Stockwin's Maritime Miscellany

by Julian Stockwin

  The day was calm and there was just a light breeze from the southwest. She was towed along the waterfront to the southern side of the harbour, where the sails were set, and she made way to the east. The gunports were open and the guns fired a salute.

  As she left the harbour she was shielded by the cliffs, and light winds hardly filled her sails. Once the headland had been passed the wind freshened and she heeled to port. The sheets were cast off and Vasa righted herself. Then another gust came, again forcing her over. This time water poured in through the lower gunports and the glorious and mighty warship heeled further, then foundered, just 90 m from shore.

  Survivors clung to debris and nearby boats raced to their aid. Of the 150 people on board, between 30 and 50 are believed to have perished, among them the helmsman. He had stayed at his post, where he would be found by archaeologists 333 years later.

  After the disaster the captain of Vasa was arrested. The king was waging war in Poland at the time, and it took two weeks for him to learn of the disaster. He put it down to ‘imprudence and negligence’ and angrily demanded that the guilty parties be punished. At an official inquest held at Stockholm’s royal castle all those who might have been responsible were called to account, but no one could be punished without awkward consequences, so the solution was to render no verdict at all.

  In 1956 the wreck was found and discovered to be in an amazing state of preservation, and she was raised in 1961. Now housed in the purpose-built Vasa Museum in Stockholm, she is an international tourist attraction and provides a unique record of life aboard a seventeenth-century warship.

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  HIGH AND DRY – stranded, without resources or support. DERIVATION: a beached ship or one up on blocks in the yard for repair or storage was said to be high and dry. For sailors, seeing their ship in effect out of its natural element, the sea, has a disturbing effect.

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  SWAMPED, DISMASTED AND ADRIFT

  Polly, a brig of 118 metric tons, left Boston, Massachusetts, in December 1811 bound for Santa Cruz in the West Indies with a cargo of timber and salted meat for plantation slaves. Aboard was Captain William Cazuneau, the mate, four seamen, a cook and two passengers, a Mr J.S. Hunt and his female slave.

  A week away from their destination they encountered a hurricane which forced the little ship over on her beam-ends. In desperation the crew clung to the rigging, which lay in an almost horizontal position. The captain ordered the masts to be cut away and the ship regained an even keel. She had taken a great deal of water on board, but the timber cargo kept her afloat. Mr Hunt and the young girl had been lost overboard.

  When the storm blew itself out the crew managed to get hold of some casks of the salt meat, which they ate raw until the cook was able to get a makeshift stove going on deck. They supplemented this with fish and a few barnacles scraped off the hull. When their water ran out they devised a method of distilling seawater using an old iron tea kettle and the barrel of the captain’s pistol as a tube attached to the spout.

  Helpless, they drifted into the open Atlantic. Many distant sails were sighted, but as Polly was so low lying and her mast was gone she was not seen. One by one most of the crew succumbed to the extreme conditions and died. The survivors resorted to cannibalism of one of their fellow sailors, pickling part of his remains to preserve it for later consumption.

  Eventually they were rescued 3,500 km west of Morocco by a British vessel. Polly had been adrift in the Atlantic for six months and had been borne over 3,200 km. Only two survived the ordeal, Captain Cazuneau and a seaman.

  THE BARBARY TERROR

  Pirates from the Barbary Coast of North Africa pillaged the length of the Mediterranean and north along Europe’s Atlantic coastline for centuries. In the relatively calm waters of the Mediterranean merchant vessels could easily be overcome by the pirates’ oar-powered galleys. The favoured tactic of the Barbary pirates was to creep up behind a ship, heave over grappling hooks and ropes and rapidly clamber aboard. The outcome of these encounters was almost invariably a swift victory for the pirates.

