Final Voyage Read online

  For Camilla Eyers

  Contents

  Introduction

  1 In the Hands of God

  Catastrophe at sea during the Age of Sail

  2 America’s Titanic

  Triumph and tragedy aboard the Sultana

  3 The Halifax Explosion

  The loss of a ship, the devastation of a city

  4 War at Sea

  From the Spanish Armada to the Bismarck

  5 Britain’s Darkest Hour

  The loss of the Lancastria and why Churchill covered it up

  6 The Age of Total Loss

  Tragedy without triumph during the Second World War

  7 Ten Thousand Dead

  The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff

  8 Worse than Titanic

  Maritime disasters since the Second World War

  By the Same Author

  Introduction

  In terms of loss of life alone, the sinking of the Titanic doesn’t even figure as one of the fifty worst maritime disasters of the last three hundred years. Even putting aside an objective and somewhat cold comparison of death tolls, some of the circumstances in which the other vessels sank – and some of the experiences of those who died on, or survived, them – were horrific almost to the point of being unimaginable. They make disaster movies look sanitised, and that includes even the more accurate versions of the Titanic story.

  The Titanic wasn’t hopelessly overcrowded with more than 10,000 people, unlike the Wilhelm Gustloff. The Titanic didn’t lose all power and wasn’t plunged into darkness when she began to sink, making escape almost impossible for those below decks, unlike Le Joola. The Titanic wasn’t consumed by a swiftly spreading inferno, unlike the Sultana and the Doña Paz. Those fleeing the Titanic weren’t shot at, unlike those fleeing the Thielbek and the Cap Arcona. The Titanic didn’t capsize before she went down, unlike the Lancastria and the Neptune. And the Titanic took almost three hours to sink, unlike most of the ships in this book.

  It is a popular misconception that the Titanic disaster had a great impact on maritime safety. The first Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) convention in 1914 was a direct response to the disaster, and there have been several others since, in 1929, 1948, 1960 and 1974. Since 1929 the emphasis has been on fire prevention, because fire has been responsible for half of all peacetime casualties at sea. In 1974 a completely new convention was drawn up, which made it a requirement for all passenger ships to be subdivided into watertight compartments to ensure they can stay afloat even with the level of hull damage the Titanic suffered. However, as of a few years ago there were still cruise ships in active service that only adhered to the 1948 convention. And most of the disasters in this book have occurred since the first convention.

  The Titanic disaster continues to hold sway over the public imagination, being the archetypal maritime disaster, possibly because it became a symbol of a dying age, the point at which mankind’s belief in its invincibility thanks to technology faltered, before finally being extinguished on the battlefields of Europe a couple of years later. Many of the films made about the Titanic use the decks of the ship to represent a microcosm of a society riven by class. Poor European emigrants seeking a better life in America face the same peril as Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon, John Jacob Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim, some of the richest, most notable men in the Western world at the time.

  It is hard to imagine Le Joola, the most recent disaster featured in this book, making so few headlines in the West had there been any British aristocrats or rich American industrialists on board. Yet around 2,000 died when Le Joola capsized off the coast of Senegal in 2002 and, only a decade later, the disaster is unknown even to those who consider the loss of the Titanic – and 1,500 of its passengers – a great tragedy. The Titanic has been remembered, commemorated and celebrated for over a century now. This book is about the people who sailed on other ships that met with disaster. Some lived, many died, but all have been almost completely forgotten.

  1 In the Hands of God

  Catastrophe at sea during the Age of Sail

  Life expectancy for the average sailor in the 18th and 19th centuries was unmercifully short. Whilst someone who worked on land could reasonably expect to make it to at least their late thirties or early forties, a sailor could consider himself lucky if he made it out of his twenties.

