Brickwrecks: BATAVIA, VASA, and TITANIC
Brickwrecks: BATAVIA, VASA, and TITANIC
Brickwrecks: Sunken Ships in LEGO® Bricks is open in No.1 Smithery and features nine infamous shipwrecks, including BATAVIA, RMS TITANIC, and VASA. You can read all about HMS PANDORA and the fateful expedition of HMS TERROR & HMS PANDORA in our previous Warship Wednesday blogs.
BATAVIA
BATAVIA was a Dutch East Indiaman that sailed from Texel, Holland bound for BATAVIA (now Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies to buy spices. In April 1629, BATAVIA became separated from the rest of the convoy she was sailing in by a storm off the Cape of Good Hope. There were 316 persons onboard, the crew and a number of passengers.
Before BATAVIA’s wrecking, her skipper Ariaen Jacobsz and an under-merchant, Jeronimus Cornelius, aimed to throw the East India Company’s senior man, Francisco Pelsaert, overboard, seize the ship and take to a life of piracy.
The planned mutiny did not take place straight away. Some of the plotters assaulted a female passenger, but she recognised the voice of one of her attackers and was able to name her assailant. Pelsaert intended to hang the attacker when they reached Australia. The mutineers agreed that the execution would be the trigger for the mutiny.
On the 4th June 1629, two hours before sunrise, BATAVIA was wrecked, on the then uncharted Morning Reef two miles from Beacon Island in the Abrolhos archipelago, 40 miles off the coast of western Australia. The crew had mistaken surf on the reef for the shine of the moon.
All 316 people aboard survived the wrecking of BATAVIA and came ashore on two islands. Jacobsz and Pelsaert took a small ship’s boat and sailed for BATAVIA to find help. When they returned after 100 days, only 116 had survived to be rescued.
While Jacobsz and Pelsaert were away, Cornelius had taken charge, and so began a reign of terror, cruelty and murder.
VASA
Built in Stockholm, at Skeepsgården Shipyard in 1627; Length: 136 feet; Displacement: 1210 tons; Crew: 133 sailors and 300 soldiers, who acted as gunners (on the day of the disaster, the soldiers were not embarked).
VASA, originally called Ny Wassan (New Vasa), was a big ship by the standards of the day. She was colourfully painted and lavishly ornamented; her figurehead was a gilded lion.
Armament: 64 cannons (48 x 24-pounders, 8 x 3-pounders, 6 x howitzers (in general, guns that fired at a low angle) and 2 x Falconet’s (weight of shot 1½ pounds, 2 inches in diameter).
Sunk off Stockholm on 10th August 1628, on her maiden voyage, after travelling approximately 1400 yards. She had departed in still, fine weather, “with only a faint wind to fill the four sails she had set”. VASA was in the lee of the high cliffs of Söder, but as she moved away from the lee, stronger gusts were experienced and more sails were set. Further away from land, the wind had more scope and strength, but VASA was coping; however, the captain had some anxiety about how far she had heeled over, and ordered the topsail sheets to be cast free (to take the wind out of the topsails). Another gust came off the land, and VASA heeled over farther and farther until water was entering through the open gun ports. VASA capsized off Beckholmen and sank in 18 fathoms of water.
VASA’s design was no different from that of any other warship of the 1620s, but she was termed a ‘crank’ ship (undesirable lack of stability, a tendency to roll easily and return slowly).
A stability test carried out before she sailed involved a group of 30 sailors running from side to side to generate a rolling motion. The test was soon stopped because she rolled too much!
VASA sailed with a reduced crew of 100, plus wives and children. A minimal crew also would have contributed to compromised stability, ie less stores, less weight. Of the crew that day, between 30 and 50 were to perish in the capsize (exact numbers vary between accounts).
Before VASA had travelled less than half a mile, she began to heel over to port. Guns, on No 2 deck, were moved from the portside to starboard to try and correct the heel; unfortunately, all the gun ports were open; the crew numbers were too small to respond quickly. VASA sank within sight of thousands of people watching from the coast. The news of her impending departure had spread throughout the city, and many people had come down to the waterfront to watch. The ship was on her way to Älvnabben, where she was to be placed in reserve.
The VASA’s captain, Captain Söfring Hanson, and Shipmaster*, Jöran Matsson, survived the capsize and were arrested and imprisoned in the palace of The Three Crowns. A Court of Enquiry was convened on the 5th September at the palace, and both were called to be questioned. The master faced a charge “that he had failed his calling and his office in that he had not paid due attention to ballast and other things as his calling and his office made incumbent upon him, whereby disaster had befallen His Majesty’s ship”.
The court of enquiry failed to find the true cause of the disaster – No Findings Declared. There is no record anywhere of anyone having been found guilty or sentenced.
If anyone had been found guilty, he or they would certainly have paid for such dereliction with their lives. According to Swiss naval articles of 1644, if a first-mate, who through careless navigation ran his vessel aground, was to be keel-hauled and made to make good any damage. Also, a person who by heedless behaviour, caused a fire to break out aboard a ship was to be thrown into the fire he had caused.