  In April 1641 the Revd. Devereux Spratt joined the vessel John Filmer which was carrying 120 passengers across the Irish Sea to England. They had not even lost sight of land before they were all carried off by Barbary pirates as slaves. Spratt was lucky – he was ransomed after two years and was able to return home. Most of those snatched away suffered cruelly, chained to the oars in galleys, or forced into unremitting physical labour ashore, eventually meeting wretched deaths.

  No Christian nation was immune. An American brig sailing for Cadiz in Spain in 1793 was about 110 km off the coast when a lookout spotted another brig flying the British flag. The master of the American vessel recognised by the cut of her sails that she was not British and assumed her to be a French privateer flying a false flag. Since the United States and France were not at war he felt he had nothing to fear, but he was sadly mistaken. In short order they were boarded by 100 heavily armed corsairs and taken prisoner, soon to find themselves incarcerated in Algiers.

  Such was the extent of the Barbary terror that parish churches in Spain and Italy kept locked collection boxes marked ‘for the poor slaves’. England even set aside an Algerian duty from customs income to finance redemptions. In 1646 Edward Casson headed a large-scale ransoming that freed 244 slaves, but these concerted efforts were rare – for most there was little hope.

  The corsairs sometimes raided the British Isles. On 20 June 1631 the village of Baltimore on the southern coast of Ireland was attacked, and over 100 men, women and children were kidnapped and sold into slavery. Forays were made to southern English counties, too. In July 1625 corsairs wielding scimitars burst into a church in Mount’s Bay, Cornwall, and dragged out 60 worshippers, who were shipped off to Morocco.

  In the peak years of enslavement from 1530 to 1780 perhaps as many as one and a quarter million white Christians were taken to North Africa. In just one 20-year period, from 1622 to 1642, over 300 English ships and around 7,000 English subjects were captured by Barbary corsairs.

  Private individuals, the church and the state were forced to pay exorbitant ransoms or fees to appease the demands of the Barbary pirates, and the cost in human suffering was huge. This terrible scourge of the seas finally ended in the early nineteenth century when Admiral Edward Pellew led a raid against Algiers, and the United States launched two major naval and land campaigns. The practice of capturing and enslaving Christians was finally crushed.

  Barbary corsair.

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  MONEY FOR OLD ROPE – reward obtained for little effort. DERIVATION: the proceeds from selling old and frayed ship’s ropes to shore-side traders was a perk of the boatswain. However, sometimes the rope was not so old and the offence of cappabar, misappropriation of government stores, was committed.

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  THE MYSTERIOUS ABANDONMENT OF MARY CELESTE

  On 4 December 1872 a Canadian brigantine Dei Gratia, sailing from New York to the Mediterranean, encountered in mid Atlantic a ship whose abandonment at sea is a mystery to this day – she was Mary Celeste. No trace was ever found of her skipper Captain Briggs, the crew of seven or the captain’s wife Sarah and her two-year-old daughter.

  When the crew of Dei Gratia spotted Mary Celeste she was sailing erratically and they could see no one on deck. They boarded the vessel and found her in a disorderly but perfectly seaworthy condition, with no living soul anywhere aboard. There was sufficient food and water for several months, but the ship’s boat was gone and the remains of the boat’s painter hung over the stern. A cargo of 1,700 barrels of industrial alcohol was sound and unshifted, although when it was unloaded in Genoa nine barrels were found to be empty.

  Sarah Briggs frequently accompanied her husband on ocean voyages, and in his cabin the boarding party found a picture of cosy Victorian domesticity, including a sewing machine and devotional literature. The last entry in the ship’s logbook was 24 November. It noted the position as 160 km west of the Azores b
ut made no reference to anything out of the ordinary.

  Crewmen from Dei Gratia sailed Mary Celeste to Gibraltar, where they put in a claim for salvage. Frederick Flood, one of the officers in the Admiralty Court, suspected foul play after the discovery on board of an old sword with what appeared to be blood stains. (Later the marks were found to be rust.) It was suspected that there had been collusion between Captain Briggs and the master of Dei Gratia so that the salvage money could be claimed and then shared, but nothing was proved. In the end the court awarded a sum of money to the crew of Dei Gratia, but less than they were expecting.

