blockship

No.69 Diary of the War No.4

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

HMS Hood

The loss of HMS Hood, built 1916, and sunk in 1941, by shells from the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen in one of the Royal Navy’s worst disasters of the Second World War, is well-known. Less well-known is her predecessor of the same name, built in 1891 and disposed of on 4 November 1914.

Aerial view of Portland Harbour from the south-west. © English Heritage, reference 24688_028
Aerial view of Portland Harbour from the south-west, showing the gap between the breakwaters nearest the viewer: last resting place of HMS Hood. © English Heritage, 24688_028

Disposed? Surely a country at war needed all the warships it could get? The answer lies in her history and in the exigencies of war. Hood was the least functional of the Royal Sovereign-class warships, built in 1891. She was let down by her low freeboard (the side of the ship between the waterline and deck) which left her ill-equipped for rough British weather in rough British waters and serving principally in the Mediterranean or in static roles in home ports.

After three months of war the full scale of the threat at sea was not yet apparent. Most of the war losses in English waters between the declaration of war to 4 November 1914 were 27 ships sunk by mines, but the emerging picture worldwide was sobering:

Loss to Mines 3 August-4 November:

22 British ships for 24,609 tons; 4 Allied ships for 3,019 tons; 22 neutrals for 27,008 tons

Surface ships 3 August-4 November:

64 British ships for 189,229 tons; 5 Allied ships for 10,140 tons; 1 neutral for 3,804 tons (1)

One British ship had already been sunk by a U-boat off Norway on 20 October, the first recorded loss to U-boat activity, and on 31 October, HMS Hermes, Hood’s contemporary from the 1890s, fitted out as an experimental seaplane carrier, had been torpedoed in the eastern Straits of Dover.

This was a sign of things to come: British naval bases began to look vulnerable to submarine and torpedo attack. Portland, in the English Channel, followed Scapa Flow, Orkneys, in having blockships sunk for their protection. HMS Hood was scuttled for this purpose beside the entrance to the South Ship Channel between Portland’s inner and outer breakwaters, to prevent an attack on the base – where she still lies, a century after she was scuttled. She is now a well-collapsed wreck on which diving is now forbidden.

Sinking HMS Hood paradoxically extended her usefulness in a wartime role. Physically, she partially bridges the gap between the breakwaters. Conceptually, this use of Hood is also a link between the shore installations of naval and harbour infrastructure and the ships that used them, by transforming a ship into structure.

(1) Sourced from Lloyd’s War Losses 1914-18, pp1-5

No.50 The Helverson

~ Serena ~ 2 Comments

Wreck-on-Wreck Collision

There’s a reason why wrecks have always been marked on Admiralty Charts as a navigational hazard – for their potential to cause more wrecks. Superstructure sticking up out of the water might be a clue, but, as with icebergs, the most dangerous part is under water.

Wreck-on-wreck collisions are relatively common and are, perhaps, the seaborne equivalent of a motorway pile-up, although any subsequent wrecks may happen much later than the original wreck.

A concatenation of events led to the collision of the English Third Rate Helverson with the wreck of the Norway Merchant in the Medway on 22 July 1667. That summer was one of panic in and around the Thames, following the Raid on the Medway on 9-14 June 1667, the raid being known in Dutch as the Tocht naar Chattam (Fight at Chatham). In response, a number of ships, both merchantmen and warships, were deliberately sunk in and around the Medway as blockships to prevent any further Dutch incursions.

The Norway Merchant was one of these, and it was upon her broken stump that the Helverson, being brought to act as an accommodation hulk for the men employed in raising as many of the ships sunk as possible, became impaled. According to the Masters in Attendance at Chatham Dock, ‘she sank upright.’ It was blamed on the pilot, ‘one Basford of Stroud’ because the previous pilot had left her, suggesting he perhaps didn’t give the Norway Merchant enough clearance or was unaware of her extent. By January 1668 they had ‘got her out of the wreck on which she was sunk’, but she thereafter disappears from history. (Quotes from the Calendar of State Papers Domestic.)

Ironically, this ship created more work for the already overworked men who were busily trying to raise as many ships as they could (many of which were beyond repair anyway). And the next day there was a further flashpoint at the Hope near Tilbury between the English and Dutch fleets, with another action fought off Sheppey on 26 July, which caused yet more wrecks. Peace was concluded at the Treaty of Breda on 31 July.

Perhaps you might think Helverson is an unusual name. In a further irony, she was ex-Dutch Hilversum, captured as a prize at the Battle of Lowestoft in 1665. She started the Second Anglo-Dutch War as a Dutch ship, and ended the war as an English one. Who better to draw her portrait than Willem van de Velde the Elder, who recorded the First and Second Anglo-Dutch Wars for the Dutch, but the Third War on the English side as a pensioner of Charles II?

Portrait of the Hilversum, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, 1655, http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/143773.html
Portrait of the Hilversum, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, 1655, http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/143773.html
(For heritage buffs: according to the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, her stern decoration preserves an image of the manor house at Hilversum, later consumed by fire.)