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From the mid-1850s, warship design was rapidly developing – sail was gradually giving way to steam, ironclads were replacing wooden vessels, and smooth-bore artillery firing round-shot was being superseded by rifled shell-firing guns. One of the most imaginative naval designers of the period was Captain Cowper Phipps Coles, who had become a popular hero during the Crimean War when he built a raft armed with a 32-pdr cannon. This played a key role in the successful bombardment of Taganrog in 1855. After the war, he studied the concept of warships carrying their main armament in revolving turrets, and patented a turret design in 1859.
The Admiralty were impressed with his remarkably sophisticated design and successfully tested the turrets on the trial vessels Prince Albert and Royal Sovereign. These were followed by an ocean-going battleship, HMS Monarch, armed with four 12-inch (305mm) muzzle-loading rifled guns (MLR) in two Coles turrets and three 7-inch MLRs in open mounts (two forward and one aft). However, Coles was obsessed with the ambition to design his own battleship, and used his flair for publicity to pressure the Admiralty into funding the project.
The order for the new vessel, HMS Captain, was placed with Laird’s Birkenhead shipyard in November 1866. Coles seems to have been difficult to work with – he had already alienated the Navy’s Chief Constructor, Edward Reed, and even Laird’s soon went their own way with the detailed design. They earned Coles’ enmity by insisting on the inclusion of a forecastle and poop to improve sea-keeping capability, but, most seriously, this hostility contributed to a failure to make essential safety checks during construction. Large quantities of overweight material were worked in, increasing displacement from the planned 6,950 tons to 7,837 tons. The excess weight reduced the designed freeboard of 8 feet (2.4 metres) to 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 metres), which meant that the turrets were awash in anything other than calm seas.
The hurricane deck
The final factor that contributed to the eventual disaster was the inclusion of towering masts (then the tallest in the Navy) carrying 37,990sq ft (3,529sq m) of sail on tripod masts set on a ‘hurricane deck’ above the turrets. Reed and Vice Admiral Sir Robert Robinson, the Controller of the Navy, had already warned that, even as designed, the combination of low freeboard and the enormous sail area made her dangerously unstable. Captain was commissioned in April 1870, and Reed soon discovered the actual figures, which so horrified him that he resigned in protest.
Strengths: innovative gun turrets
Weaknesses: overweight, inadequate safety features, dangerously tall masts
Initially, Captain seemed to live up to Coles’ extravagant promises – sea trials in fair weather during July and August went well, although test-firing her main armament caused an alarming 20° roll. The Admiralty ordered further sea trials with the Channel Squadron in the Bay of Biscay to check her safety in rough seas. Reed’s warnings about her design soon proved to be all too accurate, for during the night of 6/7 September 1870, the squadron was caught in a storm that all the other ships rode out without difficulty. However, Captain rolled uncontrollably, before suddenly capsizing with the loss of 473 men, including Coles. Only 18 sailors survived what was one of the Royal Navy’s worst peacetime disasters.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
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