  There was no ready explanation for a seemingly sound and well-manned ship to have been deserted at sea. Various theories have been put forward such as a seaquake, poisoning from contaminated flour, collision with a giant squid, pirates and mutiny. However, the explanation that is given most credence today is that Captain Briggs opened the hold to ventilate it and there was a violent rush of fumes and vapour from escaped alcohol. Believing the ship was about to explode he ordered everyone into the lifeboat, and in the resulting panic it was not properly secured to the ship. As a result they drifted away, helpless, and either their boat foundered or they all died from hunger and exposure.

  In 1884 Arthur Conan Doyle, writing under a pseudonym, published a story about a derelict ship he called Marie Celeste. His fictional tale, which recounted some of the actual events of Mary Celeste, captured the public interest.

  ENGLAND’S PERFECT STORM

  Over 300 years ago, in late autumn, the British Isles was subjected to the most severe storm ever recorded there, the great tempest of 1703. Around 15,000 lives were lost, most of them in the 700 vessels sunk or damaged by the gales. Total damage was assessed at the equivalent today of half a billion pounds.

  The Royal Navy lost 13 ships, many returning from helping the king of Spain fight the French. Some 1,500 seamen were drowned. A number of vessels even ended up in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Holland. Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s HMS Association nearly foundered, but he cut his mainmast and his ship was blown from the Thames estuary to Sweden before she could make her way back safely to England.

  One man had a remarkable tale to tell. When his ship HMS Mary was breaking up, Thomas Atkins saw Rear-Admiral Beaumont, who was aboard the vessel, grab a piece of timber, only to be washed off into the sea. A wave then carried Atkins from the sinking ship on to the deck of another vessel nearby, HMS Stirling Castle, which also soon began foundering. Another wave tossed him into one of Stirling Castle’s lifeboats. Atkins was the sole survivor of Mary.

  When the storm struck in the West Country, right in its path was the newly constructed Eddystone Lighthouse. It was completely destroyed, along with its builder Henry Winstanley, who was making some additions to the structure at the time.

  On the Thames, hundreds of ships were heaped together in the Pool of London, downstream from London Bridge. One ship at Whitstable in Kent was lifted from the sea by a gigantic surge and dropped some 230 m inland. Savage seas threw up spray which covered fields with a snow-like encrustation, making pastures inedible to grazing animals.

  A young writer now known for his classic Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, published his first book, The Storm, the following year. He maintained that the destruction of the sovereign fleet was a punishment for their poor performance against the enemy.

  Winstanley’s Eddystone Lighthouse.

  FURNACE AFLOAT

  On 3 May 1866 in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, an accident occurred aboard what had been one of the fastest ships in the world, the American clipper ship Hornet. Deep in the hold first mate Sam Hardy and two hands spilt some varnish as they prepared to fill a can from a barrel of the liquid. They should have carried it on deck before decanting such an inflammable material, but they took a short cut – and they were carrying an open lantern. In seconds the varnish caught fire. A nearby wooden sail locker burst into flames and suddenly the entire area between decks was ablaze. The ship was carrying a cargo of 20,000 gallons of kerosene and 6,000 boxes of candles.

  On deck, the fire spread rapidly – canvas blazed up and pitch boiled between the seams of the deck timbers. Frantic attempts were made to control the conflagration, but there was little time to do anything other than abandon ship.

  Grabbing what they could, the 29 crew and officers and two passengers clambered into the three ship’s boats and rowed to a safe distance. They had barely ten days’ rations, but they felt sure that a ship would come to their rescue on seeing the great clouds of black smoke rolling up into the sky.

  At 5 a.m. on 4 May the fire finally ate through the hull and Hornet plunged bow first into the deep. It would be six weeks and 6,900 km before the survivors reached Hawaii and safety. They were stalked by sharks, swordfish and waterspouts, desiccated by heat and thirst, and maddened and weakened by starvation. Of the 31 who had set out, only 15 survived.

