This may be the most appallingly silly thing ever to have happened in all history

Post by **spot** » Fri Dec 18, 2009 4:17 pm

I'm still trying to get my head round this.

"HMS Montagu was a Duncan-class Pre-dreadnought battleship of the British Royal Navy. In May 1906 in thick fog, she was wrecked off Lundy Island, fortunately without loss of life."

This is a 14,000 ton British Battleship, not some half-pint tramp steamer, right. It's three years old and, for the time, it moves like greased lightning.At 0200 hours on 30 May 1906 during radio communication trials carried out in thick fog, Montagu was steaming at high speed in the Bristol Channel when she ran into Shutter Rock on the southwest corner of Lundy Island. The force of impact was so great that her foremast was raked forward. The ship settled hard aground, with many holes in her hull, the worst of which was a 91-foot (28 m) long gash in her starboard side.

The ship's captain, believing Montagu was stuck at Hartland Point on the mainland of England, sent a party on a rowing boat to the north, instructing them to contact the Hartland Lighthouse. They instead got to the North light on Lundy Island, where officers asked the lighthouse keeper to inform the British Admiralty that they were aground south of Hartland Point. An argument ensued with the keeper until he pointed out he knew what lighthouse he kept.

HMS Montagu (1901) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That's just plain horrific. I know GPS is recent but they had maps and compasses, for goodness sake. And he doesn't just hit the biggest island in the Bristol Channel, he thinks he's hit the mainland!

fuzzywuzzy · Post by **fuzzywuzzy** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 11:15 am

You have no idea how many ship wrecks are off my coast.........

I'm going to suggest the thick fog interefered with radio transmission and instruments

Post by **spot** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 12:32 pm

I'm not sure, fuzzy. I think it's something about the odd people they had in charge back then.

Do you remember Alec Guinness playing the Admiral in Kind Hearts and Coronets, going down with his ship? That scene was a parody of HMS Victoria (1887)

The admiral had his fleet in two columns steaming directly toward the coast, just over half a mile between the columns, and ordered them to about turn hard inward toward each other so that they would end up in the same two columns steaming away from the coast though closer together. The turning circle of a battleship is a lot more than a quarter of a mile. The two leading battleships collided and the Admiral's sank within a quarter of an hour.

HMS Victoria was only three years old too, just like HMS Montagu.

That may be the other most appallingly silly thing ever to have happened in all history.

dubs · Post by **dubs** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 1:28 pm

They weren't the luckiest class of warship built were they, the Duncans? There were 6 made, from what I read, they were pretty much obsolete when they were built in 1901. Three were broken up for scrap in 1919-20. One was torpedoed, another hit a mine, and we know what happened to good old Montagu.

fuzzywuzzy · Post by **fuzzywuzzy** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 3:07 pm

You guys are destroying the great legend of the Brits being great seafarring people !!! SHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Here's something to read though It's a hell of a long list (but that's my point ) I like reading where the ship was from and how it sunk. It's like walking through the Paris cemetary and taking note of all the famous people. And this is just off the victorian coast.

VICTORIA - SHIPWRECKS

dubs · Post by **dubs** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 3:25 pm

fuzzywuzzy;1274316 wrote: You guys are destroying the great legend of the Brits being great seafarring people !!! SHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Here's something to read though It's a hell of a long list (but that's my point ) I like reading where the ship was from and how it sunk. It's like walking through the Paris cemetary and taking note of all the famous people. And this is just off the victorian coast.

VICTORIA - SHIPWRECKS

Here's a bit that might interest you Fuzzbutt.....The sister ship of the Montagu.

HMS Cornwallis joined the 6th Battle Squadron of the Channel Fleet but was sent to the Dardanelles in January 1915 where she became the first British warship to open fire on 18th February. HMS Cornwallis took part on all of the operations as well as the evacuation. After being hit with three torpedoes from German u-boat U32 she sank off Malta with the loss of 15 lives.

Post by **spot** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 4:03 pm

fuzzywuzzy;1274316 wrote: You guys are destroying the great legend of the Brits being great seafarring people !!! SHHHHHHHH!!!!!With a quick check I can find 25 battleships ever being lost at sea. Three of those were intentional as target practice after their expiry date. Of the remaining 22, twelve were British. Of those, four were destroyed by Johnny Turk, four by the Hun, two by the Japanese and the two I've already mentioned by inept orders to the helmsman.

HMS Victoria was discovered by astounded divers off the Lebanese coast four years ago, standing nose first like a tower block under the water, driven vertically into the mud by the engines still racing as she went down.