*sailing master: historical term, in the RN, a warrant officer charged with responsibility for the actual sailing and navigation of a warship until the early 19th century.
RMS Titanic
TITANIC and her sisters (Olympic and Britannic) were conceived from the rivalry between the White Star Line and Cunard, to master the lucrative Atlantic passenger trade. In 1907, J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line and his wife dined at Downshire House, Belgravia, the home of Sir James Pirrie, a partner in the Harland and Wolff Shipyard, Belfast.
The Lusitania had just been built for Cunard and was expected to shatter the speed record for crossing the Atlantic; she was about to make her maiden voyage.
It is generally believed that during this dinner party, Pirrie and Ismay hatched a plan to build two huge liners, with a third to follow. Each would be 50% larger than Lusitania’s tonnage of 30,000 gross, and nearly 100 feet longer than her 790 feet. Luxury and comfort, rather than speed, would be their attraction ( the ships would be fast enough to complete the crossing from England to New York in a week).
The proposed ships were so long that neither Harland and Wolff nor any other shipyard had a dry dock, crane or gantry big enough to build them. Harland and Wolff converted three building slips (where some of the world’s largest ships had been built) into two slips, No 2 and 3 slips. A 228-foot-high gantry was constructed over the slips, the gantry weighed in excess of 6000 tons, and it was the largest in the world.
The Belfast Harbour Commission commissioned a new graving dock. It was the largest dock in the world at the time of its construction.
New York Harbour Board had no pier long enough to accommodate the ships. Initially, the Harbour Board refused to grant permission for the lengthening of the White Star Pier. However, the New York business community recognised the benefits the ships would bring and representatives were sent to Washington, DC to press the case to the War Department, which had ultimate control of the harbour. Permission was granted.
Plans and preparations were complete so on December 16th December 1908, the first keel plate was laid for a giant liner that would be called Olympic. Three months later, on March 31st 1909, the first keel plate was laid for the TITANIC. TITANIC was launched on 31st May 1911
About TITANIC:
- 882ft 9ins length overall
- 92ft 6ins extreme width
- Gross tonnage: 45,000 tons
- Speed 21 knots,
- Accommodation for almost 2,500 passengers;
- 333 First-class cabins,
- 207 Second-class cabins,
- 222 Third-class rooms,
- 164 Third-class ‘open berths’
When TITANIC sailed from Queenstown for New York on 11th April 1912, she carried 1308 passengers and 898 crew. Of the 2,206 persons onboard, 703 were saved.
When completed TITANIC was the largest vessel in the world.
Some Interesting Facts:
- The ships were fitted with ‘submarine signalling’ apparatus, manufactured by the Submarine Signal Co., which allowed the sounds of ‘submarine bells’ to be received through the hull. By locating the direction of the sound, the position of the ship, when nearing the coast, could be obtained. Submarine bells had been established by Trinity House and the lighting authorities in the United States; over 120 bells were in place in 1911.
- When completed, there were something like 3 million rivets, weighing a total of about 1200 tons, in each ship. The largest rivets used were 1½ inches in diameter. To ensure the best workmanship, hydraulic riveting had been used where possible.
- The liners had a combination of 2 x reciprocating, triple expansion, steam engines with a Parsons steam turbine. Triple propellers were fitted, and the centre line shaft was driven by the turbine. Each ship had a total of twenty-four ‘double-ended’ boilers and five ‘single-ended’ boilers. Each ship had six boiler rooms. At sea, the ships discharged the ash, mixed with seawater, overboard by ash ejectors.
- Each ship had 3 anchors: 2 x 7¾ tons (bower anchors, sited forward on either side of the bow), 1 x centre anchor 16½ tons. The centre anchor was made to supplement the two side bower anchors due to the size of TITANIC; It was housed in a well immediately below the stern. The individual links of the anchor cable were forged from bar, either 5¾ or 6¼ inches in diameter, when constructed, by N. Hingley & Son; they were the largest links ever made.
- TITANIC was launched on 31st May 1911 at 12.15 pm. It required 23 tons of tallow (rendered fat from cattle or sheep), train oil and soft soap to grease the slipways for the launch. The launch took 62 seconds and was watched by 100,000 people. To control the speed down the slip, there were 3 anchors on each side and 80 tons of cable (drag chains).
- Olympics collision with HMS Hawke on 20th September 1911, lead to fears that such giant liners were simply too big to handle (the two ships had been steaming on parallel courses off the Isle of Wight when Hawke was sucked into the Olympics side, holing her above the waterline on the starboard quarter. HMS Hawke suffered a badly damaged bow. Olympic had passed too close to HMS Hawke, and hydrodynamic forces had come into play due to the difference in displacements of the two vessels. At the inquiry, the Admiralty gave evidence that the Olympic “crowded the channel” and that the Hawkes helm had jammed. The inquiry found the Olympic to blame, with no blame attached to the White Star Line, because the liner was under the control of a pilot at the time of the collision. HMS Hawke was an RN 1st Class cruiser displacing 7350 tons. Constructed at Chatham and launched on 11th March 1891.