  A young reporter called Samuel Langhorne Clemens happened to be in Hawaii at the time. His articles about the tragedy of Hornet were printed worldwide and made his reputation. We know him today as Mark Twain.

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  AT A STAND – taken by surprise and unsure of what to do next. DERIVATION: a vessel was said to be ‘all standing’ when she was fully equipped, or with all sails set. She could be ‘brought up all standing’ if, for example, under full sail she touched on a sandbank and shuddered to a stop.

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  A MELANCHOLY FATE

  Lutine was originally a 26-gun frigate of the French Royal Navy, launched in Toulon in 1779 as La Lutine. Some years later, during the French Revolution, she was one of a dozen ships delivered to Admiral Hood by loyalists to prevent their use by Bonaparte, and in 1793 the vessel was commissioned into the Royal Navy under the name of HMS Lutine.

  She was mainly used for convoy escort work, piloting larger transports through the treacherous waters off the coast of Holland. In October 1799 she was tasked to carry over £1 million in gold bullion and coin from England to Germany. The bullion was intended to fund German banks threatened with a stock market crash, the coin to pay troops fighting in Holland.

  Lutine left English waters in the early morning of 9 October 1799 under the command of Captain Lancelot Skynner. Later that day she encountered a heavy northwesterly gale off the Dutch coast and struck on a sandbank. With a fierce tide coming in it was impossible for local boats to go to her aid, and by daybreak the next morning Lutine was smashed to pieces. Out of some 240 crew aboard, just one survived.

  The loss of the ship was reported to the Admiralty by the commander of the local British squadron: ‘It is with extreme pain that I have to state to you the melancholy fate of HMS Lutine…’

  The cargo was insured by Lloyd’s underwriters, who paid the claim in full, but ownership of the treasure that went down with the ship was disputed between the Dutch and the English. Several attempts over the years were made to retrieve some of the treasure, but much remains in Neptune’s Realm.

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  The Lutine Bell

  The ship’s bell, recovered in 1858, took on a unique role and has hung in four successive Lloyd’s Underwriting Rooms. For many years whenever a vessel became overdue underwriters involved in insuring the vessel would ask a specialist broker to reinsure some of their liability in the light of the possibility of the ship becoming a total loss. When reliable information about the vessel became available, the bell was rung once for bad news – such as total loss – or twice for a safe arrival or positive sighting. This ensured that all brokers and underwriters with an interest in the risk became aware of the news simultaneously.

  The ringing of the Lutine Bell is now restricted principally to ceremonial occasions.

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  HMS Lutine.

  SO NEAR, YET SO FAR

  Early on the morning of 23 November 1797 the Royal Navy frigate HMS Tribune made landfall in the approaches to the harbour at Halifax, Nova Scotia. She was part of a convoy escort for merchant vessels from England b
ound for Canada but had become separated from the other ships in heavy weather out in the Atlantic. Her captain proposed that they wait until a pilot could come aboard, but the master assured him that this was not necessary as he knew the harbour well.

  Not long afterwards soldiers of the 7th Fusiliers stationed at York Redoubt watched with disbelief as Tribune careered on to Thrumcap Shoal less than 2 km from the harbour mouth. From their position on top of the high bluffs they relayed Tribune’s distress signals to the dockyard. Boats put out from the harbour to go to the assistance of the stranded vessel, but strong winds forced them back.

  In an effort to lighten the ship, her starboard guns were manhandled over the side. That evening Tribune floated off the shoal but she had lost her rudder and there was 2 m of water in the hold. The pumps were worked furiously, and at first they seemed to be succeeding, but as the storm worsened the sea flooded in. The raging winds drove the ship inexorably towards the craggy shore on the other side of the harbour, then suddenly she lurched and sank in shallow water just off the entrance to Herring Cove.