The Original Nelson’s Column Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square has been a landmark in London since it was completed in 1843. It is just under 170 feet tall (including the statue of Nelson himself at the top) and the four sides of the pedestal carry relief panels that commemorate Nelson’s four great fleet actions – [...]
The ramming of HMS Vanguard, 1875 Vanguard is a name that has been used by no less than eleven ships of the Royal Navy. The first entered service in 1586 and the most recent, still serving, is a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine that gives her name to a class of four. The name is also associated with [...]
The Loss of the East Indiaman Kent, 1825, and its immortalisation in verse Ship losses at sea, though still at an unacceptably high level today, were even more frequent in the days before radio, radar, echo-sounders and others aids to navigation. Loss of life in such incidents was very high, since before the advent of air [...]
How HMS Flora died hard: 1808 A blog some weeks ago, “HMS Flora 1780: the Carronade’s arrival”(click here to read it), dealt with a spectacular action in which this 36-gun frigate was engaged shortly after her first commissioning. The present article is however more melancholy, since it tells how this fine ship met her end [...]
Bermuda’s Floating Dry Dock, 1869 RMS Cedric - a giant in 1901 One of the more attractive aspects of the Victorian Age was the willingness to take on large and often unprecedented engineering challenges. This was perhaps never more so than at sea where, in the course [...]
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 220 years ago and is a true [...]
Horror at Sea - the loss of the SS London, 1866 “Globalisation” is a term often applied to our own time but the process was in full swing a century and a half ago. The 19th Century saw a vast increase in seaborne trade and passenger-transportation, as new export markets were opened and as economies expanded [...]
HMS Flora 1780: the Carronade's arrival In sea battles from the 1780s to the end of the Napoleonic Wars a decisive factor was often the use of the carronade. Few of these guns were carried on any one ship, and they were not counted in a ship’s rated number of guns so that, in practice, [...]
Grace Darling, Unexpected Heroine, 1838 Grace Darling by Thomas Musgrave Joy November 15th 2015 was the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of the great Victorian heroines. Grace Darling gained widespread acclaim for her courage, was celebrated in verse, prints and Staffordshire pottery and remained for several generations afterwards an almost legendary [...]
HMS Argyll and the Bell Rock Lighthouse, 1915 Between 1902 and 1908 a total of 34 armoured cruisers were built for the Royal Navy. Expensive ships, almost all in the 10000 to 16000-ton range, they were of comparable displacement to contemporary pre-dreadnought battleships. Fast and, except in the case of the later classes, very inadequately [...]
