMS Victoria and HMS Camperdown - the only instance I can recall of ramming being successfully used in battle was during the Battle of Lissa in 1866. In that engagement both sides intended to use ramming tactics but in the end only one such attack was successful when the Austro-Hungarian flagship rammed and sank one of the Italian ships. This engagement was hardly an unqualified endorsement for the use of ramming as a tactic and yet 40 years later it seems ships were still being built with rams. (Although that said, I know that HMS Dreadnought was unique, amongst other things, for being the only battleship to sink an enemy submarine by ramming).

I notice also that the bows of both the Aurora and the Olympia have a short round protrusion a bit above the water-line. I assume this is a torpedo tube ... can anyone confirm that? I knew capital ships of the time were often armed with torpedo tubes, but I'd always assumed that they were either located below the waterline as on submarines, or carried on deck as on WW2 destroyers.

PaulRyckier wrote:

I read in a book that the rules of movements in a fleet were very strict and detailed. It was perhaps due to incidents as you mentioned that the rules in the US marine became so strict?

As I recall the official investigation showed that a major part of the problem was Admiral Tryon himself, coupled with the Navy's strict hierarchy which tended to suppress initiative by junior officers in a service that hadn't fought a major battle since Nelson's time. Tryon, although a supremely competent commander, had a rather overbearing personality and didn't like to be questioned by his fellow officers. He was also known, whilst trying to keep his officers "on their toes", to sometimes order strange manoeuvres which he expected to be obeyed immediately and unquestioningly, but which he then would change or countermand a short while later. Prior to the collision the captains of the other ships in the squadron believed he would soon change the orders to turn inwards on themselves, and it was only when it was almost too late did some of them dare to signal the flagship questioning the manoeuvre. There was also a suggestion that came up at the inquiry (but which was I think largely suppressed) that Tryon was ill or even that he had been showing signs of confusion perhaps due to his age (though he was only in his 60s). As the captains of all the other ships correctly obeyed the clear orders from their Commander-in-Chief, none were held responsible. The blame was largely put on Tryon, although he couldn't answer the charges as he had conveniently gone down with his ship. Nevertheless his last recorded words were, "It is all my fault".

Meles meles wrote:

PaulRyckier wrote:

I read in a book that the rules of movements in a fleet were very strict and detailed. It was perhaps due to incidents as you mentioned that the rules in the US marine became so strict?

As I recall the official investigation showed that a major part of the problem was Admiral Tryon himself, coupled with the Navy's strict hierarchy which tended to suppress initiative by junior officers in a service that hadn't fought a major battle since Nelson's time. Tryon, although a supremely competent commander, had a rather overbearing personality and didn't like to be questioned by his fellow officers. He was also known, whilst trying to keep his officers "on their toes", to sometimes order strange manoeuvres which he expected to be obeyed immediately and unquestioningly, but which he then would change or countermand a short while later. Prior to the collision the captains of the other ships in the squadron believed he would soon change the orders to turn inwards on themselves, and it was only when it was almost too late did some of them dare to signal the flagship questioning the manoeuvre. There was also a suggestion that came up at the inquiry (but which was I think largely suppressed) that Tryon was ill or even that he had been showing signs of confusion perhaps due to his age (though he was only in his 60s). As the captains of all the other ships correctly obeyed the clear orders from their Commander-in-Chief, none were held responsible. The blame was largely put on Tryon, although he couldn't answer the charges as he had conveniently gone down with his ship. Nevertheless his last recorded words were, "It is all my fault".

Andrew Gordons "Rules Of The Game" covers Tyron and his eventual fate in some depth and links it to the RN's performance at Jutland. Good book, well worth the read. Basically he had  a system where he would raise a specific flag signal "TA" and the rest of the squadron would follow suit.

So far so good. 

 Off Lebanon Tyron decides to pull off a manoeuvre where he has two columns of ships "x" cables apart. He led one column an  admiral called Markham led the other. Tyron would turn HMS Victoria to starboard in a 180 turn, Markham would turn to port with a 180 turn. The ships following would play follow there leader and the columns would have changed direction and remained in formation (though considerably closer than they had been)

The problem occurred when 2 things happened.

i) Tyron blundered in his mathematics, underestimating the distance required to pull off the manoeuvre .

ii) Markham was completely bewildered by what was requested.

Markham recognised that the distance was probably too small for him too successfully carry out what Tyron was ordering.However Tyron was not a man to be argued with and he feared a very public rebuke. He sort of got one when Tyron signalled " What are you waiting for!!

Hoping that his commander had a masterly trick up his sleeve he complied with the order and HMS Camperdown continued the manoeuvre .


Unfortunately Tyron hadn't.

HMS Camperdown struck HMS Victoria on her starboard side a fair way forward. This was bad enough. Unfortunately Camperdown reversed her self out of the hole and effectively pulled the plug out of HMS Victoria before her watertight integrity had been established. HMS Victoria went down.Straight down.