  It should perhaps not be surprising, then, that at times half of all British sailors serving on Royal Navy ships during the Age of Sail were conscripted by press gangs. Sailors were physically overworked in harsh conditions, spending much of the time wet and cold. They were malnourished, eating poorly preserved food; a diet that contained little in the way of fresh fruit or vegetables but plenty in the way of weak alcohol, the only alternative to which was dirty water. They lived in crowded conditions and sanitation was poor. Half of all deaths that occurred at sea were due to disease. During the Napoleonic Wars, for example, 100,000 British sailors perished. Only 1,500 died in battle, whilst 60,000 died from disease, the biggest killer being typhus spread by infected lice.

  A graveyard of shipwrecks litters the seabeds of the world’s oceans.

  Disease and sea battles aside, whether on warships or merchant vessels, life at sea during the Age of Sail carried with it at least a one in ten chance of death. Approximately ten per cent of long voyages met with total disaster. A graveyard of shipwrecks litters the seabeds of the world’s oceans, the unknown final resting places of the vessels and crews who never reached their intended destinations, having disappeared without trace – or survivors – en route.

  Hundreds of thousands died over the centuries, but death at sea was too commonplace, too routine, to warrant memorialising the loss of yet another 200 crewmen. Two particular disasters stand out, however, because both of them led to the deaths of more people than the sinking of the Titanic. One of them – the Scilly Disaster of 1707 – changed the world. The other – the sinking of the Tek Sing in 1822 – has been forgotten by all but ghoulish collectors, and the treasure hunters who serve them.

  From siege to storm

  On 29th September 1707, Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell sent word from his flagship HMS Association to the other 20 vessels under his command that they were to leave Gibraltar for Portsmouth. They had spent the summer in the Mediterranean, besieging the French port of Toulon as part of a combined force of British, Dutch and Austrian ships. The War of Spanish Succession was in its sixth year, with another seven to go before the alliance of French and Spanish unionists gave up on their attempts to unify the countries under a single Bourbon monarch, which would have shifted the balance of power in Europe away from those who allied against France and Spain.

  Shovell’s fleet, which comprised 15 ships of the line, four fireships, a sloop and a yacht, had helped destroy eight French vessels at Toulon, but the British-led campaign was ultimately unsuccessful. The victorious French and Spanish ships had inflicted not inconsiderable damage on the ships of Shovell’s fleet, and whilst still seaworthy they needed to return to Britain for repairs. Winter would soon make the passage too dangerous, so putting off departure much longer would risk leaving the fleet cut off. Carrying the spoils of war, including thousands of plundered gold and silver coins, the fleet left Gibraltar and sailed into the Atlantic, and a terrible storm.

  Squalls plagued the fleet for the entire journey, and when Shovell’s ships passed through the Bay of Biscay, gales pushed the fleet off course. It was 21st October before the night skies were clear enough for Shovell’s navigators to make an astronomical observation and estimate the fleet’s position. They were not where they thought they were. The next day, as the ships passed to the west of Brittany, a new storm brought even worse weather than before. Again, the fleet was blown off course.

  At noon o
n the 22nd, Shovell summoned the captains and navigators of the other ships to the Association. Depth soundings taken by his crew had recorded 90 fathoms (just over 500ft, or 150m), which was completely wrong for where they were supposed to be. The only way of determining the fleet’s longitude was to use dead reckoning, calculating the current position by factoring in the direction travelled – and the speed travelled at – since the last position was fixed. Notoriously unreliable even in the best of weather conditions, dead reckoning proved to be fatally inaccurate for Shovell’s storm-ridden ships.

  All but one of the captains and navigators meeting on board the Association agreed – the fleet lay off the coast of France, in the latitude of Ushant. The captain of HMS Lenox was the sole dissenting voice. He believed the fleet was much closer to the Isles of Scilly, about 100 miles distant from Ushant. The Isles of Scilly were surrounded by one of the most extensive graveyards of shipwrecks in the world (to date, more than 900 ships have struck the rocks and sunk there). This made the waters around the 55 islands some of the most infamously dangerous for shipping. The captain of the Lenox believed the fleet would be within sight of them by mid-afternoon.

