Year: 2015

No. 76: The London Blows Up, 7 March 1665

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To commemorate the 350th anniversary of the loss of the warship London in the Thames Estuary on 7 March 1665, I would like to take a look at the London in 1665 and in 2015, in a two-part blog. In this first part we look at the story of the wreck event in the words of those who were there at the time, and in the next part on Monday we will hear from those working on the London today.

1665

Pen and ink ship portrait of the hull of the London in broadside view, with flag at her stern.
The London, circa 1660, Willem van de Velde, © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Van de Velde was a Dutch marine artist and specialist in ship portraits, and played a role in documenting the battles of the Anglo-Dutch wars.

The London was a stalwart of the Commonwealth Navy, built in 1656 under Cromwell, but had also been part of the fleet accompanying Charles II on his return from exile in the Netherlands in 1660. On 7th March 1665, the London was bound from Chatham Dockyard to the Hope Reach in the Thames, a key location at a tense time, since war had just been declared between Charles II’s England and the United Provinces of the Netherlands on the 4th. The national mood was sombre, and it was also a cold day: thirty miles north, Ralph Josselin, vicar of Earls Colne in Essex, noted that his water pump had frozen that day. (1) Undoubtedly what happened next would have made headlines had there been such a thing as newspapers in England, but the first edition of the London Gazette would not come out until 7th November 1665. However, as Josselin’s journal shows, this was a time of assiduous diary-writing and administrative record-keeping, which allows us a window into the past.

Between Chatham and the Hope Reach lies the Nore: as so often, a safe deep-water anchorage, which was, and remained, a traditional assembly point for battle fleets and convoys up to and including the Second World War, lay next to a hazard, the notorious Nore sandbank. Yet it was not the Nore that was to claim the London.

A letter written on the 8th to Sir Joseph Williamson reported: ‘The brave ship London has blown up near the Hope’, leaving behind only her hull and stern. (2) On the same day Samuel Pepys, in his capacity as Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board, provides us with more detail on the ‘sad newes of the London‘ in his personal diary: ‘a little a’this side the buoy of the Nower [that is, on the London side of the buoy, not the seaward side], she suddenly blew up.’ He tells us that only 24 persons were saved out of a complement of over 300, ‘the ship breaking all in pieces, with 80 pieces of brass ordinance.’ (3)

Portrait of Samuel Pepys in old age, wearing a wig and facing right against a dark background, in a gold frame.
Samuel Pepys, 1689, by Godfrey Kneller. © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Pepys was one of the key figures of the 17th century Navy and a very capable administrator. He had been asked to distribute the Articles of War to the fleet in the Hope just a few days previously.

Another letter, this time to Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington, passes on coffee-house gossip, blaming the easy availability of gunpowder ’20s a barrel cheaper than in London’ and therefore by implication suspect in provenance and quality. (4) On the 9th, John Evelyn, the other famous diarist of the period, ‘went to receive the poor creatures that were saved out of the London frigate, blown up by accident, with above 200 men,’ for he had been appointed one of the Commissioners for sick and wounded seamen by Charles II. (5) The Dutch ambassador, Michiel van Gogh, had more specific intelligence on numbers than Pepys, or perhaps more details were known by the time of his letter on 10th March: ‘The London, prepared for Vice-Admiral Lawson, was blown up while sailing up the river, and only 19 out of the crew of 351 saved.’ (6)

On the 11th Pepys recorded the results of an inspection of the wreck by Sir William Batten and Sir John Mennes: ‘out of which they say, the guns may be got, but the hull of her will be wholly lost’. (7) Those guns continued to be the focus of administrative attention for a good 30 years afterwards: recoveries made in 1679 caused some wrangling that surfaced in 1694-5, as the salvor attempted to leverage payment of a debt. (8)

What happened next? Part 2 on Monday will bring the story of the London up to date.