Literally in this case. When her wreck was discovered a few years ago she was perfectly perpendicular with her bow buried in the mud and the rest of her pointing to the surface. Google HMS Victoria wreck and you will see some amazing images.



The real shame (apart from the loss of life) was that Tyron was trying to get his officers to use initiative rather than rely on rigid command. Ironically, such was his status at the time nobody dared question him. So even though Markham had recognised the danger he carried on with the order!

As Jacky Fisher was to point out 20+ years later after the Battle of Dogger Bank....


"Any fool can obey orders!"

Oh, and I think Jellicoe was suffering from "Malta Fever" as opposed to Malaria,but I may be wrong.

Meles meles wrote:

PaulRyckier wrote:

I read in a book that the rules of movements in a fleet were very strict and detailed. It was perhaps due to incidents as you mentioned that the rules in the US marine became so strict?

As I recall the official investigation showed that a major part of the problem was Admiral Tryon himself, coupled with the Navy's strict hierarchy which tended to suppress initiative by junior officers in a service that hadn't fought a major battle since Nelson's time. Tryon, although a supremely competent commander, had a rather overbearing personality and didn't like to be questioned by his fellow officers. He was also known, whilst trying to keep his officers "on their toes", to sometimes order strange manoeuvres which he expected to be obeyed immediately and unquestioningly, but which he then would change or countermand a short while later. Prior to the collision the captains of the other ships in the squadron believed he would soon change the orders to turn inwards on themselves, and it was only when it was almost too late did some of them dare to signal the flagship questioning the manoeuvre. There was also a suggestion that came up at the inquiry (but which was I think largely suppressed) that Tryon was ill or even that he had been showing signs of confusion perhaps due to his age (though he was only in his 60s). As the captains of all the other ships correctly obeyed the clear orders from their Commander-in-Chief, none were held responsible. The blame was largely put on Tryon, although he couldn't answer the charges as he had conveniently gone down with his ship. Nevertheless his last recorded words were, "It is all my fault".

Meles meles,

"There was also a suggestion that came up at the inquiry (but which was I think largely suppressed) that Tryon was ill or even that he had been showing signs of confusion perhaps due to his age (though he was only in his 60s)."

As the author of the American book that I mentioned must have been aware of this story, perhaps he repeated that story in the story of the Captain of the Belinda, who had also mental problems and many times some strange comportment as when he stuck obstinately to the rules of acting within a fleet, even at the risk of ramming the admiral's ship. He said to his subaltern, the old rot (the admiral) knows his rules and will turn aside as the rule says. And indeed on the last moment the admiral turned away with his ship.
I watched yesterday the film that in 1956 followed the book (and that I saw in Ostend in I think 1958), to see that event but as I skipped over some bits it can that I haven't seen this episode, although the film followed exactly the book (as I have the book recently reread).
And although I understand, due to the fora, better English than fifteen years ago, it is always handy when there are subtitles, even in the same language (I tried to have subtitles but without result) Of course the BBC English is for me better understandable than the spoken American film language...




Its all for the oldies of this board ...
And perhaps some will remember  one of our favourites in the time (in Ostend it were nearly all American films and the stars as John Wayne and yes Jeff Chandler were very well known).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Chandler

Kind regards from Paul.

VF wrote:

Oh, and I think Jellicoe was suffering from "Malta Fever" as opposed to Malaria,but I may be wrong.

That is very possible. I read it was a fever, and assumed Malaria.

Good to see you again VF. And thanks again to Binky for passing the message on.

Back to June 1897, and while the Diamond Jubilee Review was occupying the attention of the Royal Navy, in Germany Alfred von Tirpitz was appointed State Secretary of the Imperial German Navy.
Tirpitz had been lobbying for the creation of a German battlefleet for years, and now, with the Kaiser's backing was in a position to do something about it.
He had concluded that Germany required 19 battleships as follows:
1 Fleet Flagship
2 Battle Squadrons of 8 ships each
2 Reserve ships.

In March 1898, the creation of this fleet was approved by the Reichstag. In response to British stop and search of foreign ships en route to South Africa during the Boer War, the fleet was doubled to a proposed 38 battleships.

The 4 German battleships in service in June 1897, were the Brandenburg Class ships.

Interesting vessels in that, in addition to the normal fore and aft gun turrets, the carried another main gain turret amidships, albeit of smaller barrel length, giving them a broadside of six 11-inch guns, against the four 12-inch of the Royal Navy's Majestics.