  Notoriously unreliable even in the best of weather conditions, dead reckoning proved to be fatally inaccurate for Shovell’s storm-ridden ships.

  Shovell ignored him and accepted the prevalent opinion. He sent 17 of the captains back to their ships with orders to be ready to continue at his signal. Three of the ships he ordered to break formation and head for Falmouth instead. One of those ships was the Lenox. Listening to Shovell’s orders rather than his own inclinations, the captain of the Lenox followed a direct north-easterly route toward Cornwall. The three vessels soon found themselves amongst the rocky islets to the southwest of the Isles of Scilly. The Lenox managed to evade them, but another of the ships, the fireship HMS Phoenix, struck the rocks. Her captain quickly ordered the ship beached, and running her ashore on the sands between Tresco and St Martin’s was the only thing that saved her crew from suffering the same fate as many of those on the rest of Shovell’s ships.

  The Isles of Scilly were surrounded by one of the most extensive graveyards of shipwrecks in the world.

  The Scilly Disaster

  At 6pm, as the sun set and a fresh storm mounted, its cloudbank blocking out the moonlight, Shovell sent his signal to the rest of the fleet. A light frigate usually led the way, but those were the ships Shovell had dispatched to Falmouth. As night fell, and it became so dark the ships could only see each other – when the weather permitted – by their lights, the Association took the lead position.

  According to local account, one of the crewmen aboard the Association was from the Isles of Scilly. Apparently he smelt burning kelp (a practice that had become something of an industry on the islands in the previous 20 years, the soda ash produced from burning seaweed being used in the production of soap, dyes, glass and gunpowder). Realising the captain of the Lenox had been right, and the fleet was nearing the Isles of Scilly, he warned Shovell to change course. In one version of the story, Shovell hanged the man from the yardarm. Regardless, the story is undoubtedly apocryphal, not least because nobody on the Association survived to have reported it.

  Crewmen on the third-rate ship of the line HMS Monmouth were the first to spot the rocks to leeward. The captain of the Monmouth ordered evasive manoeuvres and the ship narrowly avoided collision. He didn’t have time to warn the rest of the fleet.

  The Association was only 10 years old. A second-rate ship of the line, she was 165ft (50m) long and had 90 guns (by comparison, fifty years later HMS Victory was commissioned with 100). In 1703, whilst anchored off Harwich, the Association was caught in the Great Storm that wrecked 13 Royal Navy ships and killed almost 1,500 seamen. Some of the strongest winds ever recorded carried the Association almost as far as Sweden. But she survived, going on to assist in the capture of Gibraltar less than nine months later. When she smashed into Outer Gilstone Rock she sank in only three minutes.

  Too late, Shovell must have realised his mistake. Before the Association finally broke apart, three of her guns were fired.

  Too late, Shovell must have realised his mistake. Before the Association finally broke apart, three of her guns were fired. The crews of some of the other ships heard and immediately changed course. For some of those ships it was also too late. The captain of HMS St George didn’t know which way to turn, and when he did, the ship also struck rocks, which caused serious damage to her stern. (The damage didn’t prove fatal, and the St George did eventually make it to Portsmouth.)

  The most westerly part of England is Crim Rocks, which is infamous for the ‘tearing ledges’ hidden just beneath the surface in the waters all around the islets. Onto these jagged spiked rocks sailed HMS Eagle, a 165ft (48m) third-rate ship of the line. The storm dragged the Eagle over a mile further north before she finally sank.

  Meanwhile other ships in the fleet had lost sight of the lights from the Association. Now even the crews who had not heard her gunfire, the sound lost behind the roar of the storm, realised what must have happened, and fired their guns too. This didn’t save HMS Romney, however. The 130ft (40m) fourth-rate ship of the line hit Bishop Rock and sank not far from where the Eagle had gone down only minutes before.

