Hospital Ships in U-Boat Sights 1917-18 There can be few more dreadful predicaments in warfare at sea than to be a patient in a hospital ship attacked by the enemy. The vulnerability of such ships was recognised in The Hague Convention of 1907 which specified that they should be immune to attack but clearly [...]
The loss of HMS Amphion, 1796 The horror of explosion on a wooden ship As depicted by Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900) Sir Edward Pellew, later Lord Exmouth, was one of the most charismatic commanders of the Royal Navy in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and the inspiration of many [...]
1667 and all that: Guest Blog by J.D. Davies Dutch attack on the Medway, June 1667 by Pieter Cornelisz van Soest Antoine Vanner: I have been impressed since first discovering the non-fiction and fiction of the distinguished naval historian J.D.Davies, about whom a short biographical note is provided at the end [...]
July 1917: A month of carnage at sea U-boat warfare, as idealised by German artist Willy Stöwer (1864-1931) A hundred years ago, in July 1917, Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare campaign was entering its sixth month. U-boat attacks on Allied naval and civilian shipping, with the occasional, often accidental, sinking of neutral vessels, had been [...]
Britain and France confront Argentina Battle of Obligado, 1845 British ships (right) and French ships (left) move up the Parana river towards Argentinian defences, November 20th 1845 Today, when one thinks of naval combat between British and Argentinian forces the Falklands War of 1982 is the case most likely to come to mind. [...]
HMS Recruit: A Marooning Scandal in the Royal Navy One tends to think of “marooning” – abandoning a seaman alone on an uninhabited island – as being a punishment associated with buccaneers and pirates in the late 17thand early 18th Centuries. It is therefore somewhat of a shock that what was probably the last instance [...]
Pig-headed stupidity and the wreck of the Vrijheid, 1782 Many maritime disasters have been caused by poor ship designs, inadequate operating procedures, bad maintenance and overwhelming weather conditions. There are however – as with every type of disaster, by land and sea – cases where sheer pig-headed stupidity is the major factor. I came [...]
HMS Hero – the Player’s “Navy Cut” battleship HMS Hero and her sister, HMS Conqueror, both commissioned in the late 1880s, were described by Dr.Oscar Parkes, the ultimate authority on British battleships, as “two of the most useless turret ships ever built for the Navy”. Despite this damning evaluation, which was supported by many [...]
Almirante Lynch – first sinking by torpedo, 1891 The appearance of the successful self-propelled torpedo occurred in the mid-1870s, at the same time as light, efficient steam engines allowed the development of a new type of warship, the torpedo boat. Fast by the standards of the time – typically 18 to 20 knots – [...]
The Bayonnaise and HMS Ambuscade action, 1798 On my blog and website, I have dealt several times with single-ship actions during the Age of Fighting Sail, the protagonists being mainly British and French, though the Americans do figure in 1812-15. In most cases British victory over the French seems to have been all but pre-ordained, [...]