Meles meles wrote:

It's interesting that all those warships built in the couple of decades before WW1 have forward-protruding prows, in contrast to the backward-curving prow of HMS Gannet ... and of earlier sailing ships, and of most ships built after WW1. I assume this is because they are armoured rams. Although there are quite a few instances of ships of the period being sunk accidentally by ramming - including the 1893 incident between HMS Victoria and HMS Camperdown - the only instance I can recall of ramming being successfully used in battle was during the Battle of Lissa in 1866. In that engagement both sides intended to use ramming tactics but in the end only one such attack was successful when the Austro-Hungarian flagship rammed and sank one of the Italian ships. This engagement was hardly an unqualified endorsement for the use of ramming as a tactic and yet 40 years later it seems ships were still being built with rams. (Although that said, I know that HMS Dreadnought was unique, amongst other things, for being the only battleship to sink an enemy submarine by ramming).

There was a thought that ramming was the best way to deal with an armoured warship and Britain had two ironclads of the Conqueror class built in the early 1880s. These ships were not a success. The vessels themselves were poor seaboats, Conqueror appears to have spent her entire career in sight of land, and the notion that an enemy ship would sit and wait to be rammed was considered unlikely.

HMS Conqueror;

Meles meles wrote:

I notice also that the bows of both the Aurora and the Olympia have a short round protrusion a bit above the water-line. I assume this is a torpedo tube ... can anyone confirm that?

I don't know what it is, and so far, haven't found anything about them.


The second ship of the Conqueror class was HMS Hero. Whether this is supposed to her in the background is hard to say:

Triceratops wrote:

Meles meles wrote:

I notice also that the bows of both the Aurora and the Olympia have a short round protrusion a bit above the water-line. I assume this is a torpedo tube ... can anyone confirm that?

I don't know what it is, and so far, haven't found anything about them.

Unless this has anything to do with them:

The Good Old Days

In The War of the Worlds, HMS Thunder Child (which managed to destroy two, possibly three, Martian Tripods before being destroyed herself) was an ironclad 'torpedo ram'.  She may have been based on HMS Polyphemus (the only such real Royal Navy vessel), which entered service in 1882 and was equipped with both torpedoes and a bow ram.  She took her name from a single torpedo tube mounted in her ram, which was reminiscent of a Cyclops eye (four other tubes were mounted underwater either side of the hull).  Earlier torpedo rams, in fact, used a spar torpedo fixed to their ram rather than tube-launched self-propelled weapons.

1882 (HMS Polyphemus) is about when self-propelled torpedoes started coming into widespread use. Whitehead developed his first self-propelled torpedo in 1866 and they started to be manufactured at Woolwich within a few years. Whitehead torpedoes were fitted onto some RN ships by about 1870 and by the mid-1870s the French, Italian, Austrian and Russian navies were also starting to deploy ships armed with self-propelled torpedoes.

The first self propelled torpedo fired in action was at the Incident at Pacocha, between HMS Shah, HMS Amethyst and the rebel Peruvian turret-ram, Huascar.



Huascar is another survivor from this period, being preserved as a museum ship in Chile:(she had a very colourful career)*




*EDIT:
including ramming and sinking the Chilean corvette Esmeralda during the War of the Pacific;

Triceratops wrote:

VF wrote:

Oh, and I think Jellicoe was suffering from "Malta Fever" as opposed to Malaria,but I may be wrong.

That is very possible. I read it was a fever, and assumed Malaria.

Good to see you again VF. And thanks again to Binky for passing the message on.

Back to June 1897, and while the Diamond Jubilee Review was occupying the attention of the Royal Navy, in Germany Alfred von Tirpitz was appointed State Secretary of the Imperial German Navy.
Tirpitz had been lobbying for the creation of a German battlefleet for years, and now, with the Kaiser's backing was in a position to do something about it.
He had concluded that Germany required 19 battleships as follows:
1 Fleet Flagship
2 Battle Squadrons of 8 ships each
2 Reserve ships.

In March 1898, the creation of this fleet was approved by the Reichstag. In response to British stop and search of foreign ships en route to South Africa during the Boer War, the fleet was doubled to a proposed 38 battleships.

The 4 German battleships in service in June 1897, were the Brandenburg Class ships.

Interesting vessels in that, in addition to the normal fore and aft gun turrets, the carried another main gain turret amidships, albeit of smaller barrel length, giving them a broadside of six 11-inch guns, against the four 12-inch of the Royal Navy's Majestics.

Looks powerful but my money would still be on a "Majestic". The midships turret had lower calibre guns (35 against ? 40 calibre). The other thing to remember is that in reality it was the 6 inch QF which were expected to shred the enemy ,with the larger guns giving the coup de grâce. 
Also at this particular time period I'm pretty sure that the guns would have to be trained back to fore or aft and to a particular elevation before they could be reloaded. So the rate of fire would be slow.If I'm reading your schematic right the QF guns on this ship are predominantly 4.1 inch. To be honest I don't think that they would cause much trouble against a Majestic class battleship unless they got lucky with their 11 inch. Given the inaccuracy due to lack of fire control at this time this would have to be a short ranged range slog.
Interesting this ship went on to serve in the Turkish Navy. She was sunk in the Dardanelles by HMS E11 in 1915. So she had a reasonably long service life.