Do you dive, fuzz? You've plenty on that list which could be swum around.

fuzzywuzzy · Post by **fuzzywuzzy** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 7:25 pm

I used to many moons ago but I've never dived that far out .( I don't like sharks) There are some wrecks that when the tied is out you can see them from the beach. In the words of Get Smart "missed it by this much" . Not many people overseas know, but a lot of people who made it from Britain didn't come into the Ports but were either found by Aboriginals or explorers because they were washed up on shore. Our old cemetarys are testament to how they died. Kind of sad to come all that way and end up alone or dead so far from home.

On tuesday I'm off to Melbourne I'll grab great granddads list of ships he was on during his days in the British navy. He started out as a stoker and ended a chief petty officer just before WW2

Post by **spot** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 7:48 am

fuzzywuzzy;1274366 wrote: On tuesday I'm off to Melbourne I'll grab great granddads list of ships he was on during his days in the British navy. He started out as a stoker and ended a chief petty officer just before WW2

We could have a lot of fun with a thread going into those, I'd enjoy it.

Post by **spot** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 7:59 am

dubs;1274305 wrote: They weren't the luckiest class of warship built were they, the Duncans? There were 6 made, from what I read, they were pretty much obsolete when they were built in 1901. Three were broken up for scrap in 1919-20. One was torpedoed, another hit a mine, and we know what happened to good old Montagu.

I'm not so sure about the pretty much obsolete when they were built bit. The serious discussion which led to the Dreadnaught in 1906 didn't start until 1903, as far as I can tell. If you can come up with any earlier discussion than that, it would be an interesting conversation.

And, until discussion of longer-range heavier guns and faster battleships started and the race was on, the Duncans seem to me to have been rather well specified. Perhaps HMS Montagu should have had a very thick fender on the bow.

Post by **spot** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 10:27 am

Scrat;1274466 wrote: Some dandy that grew up on an estateModern English usage gives that a rather different meaning than the one you intend. A dandy that grew up on an estate in England these days is called a Chav.

But yes, your point's valid. I'll check when the Royal Navy brought potential ability into their recruitment system but I'm sure that even as late as 1860 it would have militated against the lower classes becoming officers. That's when the two who wrecked their battleships would have started out in the service.

Even then, though, once you became a Post Captain, there was no accelerated promotion based on who you knew or what friends you had. It was strictly in order of seniority until you became retired or died.

dubs · Post by **dubs** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 3:17 pm

spot;1274423 wrote: I'm not so sure about the pretty much obsolete when they were built bit. The serious discussion which led to the Dreadnaught in 1906 didn't start until 1903, as far as I can tell. If you can come up with any earlier discussion than that, it would be an interesting conversation.

And, until discussion of longer-range heavier guns and faster battleships started and the race was on, the Duncans seem to me to have been rather well specified. Perhaps HMS Montagu should have had a very thick fender on the bow.

I should have said, soon to be obsolete. Inasmuch as battleships of the worlds navies, were considered obsolete with the launching of the Dreadnought class in 1906.

The Duncans were an adaptation of the Majestic class pre dreadnought, with exactly the same armament, but much less armour. This made them extremely fast, but very vulnerable.

Post by **spot** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 3:34 pm

Scrat;1274466 wrote: I don't think skill was a major factor back then. Weren't officers commissions purchased by the upper classes then? I don't think the British Navy was the best it could have been. Bobby Fisher changed many things in his time I do believe. Actually, the more I think of this, no it wasn't so. The Army, yes, definitely. Any upper class twit could buy himself a commission right up to the first world war and many did. The Navy recruited its officers solely from among the Midshipmen by examination for Lieutenant. Promotion from Lieutenant to Commander to Captain to Post Captain was entirely in the hands of superior officers and influence counted there, but the selection by examined ability had already happened and it was rigorous.

Becoming a Midshipman, though, was by invitation from whatever ship's captain one knew in the first place. So yes, there's a large element of class there, though the children of indigent ex-officers got taken on by friends and they wouldn't be considered above lower middle class at best, if they had no other connections.

Bobby Fisher was the mad American. Our mad Naval Englishman was a Jacky.

Post by **spot** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 7:53 pm

He didn't miss it, exactly, he was First Sea Lord at the time running the whole show alongside Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty. or the other way about, I can never remember which title's which, one's naval and the other's political. Jacky Fisher crashed and burned some time after Gallipoli, trying to stage a palace coup and take over the war government. He wrote the most exciting memoirs after the war, too - if you ever manage to track down a copy, do check it.

Post by **spot** » Mon Feb 15, 2010 9:57 am

Here's a copy on eBay, I just noticed it in passing.

MEMORIES Lord Fisher - Admiral of the Fleet ~ 1919 HB on eBay (end time 05-Mar-10 13:56:52 GMT)