How do you make a monster gun disappear? In the second half of the 19th Century advances in metallurgy allowed an unprecedented increase in the size and weight of artillery pieces for applications in which mobility by land was not a concern. This applied to weapons mounted either in fixed fortifications, or on ships. The [...]
HMS Transfer: cold-blooded courage - and service under four flags 1796 - 1804 Few warships can have sailed under the flags of four different nations, and to have seen action each time, in just eight years. This was however the distinction of the French-built privateer Quatre Frères, a 150-foot polacca commissioned in Bordeaux in 1796. [...]
Steerage-passenger conditions on the North Atlantic In a recent blog (Click here to read) about the disaster that overcame the SS Utopia in 1891, and which resulted in the deaths of 562 Italian emigrants, I commented briefly on the bewilderment and trepidation with which these people set out on the voyage in the first place. [...]
The Capture of the Chevrette, 1801 While leafing through an 1894 book entitled “The British Fleet” by Commander Charles N. Robinson (Assistant Editor of the Army and Navy Gazette) I came on a copy of the engraving above. It shows a cutting-out mission on July 22nd 1801 in which crews from four Royal Navy [...]
Disaster at Gibraltar - SS Utopia and HMS Anson, 1891 In 1866, at the naval battle of Lissa, in the Adriatic, victory was secured by the Austrian fleet over its Italian enemy by means of ramming. Though this was a unique event in a fleet-action, and made possible only by factors – such as [...]
The Capture of Gibraltar and the Battle of Malaga, 1704 I wrote this article when in southern Spain, between Malaga and Marbella. The Mediterranean is narrow at that point and the mountains of the Moroccan shore are visible on a clear day. The sea funnels westwards towards the Straits of Gibraltar, which vary from 10 to [...]
