HMS Captain

"Few such terrible disasters have ever happened at sea. A greater number of lives may occasionally have been lost in a single wreck; but this wreck is that of one of the finest ships in the world, manned by one of the finest crews." The Times, 10 September 1870 HMS Captain was an experimental ‘sail-and-steam’ turret warship which capsized in a storm off Cape Finisterre, Spain just after midnight on 7 September 1870. As this capital ship was considered ‘the Pride of the Victorian Navy’ she was a highly sought-after posting; so that when she sank many distinguished British naval officers also perished, including sons of several prominent Cabinet ministers such as the First Lord of the Admiralty. Nearly the entire crew of some 500 officers and men went down with the ship, including her celebrated designer, Captain Cowper Phipps Coles CB RN. The loss of the Captain was a national catastrophe, touching Queen Victoria personally, and memorialised at St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. Fact: More men were lost aboard HMS Captain than at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) or at sea during the entire Crimean War (1853-55). Coles wanted a high-tech man-of-war which could go anywhere (including across the Atlantic) and sink anything. His ‘perfect’ iron vessel would boast the biggest guns, mounted in revolving turrets. As with American monitor-ironclads, Coles believed a weapons platform low in the water added stealth and further maximized armour protection. But to ensure great speed and geostrategic range in an age of empire, Coles insisted upon a large spread of sail to supplement her steam engines. With a lower freeboard than originally planned, the vessel’s high centre of gravity made her dangerously unstable. On the night of 6 September 1870, HMS Captain was part of a combined fleet of the Channel and Mediterranean Squadrons of the Royal Navy, on manoeuvres in a diplomatic show of force, when a fierce gale of hurricane strength toppled her over before the crew could cut loose her remaining sails. Only 18 men of nearly 500 aboard survived. Testimonies from the court-martial (27 September to 8 October 1870) conflicted on the nature of the freak 'gale' and 'heavy squall' which suddenly obscured and then sank the Captain , and no other vessels nearby. Was she struck by a random cyclonic downburst, like the one which capsized the superyacht Bayesian off Sicily in August 2024? Fact: Since the 17th-century there had been several capital ships in the Royal Navy named 'Captain', including Horatio Nelson's career-making flagship at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent (14 February 1797). But the sheer scale and controversial nature of HMS Captain's loss in 1870 was so appalling that no other vessel has carried the name since... She quickly became a black ship in British national memory - an Albatross tinged with political scandal and naval embarrassment. Thus, 'HMS Captain' been largely forgotten (and buried over) to this day. Our working scatter plot suggests the time and place of the Captain’s foundering was further out to sea than some have speculated. This also means the wreck of HMS Captain would be out of reach of most fishing trawlers and relic hunters off Spain’s ‘Costa da Morte’. There are relatively few destructive marine organisms at these depths, with no sunlight and little oxygen, so the shipwreck might be remarkably intact. The University of Wolverhampton is collaborating with a wide array of historians, archaeologists, museum authorities, MoD personnel, civil servants and international authorities. These include: Salvage and Marine Operations (SALMO) branch, Ministry of Defence Naval Historical Branch (MoD) Matthew Sheldon, Interim Director General, National Museum of the Royal Navy Royal Museums Greenwich Royal Geographical Society (US) National Maritime Historical Society Dr. James P. Delgado, (US) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Waves Group (UK marine survey consortium) Galicia-based marit