  The final ship to founder was the fireship HMS Firebrand. Her smaller size made her no more manoeuvrable than the Association, and probably more susceptible to the strong storm winds. The Firebrand smashed into Outer Gilstone Rock, just like Shovell’s flagship before her, but the Firebrand struck with such ferocity that she became stuck on the rocks. A large wave eventually lifted her off, but she started sinking fast. With nothing to lose, her captain steered the flooded ship for St Agnes, though of course he had no idea where he was, or where he was going. The Firebrand sank just offshore, close to Menglow Rock.

  The Firebrand’s captain’s quick thinking may not have saved the ship, but it saved the lives of 12 of his 40 crew, including his own. As the ship disappeared beneath the tumultuous waves, the captain and six of his men managed to board a small boat, which they used to reach the shallows of St Agnes. Another five men made it to the shore using pieces of floating wooden wreckage from their smashed vessel. As the 12 men later discovered, from the other three ships that sank, they would be joined by only one more survivor.

  Legacy of the dead

  Shovell’s body was discovered on the beaches of St Mary’s the next morning. Another local legend claims he was still alive when he reached the shore and that a couple of women murdered him to steal his emerald ring. It is just as likely to be apocryphal as the story of the local crewman aboard the Association, and for the same reason. Everyone on board the Association drowned, between 800 and 900 men. In better conditions some of the men might have been able to swim to shore, but in the heaving seas of the night before they were quickly overcome. The storm current had been strong enough to carry Shovell’s body to St Mary’s, after all, seven miles from where the Association sank. There had never been any real prospect of rescue by the other ships in the fleet. They were too busy saving themselves.

  In better conditions some of the men might have been able to swim to shore.

  Another 400 to 500 men died after the Eagle hit Crim Rocks, and as many again when the Romney sank. By almost miraculous luck, one crewman from the Romney, a former butcher serving aboard as quartermaster, managed to survive. He was the thirteenth and final survivor of the Scilly Disaster. Whilst the exact number of dead is unknown, the lowest estimate stands at 1,400, and a more realistic figure would be much higher. For days afterwards bodies and wreckage washed up on the beaches of the Isles of Scilly, but most of those who lost their lives were swept out to sea, their remains never found.

  For the British government the loss of so many ships and men in one incident represented a double blow, seeing as it followed Shovell’s fleet’s failure to take Toulon. This was not yet the Royal Navy that ruled the waves for Britannia, and the government realised that bec
oming the dominant naval power in the world wasn’t simply a matter of the number of ships or their firepower. The investigation into the disaster concluded that the navigators’ inability to work out longitude to a sufficiently accurate degree was the principle cause. Finding a new way of calculating longitude was already of growing importance, especially with the increasing frequency of transatlantic crossings.

  For days afterwards bodies and wreckage washed up on the beaches of the Isles of Scilly.

  The Longitude Act of 1714 established a prize fund of £20,000 (nearly £3 million in today’s money) for anyone who could find a way to determine longitude accurately whilst at sea and out of sight of land. Isaac Newton and Edmond Halley (the mathematician and astronomer best known for working out the orbit of the eponymous comet) both attempted to find a solution, but were ultimately unsuccessful.

  The problem stemmed from the fact that to work out a precise bearing, navigators needed to know the time at a fixed point. Out of sight of land this became especially difficult, not least because for every 15 degrees a ship travelled east or west, the local time moved either forward or back an hour. What was needed was a timepiece that could keep the time at sea, but unfortunately the most reliable means of keeping time on land was the pendulum clock, and the motion of the sea meant they couldn’t work on ships, least of all in the rocky conditions Shovell’s fleet experienced.

  It wasn’t until 1773 that self-trained clockmaker John Harrison claimed the prize (though having already received interim payments from the Board of Longitude, the final sum was much reduced from the initial reward offered). Harrison’s chronometer was just a little larger than a pocketwatch, and used a wind-up clockwork mechanism rather than a pendulum to keep track of time. Though it took many years before the chronometer became a standard piece of onboard equipment, by the mid-19th century many captains (let alone ship owners) considered them essential for long distance voyages. Harrison’s first four prototypes can be seen on display at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. All but one of them continue to run.