Captain Death of the Privateer Terrible, 1756 For the commander of a privateer to be named “Captain Death” seems over-theatrical, especially as his ship was called the Terrible (one imagines him an adversary of Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow). There was however such a real-life character, even if this name was probably originally De’Ath, [...]

The French Navy's Iéna and Liberté Disasters, 1907 & 1911 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries all major navies, other than the German, lost large ships through magazine explosions of unstable ammunition. The first of such tragedies was in the US Navy, when the battleship USS Maine blew up in the harbour of Havana, [...]

The First Victoria Cross Winner 1854 Ever since the Crimean War (1854-56) the Victoria Cross has been the highest award for British service personnel for gallantry in the face of the enemy.  It takes precedence in order of wear over all other British orders, decorations, and medals, including the Order of the Garter.  Instituted [...]

Queen Victoria and a Sultan’s Salvage It’s hard to imagine a sequence of events that links an Ottoman Sultan, Queen Victoria, the Royal Navy of 1889, an innovative epic of marine salvage and an 1870s warship which served in various capacities until the end of the Second World War. The link is however the [...]

American Naval Hero: Silas Talbot               USS Constitution today The USS Constitution – “Old Ironsides” – is apparently the only active ship in service in the United States Navy to have sunk an enemy ship in combat. She was launched in 1797 and is a true [...]

Discipline, heroism and survival: HMS Alceste, 1817 The aftermath of the wreck of the French frigate Medusa in 1816 is widely regarded as one of the most horrible events in maritime history. Abandoned on an overloaded raft by officers and crew, who took to the boats when the vessel grounded off the coast of modern Mauritania, [...]

Fighting the Riff Pirates 1848-51 The Barbary pirates of North Africa were a scourge to maritime trade for many centuries. It was only in the nineteenth century that major naval and military campaigns – most notably the US Navy’s and Marine Corps’ intervention on “the Shores of Tripoli”, the Anglo-Dutch action against Algiers in [...]

HMS Quebec vs. Surveillante – 1779 Perhaps the most ferocious frigate action ever? Single ship actions, usually between frigates, are remembered as some of the most dramatic actions of the Age of Fighting Sail. They captured the imagination of the public in their own time, making heroes of captains like Pellew and Cochrane, who [...]

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 [...]

A survivor’s account – the loss of HMS Namur, 1749 Two conflicts – the War of Jenkin’s Ear and the War of Austrian Succession – merged into one and lasted from 1739 to 1749. The various international alliances involved were complex, but for Britain the main enemies were to be – as usual! – France and [...]