Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History
Events on 27 October
1760 - HMS Superb was a 74-gun Bellona-class third-rate ship of the line is launched
HMS Superb was a 74-gun Bellona-class third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 27 October 1760 at Deptford Dockyard
The Superb was Admiral Edward Hughes's flagship in India in 1782 during a notable series of engagements with the French under Suffren.
On 20 June 1783 the Superb took part in the Battle of Cuddalore before returning to Bombay for copper sheathing along her hull. On 7 November she developed a severe leak through the sheathing into the bilge, and sank in Tellicherry Roads off the Bombay coast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Superb_(1760)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellona-class_ship_of_the_line
1775 - HMS Bedford , a Royal Navy 74-gun third rate Launched
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Bedford_(1775)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Oak-class_ship_of_the_line
1779 - HMS Laurel , a 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth-rate frigate launched
HMS Laurel was a 28-gun Enterprise-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. Laurel was first commissioned in October 1779 under the command of Captain Thomas Lloyd. She sailed for the Leeward Islands on 13 April 1780, but was wrecked on 11 October in the Great Hurricane of 1780 at Martinique. Lloyd, and all but 12 of his crew, died.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Laurel_(1779)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise-class_frigate
1800 - Boats of HMS Phaeton (38), Sir James Nicoll Morris,cut out San Josef (8) from Fuengirola
HMS Phaeton was a 38-gun, Minerva-class fifth rate of Britain's Royal Navy. This frigate was most noted for her intrusion into Nagasaki harbour in 1808. John Smallshaw (Smallshaw & Company) built Phaeton in Liverpool between 1780 and 1782. She participated in numerous engagements during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars during which service she captured many prizes. Francis Beaufort, inventor of the Beaufort Wind-Scale, was a lieutenant on Phaeton when he distinguished himself during a successful cutting out expedition. Phaeton sailed to the Pacific in 1805, and returned in 1812. She was finally sold on 26 March 1828.
A contemporary Japanese drawing of the HMS Phaeton; in custody of the Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Phaeton_(1782)
1803 - HMS Merlin (16), Edward Pelham Brenton, and boats destroyed French privateer Sept Freres, Citizen Pollet, by driving her ashore to the west of Gravelines.
HMS Merlin was launched in 1801 in South Shields as the collier Hercules. In July 1803, with the resumption of war with France, the Admiralty purchased her. She was one of about 20 such vessels that the navy would then employ primarily for convoy escort duties. She served on active duty until 1810, capturing one small privateer. She then served as a receiving ship until 1836 when the navy sold her for breaking up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Merlin_(1803)
1810 - HMS Orestes (16), John Richards Lapenotiere, took French privateer Loup Garou (16), Charles Laurent Faures, some 120 miles west of Scilly
HMS Orestes was a 16-gun brig-sloop of the Seagull class of the British Royal Navy, launched in October 1805. She served during the Napoleonic Wars, primarily in the North Sea and the Channel, where she captured three privateers. The Navy sold her in 1817.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Orestes_(1805)
1864 - Lt. William Cushing, USN, sinks Confederate ram CSS Albemarle with a spar torpedo attached to the bow of his launch.
Lt William B Cushing, USN
Albemarle successfully dominated the Roanoke and the approaches to Plymouth through the summer of 1864. By autumn the U. S. government decided that the situation should be studied to determine if something could be done: The U. S. Navy considered various ways to destroy Albemarle, including two plans submitted by Lieutenant William B. Cushing; they finally approved one of his plans, authorizing him to locate two small steam launches that might be fitted with spar torpedoes. Cushing discovered two 30-foot (9.1 m) picket boats under construction in New York and acquired them for his mission. On each he mounted a Dahlgren 12-pounder howitzer and a 14-foot (4.3 m) spar projecting into the water from its bow. One of the boats was lost at sea during the voyage from New York to Norfolk, Virginia, but the other arrived safely with its crew of seven officers and men at the mouth of the Roanoke. There, the steam launch's spar was fitted with a lanyard-detonated torpedo.
On the night of October 27 and 28, 1864, Cushing and his team began working their way upriver. A small cutter accompanied them, its crew having the task of preventing interference by the Confederate sentries stationed on a schooner anchored to the wreck of Southfield; both boats, under the cover of darkness, slipped past the schooner undetected. So Cushing decided to use all twenty-two of his men and the element of surprise to capture Albemarle.