The Germans thought exactly the same, and in their next two classes of battleships, not only dropped the midships turret but the 11-inch gun as well, in favour of a faster firing 9.4-inch gun. ( from memory the 9.4 could fire 3 rounds for every 2 of the 11-inch)
They also beefed up the secondary armament.

Kaiser Freidrich III Class



Wittelsbach Class

I'd imagine those 6 inch QF's in the bow would be very wet in the wrong seaway!

Personally I love French Pre dreadnoughts! Some of them look completely bonkers, some of them were barely seaworthy! Boy they looked different!

I'm not an expert on old-fashioned ships but when I was in London I did visit the Cutty Sark, a tea clipper and there is another olden days ship moored on the north bank of the Thames in a more central part of London that I visited (I remember being surprised that it was rather small by present-day standards) but I can't think of the name of it.

There's a replica of Francis Drake's 'Golden Hind' and that really was a tiny ship in which to circumnavigate the world. But she's moored at St Mary Overie Dock in Southwark and that's on the south bank,



Moored along the Thames embankment (north side) there are HMS President and HMS Wellington, but I think they're both privately owned and neither are restored to their original condition.

HMS President, (previously HMS Saxifrage) an anti-submarine Q-ship, launched 1918:



HMS Wellington, a sloop launched in 1934:

From memory the one I saw looked like the "Golden Hind". Maybe my 60-something memory is misremembering where I saw it. Thanks for the pictures, MM, - I know somebody set fire to the "Cutty Sark" though I don't think it was ever determined whether the burning was accidental or on purpose but it is in the process of being refurbished. I was much saddened when I had it had been damaged.

I used to know a lady (no longer with us - she'd have been over 100 if she was) who had a copy of (the original had crumbled) of a coded journal her grandfather had kept as a seaman on a sailing ship (well various different ones over time). But he had mentioned some unfortunate person being "flogged around the fleet" - our sailing ship experts will probably know this but it apparently meant the unfortunate person receiving a certain number of lashes on every ship in the fleet. This poor man had died somewhere along the line while the sentence was being carried out but the person in charge said to finish the sentence so the dead body was carried around the remaining ships and flogged. Rather a more brutal way of doing things than depicted in some of the filmic depictions of a life on the ocean waves.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I used to know a lady (no longer with us - she'd have been over 100 if she was) who had a copy of (the original had crumbled) of a coded journal her grandfather had kept as a seaman on a sailing ship (well various different ones over time).  But he had mentioned some unfortunate person being "flogged around the fleet" - our sailing ship experts will probably know this but it apparently meant the unfortunate person receiving a certain number of lashes on every ship in the fleet.  This poor man had died somewhere along the line while the sentence was being carried out but the person in charge said to finish the sentence so the dead body was carried around the remaining ships and flogged.  Rather a more brutal way of doing things than depicted in some of the filmic depictions of a life on the ocean waves.

Yep it happened - a truly awful way to die.But then that was the Royal Navy of the time. Didn't do them much good, there are various accounts of seaman joining the fledgling American navy as a result of the British way of doing things. The other thing to remember is that is that due to the generous grog rations its fair to say that many an RN sailor was probably drunk in battle during the age of sail.

Of course all this was forgotten during the Victorian times. Stiff upper lip and servitude was the name of the game. Oh,and a lack of independent thought. It took WW1 to correct this.

Meles meles wrote:

There's a replica of Francis Drake's 'Golden Hind' and that really was a tiny ship in which to circumnavigate the world. But she's moored at St Mary Overie Dock in Southwark and that's on the south bank

I saw the Golden Hind today, on my way to the Shakespeare's Globe exhibition. Her dock has been drained and her bottom was exposed for all to see! *thuds as delicate ladies swoon at the thought of naked bottoms* It appears her hull is in need of extensive refurbishment, not surprisingly, really, as she's an old lady, now. I can remember as a child (which I haven't been for a long time) going aboard when she visited Jersey. The Sunday she was there all her crew, in their Elizabethan costumes, dutifully turned up to church (the one I used to go to, St Helier, is the nearest to the harbour).

I didn't realise she still sailed, or was even deemed seaworthy - when was the last time she went on such a voyage, does A-Nyone know?

I ask because back in the day I used to like blagging my way onto any old sailing vessel that came within range (preferably under sail), and I would hate to think that the Golden Hind was on the go at the time and I hadn't known!

20 October 1827, generally regarded as the last major battle fought under sail, the Battle of Navarino, went a long way to securing Greek Independence from the Ottoman Empire:

Battle of Navarino