CGI reconstruction of the London, showing her gun decks and masts
CGI reconstruction of the London © Touch Productions

(1) Diary of Ralph Josselin, 7 March 1665

(2) Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Charles II, 1664-5, Vol.114, No.84

(3) Diary of Samuel Pepys, 8 March 1665

(4) Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Charles II, 1664-5, Vol.114, No.90

(5) Diary of John Evelyn, 9 March 1665

(6) Copy, Holland Correspondence, March 10, 1665, in Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Charles II, 1664-5, Vol.114

(7) Diary of Samuel Pepys, 11 March 1665

(8) Calendar of Treasury Papers, Vol. 1, 1556-1696, May 17, 1694, and November 26, 1695

No.75 Andromeda (Diary of the War No.7)

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One hundred years ago, on 13 February 1915, the English steel barque Andromeda struck the rocks while inbound for Falmouth, en route to London, with 3,000 tons of grain from Oregon.

Her inclusion in the War Diary for this month illustrates the fact that while ships faced new threats from enemy action in time of war, they continued to be just as vulnerable as ever to environmental hazards. It could be said that wartime voyages were doubly hazardous. For the year 1915 there were some 59 recorded strandings on beaches, sandbanks, and rocks, or approximately one eighth of all wrecks recorded for that year. (1)

The Andromeda is a snapshot in time: in the early 20th century the barque became a specialist carrier of grain cargoes, and her manner of loss was linked to another aspect of seafaring heritage: for she was inbound to Falmouth ‘for orders’. In effect, when a vessel was loaded at her departure port, her master and crew did not necessarily where the final leg of the voyage would take them. It would only be in making landfall in England at Falmouth, with its noted anchorage, that crews would receive their ‘orders’ for their final destination.

When the Andromeda ‘spoke with’ an armed patrol vessel off the Isles of Scilly on 12 February messages were exchanged: the patrol vessel warned of U-boat activity in the Channel, while the Andromeda requested a message be sent to Falmouth requesting a pilot to take her in there.

The vessel got into difficulties off Falmouth as squally, stormy weather ensued and the master continued to wait, with reduced sail, for a pilot who failed to materialise. As so often, the loss of the Andromeda was the result of a chain of circumstances. To quote the Board of Trade Inquiry report into the loss:

‘his implicit reliance on the wireless message of the patrol officer, the warning as to submarines, his knowledge that pilotage was compulsory at Falmouth, his anticipation that the harbour was mined’ kept him waiting off Falmouth, exposing his vessel to difficulties on a lee shore onto which she could not but be driven ashore. (2)

Thus it was that while not a war loss, the Andromeda was wrecked through environmental hazards – the weather driving her onto local rocks – in circumstances shaped by the heightened fear of wartime conditions.

With many thanks to Mark Milburn, who has located the bow of the Andromeda off Killigerran Head, east of Falmouth, and researched her history, enabling us to update our records.

(1) Source: National Record of the Historic Environment (NRHE) database

(2) Board of Trade Wreck Report for Andromeda

No. 74 The Bramble Bank

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Hoegh Osaka aground on the Bramble Bank: Maritime and Coastguard Agency
Hoegh Osaka aground on the Bramble Bank: Maritime and Coastguard Agency

Inspired by the vicissitudes of the car carrier Hoegh Osaka on the Bramble Bank since January 3, and her safe arrival last night (January 22) in Southampton, I thought I’d take a look this week at wrecks on the Bramble Bank.

Our earliest recorded shipwreck in the locality is an anonymous brig which was reported in Lloyd’s List as going ‘on the Brambles’, and ‘since bulged’, that is, bilged, or ending up with a hole in the bottom of her hull, after a ‘hard gale at NW’ on 18 December 1790. (1)

It can sometimes be very difficult to know the date of the earliest shipwreck on a particular feature: quite apart from the issues of the selective survival of documentary evidence, there is also the vagueness of contemporary reports, characteristic of the 18th century and earlier. It is likewise quite possible that contemporary or earlier wrecks or grounding incidents (in which the ship was, like the Hoegh Osaka, refloated) are masked by the brevity of such reports: a place of loss might simply be specified as ‘near Southampton’, ‘near Portsmouth’, and so on.