_(14578563567).jpg "Naval/Maritime History - 18th of April - Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History (3)")
The torpedo explodes against the Albemarle
As they approached the Confederate docks their luck turned, and they were spotted in the dark. They came under heavy rifle and pistol fire from both the shore and aboard Albemarle. As they closed with the ironclad, they quickly discovered she was defended against approach by floating log booms. The logs, however, had been in the water for many months and were covered with heavy slime. The steam launch rode up and then over them without difficulty; with her spar fully against the ironclad's hull, Cushing stood up in the bow and pulled the lanyard, detonating the torpedo's explosive charge.
The explosion threw Cushing and his men overboard into the water; Cushing then stripped off most of his uniform and swam to shore, where he hid undercover until daylight, avoiding the hastily organized Confederate search parties. The next afternoon, he was finally able to steal a small skiff and began slowly paddling, using his hands and arms as oars, down-river to rejoin Union forces at the river's mouth. Cushing's long journey was quite perilous and he was nearly captured and almost drowned before finally reaching safety, totally exhausted by his ordeal; he was hailed a national hero of the Union cause for his daring exploits. Of the other men in Cushing's launch, one man,Seaman Edward Houghton, also escaped, two others were drowned following the explosion, and the remaining eleven were captured.
Cushing's daring commando raid blew a hole in Albemarle's hull at the waterline "big enough to drive a wagon in." She sank immediately in the six feet of water below her keel, settling into the heavy river bottom mud, leaving the upper casemate mostly dry and the ship's large Stainless Banner ensign flying from the flagstaff at the rear of the casemate's upper deck. Confederate commander Alexander F. Warley, who had been appointed as her captain about a month earlier, later salvaged both of Albemarle's rifled cannon and shells and used them to defend Plymouth against subsequent Union attack—futilely, as it turned out.
Lieutenant Cushing's successful effort to neutralize CSS Albemarle is honored by the U.S. Navy with a battle star on the Civil War campaign streamer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Albemarle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_B._Cushing
1877 - The tall ship Elissa is a three-masted barque.is launched
The tall ship Elissa is a three-masted barque. She is currently moored in Galveston, Texas, and is one of the oldest ships sailing today. Launched in 1877, she is now a museum ship at the Texas Seaport Museum. She was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990.
The tall ship Elissa, which has sailed in three centuries, sails up the channel into Port Galveston, Texas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elissa_(ship)
1890 - french armed cruiser Dupuy de Lome launched
Dupuy de Lôme was an armoured cruiser built for the French Navy (Marine Nationale) during the late 1880s and 1890s. She is considered by some to be the world's first armoured cruiser and was intended to attack enemy merchant ships. The ship was named after the naval architect Henri Dupuy de Lôme. Dupuy de Lôme's completion was delayed by almost two years by problems with her boilers, but she was finally commissioned in 1895 and assigned to the Northern Squadron (Escadre du Nord), based at Brest, for most of her career. The ship made a number of visits to foreign ports before she began a lengthy reconstruction in 1902. By the time this was completed in 1906, the cruiser was regarded as obsolete and Dupuy de Lôme was placed in reserve, aside from one assignment in Morocco.
The ship was sold to the Peruvian Navy in 1912, but they never paid the last two installments and the ship remained inactive at Brest during World War I. The French agreed to take the ship back in 1917, keeping the money already paid, and they sold her in 1918 to a Belgian shipping company that converted her into a freighter. Renamed Péruvier, the ship's engines broke down and she had to be towed to her destination where part of her cargo of coal was discovered to be on fire during her maiden voyage as a merchant vessel in 1920. Deemed uneconomical to repair, Péruvier was towed to Antwerp and later scrapped in 1923.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_cruiser_Dupuy_de_Lôme
1914 – The British lose their first battleship of World War I: The British super-dreadnought battleship HMS Audacious (23,400 tons) is sunk off Tory Island, north-west of Ireland, by a minefield laid by the armed German merchant-cruiser Berlin.
HMS Audacious was the fourth and last King George V-class dreadnought battleship built for the Royal Navy in the early 1910s. After completion in 1913, she spent her entire career assigned to the Home and Grand Fleets. She was sunk by a German naval mine off the northern coast of County Donegal, Ireland, in October 1914.
British battleship HMS Audacious. Date not recorded, but must be some time between 1912 and 1914. Original image cropped and adjusted.