From the 19th and 20th centuries, however, a handful of wreck incidents involving the Bramble Bank are recorded, illustrating more regular and accurate reporting, rather than the bank becoming an increasing hazard to maritime traffic.

The most recent wreck to leave archaeological remains was Bridge No.4, formerly a chain ferry across the River Medina on the Isle of Wight, in 1976. Replaced by Bridge No.5 in 1975, she was decommissioned and foundered off the Bramble Bank en route to the breakers at Southampton in early 1976. This wreck demonstrates the diversity of 20th century wreck archaeology and is in good company with the remains of the King Harry Ferry, similarly lost off St. Agnes’ Head, Cornwall, en route to the Clyde in 1936. Chain ferries still remain in operation at Cowes and Falmouth.

The Bramble Bank also has another unusual heritage: an annual cricket match on the bank at low tide, probably inspired by similar matches on the Goodwin Sands, which we will revisit next week with a follow-up to the Turner post.

(1) Lloyd’s List, 21 December 1790, No.2,257

No.73 HMS Formidable (Diary of the War No.6)

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Lifebelt from HMS Formidable washed up on the Dutch coast during the First World War, presented to the Imperial War Museum in 1920. © IWM (MAR 66)
Lifebelt from HMS Formidable washed up on the Dutch coast during the First World War, hundreds of miles from the site of the sinking in mid-Channel off the Bill of Portland. Presented to the Imperial War Museum in 1920. © IWM (MAR 66) http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30004000

As the year turned to 1915, the 5th Battle Squadron were deployed in the English Channel some 25 miles off the Bill of Portland on exercises, among them HMS Formidable, a pre-dreadnought battleship of 1898. Two hours and twenty minutes into the New Year, as the fleet crossed the path of some fishing vessels, and the weather began to worsen, a torpedo launched from U-24 roared out of the dark and into the Formidable. She began to list to starboard, compounding the difficulties of getting out the boats at night and in rough weather.

Twenty minutes later another torpedo struck the Formidable, causing her to capsize and sink completely at about 4.45am. One survivor told the Daily Telegraph of his ordeal bobbing about in the water as he watched the ship before she finally went under: “It was one of the saddest sights I have ever seen in my life . . . All this time a very loud hissing noise was coming from the sinking warship.” To him the water temperature seemed warmer than standing in his pyjamas for “over two hours in the terribly cold wind on the deck”. (Daily Telegraph, 4 January 1915, No.18,636, p9). Out of a complement of 780, only 199 men were saved.

It was a fishing vessel, the Provident or Providence, a Brixham smack out at sea off Berry Head, Devon, which picked up a significant number of the survivors. One of the Formidable‘s boats was spotted under the lee of the smack and after several perilous manoeuvres in waves 30 feet high, all 71 men were successfully transferred from their open boat to the smack in half an hour – just in time, for she had “a hole under her hull. This had been stuffed with a pair of pants, of which one of the seamen had divested himself for the purpose”. Another survivor downplayed the situation they were in: “undress uniform: swimming costume!” (Daily Telegraph, 2 January 1915, No.18,634, p9).

Captain Pillar and his crew aboard the Provident received numerous awards for the rescue, including a Gold Medal from the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society, ‘only given in exceptional cases of bravery’. There is a memorial to those who lost their lives at Lyme Regis: the site of the wreck itself is a Controlled Site under the Protection of Military Remains Act.

It would not be the last time that wartime naval exercises in mid-Channel off Lyme Bay were interrupted by enemy action. During the Second World War, as Exercise Tiger was taking place in April 1944, German E-boats torpedoed two of the American landing craft which were taking part, Landing Ship Tanks LST 507 and LST 531.