Sinking
Repeated reports of submarines in Scapa Flow led Jellicoe to conclude that the defences there were inadequate and he ordered that the Grand Fleet be dispersed to other bases until the defences were reinforced. On 16 October, the 2nd Battle Squadron was sent to Loch na Keal on the western coast of Scotland. The squadron departed for gunnery practice off Tory Island, Ireland, on the morning of 27 October and Audacious struck a mine at 08:45, laid a few days earlier by the German auxiliary minelayer SS Berlin. Captain Cecil Dampier, thinking that the ship had been torpedoed, hoisted the submarine warning; in accordance with instructions the dreadnoughts departed the area, leaving the smaller ships behind to render assistance.
The crew of Audacious take to lifeboats to be taken aboard Olympic
The explosion occurred 16 feet (4.9 m) under the bottom of the ship, approximately 10 feet (3.0 m) forward of the transverse bulkhead at the rear of the port engine room. The port engine room and the outer compartments adjacent to it flooded immediately, with water spreading more slowly to the central engine room and adjoining spaces. The ship rapidly took on a list to port of up to 15 degrees, which was reduced by counter flooding compartments on the starboard side, so that by 09:45, the list ranged up to nine degrees as she rolled in the heavy swell. The light cruiser Liverpool stood by, while Jellicoe ordered every available destroyer and tug out to assist, but did not send out any battleships to tow Audacious because of the supposed submarine threat. Having intercepted the stricken dreadnought's distress calls, the White Star ocean liner RMS Olympic, sister of the RMS Titanic, arrived on the scene.
Destroyers evacuate crewmen
The ship could make 9 knots (17 km/h; 10 mph) and Dampier believed that he had a chance of making the 25 miles (40 km) to land and beaching the ship, so he turned Audacious south and made for Lough Swilly. After about two hours, the ship had covered 15 miles (24 km) when the rising water forced the abandonment of the centre and starboard engine rooms and she drifted to a stop. Dampier ordered all non-essential crew to be taken off, boats from Liverpool and Olympic assisting, and only 250 men were left aboard by 14:00. At 13:30, Captain Herbert Haddock, the captain of Olympic, suggested that his ship attempt to take Audacious in tow. Dampier agreed, and with the assistance of the destroyer Fury, a tow line was passed 30 minutes later. The ships began moving, but the line was severed when it was fouled by the cruiser's propellers. Liverpool and the newly arrived collier SS Thornhill then attempted to take the battleship in tow, but the line snapped before any progress could be made.
Liverpool (left) and Fury (centre), in combination with Olympic, try to take Audacious in tow (View from Olympic)
Vice-Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly, commander of the 1st Battle Squadron, arrived on the scene in the ocean boarding vessel Cambria and took over the rescue operation. Upon learning that two ships had been mined in the area the day before, and that there was no threat from submarines, Jellicoe ordered the pre-dreadnought battleship Exmouth to sail at 17:00 for an attempt to tow Audacious. Dampier ordered all but 50 men to be removed at 17:00 and Bayly, Dampier and the remaining men on the ship were taken off at 18:15 with dark approaching.
Just as Exmouth was coming up on the group at 20:45, Audacious heeled sharply, paused, and then capsized. She floated upside down with the bow raised until 21:00, when an explosion occurred that threw wreckage 300 feet (91 m) into the air, followed by two more. The explosion appeared to come from the area of 'B' magazine and was probably caused by one or more high-explosive shells falling from their racks and exploding, then igniting the cordite in the magazine. A piece of armour plate flew 800 yards (730 m) and killed a petty officer on Liverpool. This was the only casualty in connection with the sinking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Audacious_(1912)
1922 - The Navy League of the United States sponsors the first celebration of Navy Day to focus public attention on the importance of the U.S. Navy. The date is selected because it is Theodore Roosevelts birthday. Navy Day is last observed Oct. 27, 1949.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy_Day
1981 – Cold War: The Soviet submarine S-363 runs aground on the east coast of Sweden.
Soviet submarine S-363 was a Soviet Navy Whiskey-class submarine of the Baltic Fleet, which became famous under the designation U 137 when it ran aground on 27 October 1981 on the south coast of Sweden, approximately 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from Karlskrona, one of the larger Swedish naval bases. U137 was the unofficial Swedish name for the vessel, as the Soviets considered names of most of their submarines to be classified at the time and did not disclose them. The ensuing international incident is often referred to as the Whiskey on the rocks incident.
