In the 18th century, Britain seemed to be at war more or less continuously. However, once Napoleon was defeated in 1815 the amount of international conflict requiring naval firepower subsided significantly for the rest of the 19th century. It might, therefore, be assumed that in the Victorian era few vessels of the Royal Navy would have been lost. Yet this is not, in fact, the case. There were quite a large number of appalling shipwrecks in which there was significant loss of life and some examples are given below.

It’s important to be aware of these disasters because Royal Navy service records for the Victorian period tend to record simply a list of ships on which an ancestor served. They will not necessarily explain that your ancestor died in a shipwreck or that he survived one. Service records for officers and ratings can all be downloaded from The National Archives (TNA) website via the appropriate research guides for the Royal Navy here .

Unsurprisingly, warships were still lost because of the weather in Victorian times. Storms were the commonest culprit, with HMS Avenger (1847), HMS Prince (1854) and HMS Serpent (1890) being examples of vessels that succumbed in this way. In each of these three cases, nearly everyone on board perished, with less than ten crew members surviving. There were also instances of naval vessels leaving port and then disappearing without trace. Examples include HMS Sappho, which vanished off the coast of Australia in 1858, and HMS Atalanta, which was never seen again after departing Bermuda in 1880. These mysterious events must have been extremely upsetting for the families of men on board – hoping that one day their husband or son might be found taking refuge on some remote island perhaps, and being uncertain whether to grieve or not. In most cases, the ships that vanished are likely to have been destroyed by storms.

However, storms are not the only weather events associated with the demise of Royal Navy ships. I researched the career of Ed Balls’ ancestor William Dunbar for the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? programme. William was assistant surgeon on board HMS Seagull in 1845 and I discovered that while he was on board this ship ran aground and sank in thick fog off the coast of Dorset. Fortunately, William and all his crewmates survived.

Ice can also be a significant problem. In 1848, Sir John Franklin was seeking the fabled North-West Passage across the top of Canada, but he and his men all disappeared. It later transpired that his two vessels HMS Erebus and HMS Terror had become trapped in the ice and were crushed and sank. They have both been recently discovered beneath the Arctic ice by Canadian underwater archaeologists, who were amazed at the remarkable state of preservation of the ships and their contents.

Ghost ship
One of the most infamous naval losses of the 19th century involved the training ship HMS Eurydice. In 1878, it was returning to the UK from the Caribbean but when nearing the Isle of Wight the ship was suddenly engulfed in a freak snow blizzard which seemed to come from nowhere. When the weather parted, the ship had gone. About 360 men died, and there were only two survivors of the sinking, neither of whom could give a coherent explanation of what happened. This chain of events sparked suggestions of some sort of supernatural involvement, especially when the Bishop of Ripon claimed that one of his dinner guests had had a premonition of the sinking. Yet this was not the end of the story. Ever since the ship’s demise there have been reports of Eurydice appearing as a ghost ship off the Isle of Wight – abruptly appearing and then disappearing again. Its sudden arrival has allegedly caused a Royal Navy submarine to take evasive action and it was even reportedly seen by Prince Edward when filming a TV programme in 1998.

Incompetence
Many naval disasters have a far more familiar and down-to-earth cause, namely human error or even stupidity. In 1852, in calm weather, the crowded troopship HMS Birkenhead sailed too close to the shore of South Africa, struck an uncharted rock and sank, killing around 450 people. The heroism of the troops, who stood at attention while the women and children abandoned ship in the few lifeboats, is believed to be the origin of the phrase ‘women and children first’. It’s horrible to learn that a lot of these brave soldiers, thrashing around in the water after the Birkenhead sank, were eaten by sharks.

In 1880, HMS Doterel blew up because, bizarrely, a dangerously explosive chemical was being kept on board and was not stored properly. It leaked and seems to have detonated the ship’s magazine where all the gunpowder was located. All but 12 of the crew were killed.

However, in terms of incompetence, two Victorian naval disasters stand head and shoulders above all others: the loss of HMS Captain in 1870 and HMS Victoria in 1893.

In the 1860s, Captain Cowper Coles designed a rotating gun turret which, for the first time, could enable a warship to fire in different directions without having to change course to bring its fixed guns to bear. But there was a problem: ships needed masts and sails and they got in the way of a rotating turret. While trying to solve this issue, Coles and the Admiralty fell out and as a result he was fired. Infuriated, Coles used his political connections and the newspapers to make his case and he was re-employed. However, the ship he eventually built, HMS Captain, was heavily criticised by experienced and powerful figures, especially Robert Spencer Robinson, controller of the Navy, and others. They said the ship was too heavy, sat too low in the water and its centre of gravity was too high. Coles completely ignored them. Shortly after launch on 6 September 1870, Captain was cruising off Spain in heavy seas. Waves inundated the decks alarmingly, and as the wind increased to gale force the ship lurched, then simply rolled upside down and sank within a few minutes. Around 480 men drowned, including Coles himself; only 27 were picked up alive. Undoubtedly, Coles was ahead of his time but his arrogant determination to build ‘his ship his way’ and prove his critics wrong – despite expert opinion to the contrary and inadequate sea trials – was the ultimate cause of this sad disaster.

The loss of HMS Victoria in 1893 is arguably the most senseless large-scale loss of life in Royal Navy history. Victoria was the flagship of vice-admiral Sir George Tryon, who commanded the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean fleet. On 22 June 1893, while on manoeuvres off Lebanon, Tryon split his fleet into two parallel columns. One was led by Tryon in the Victoria, the other by rear-admiral Albert Markham in HMS Camperdown. Inexplicably, Tryon ordered the two lead ships in each column to turn towards each other, even though there was clearly inadequate space for the manoeuvre. Tryon’s own senior officers knew this, yet the rigid discipline of the Royal Navy made querying his orders simply impossible. Markham dared to hesitate and Tryon signalled to him: ‘What are you waiting for?’

The manoeuvre took place as ordered and the inevitable collision occurred. Camperdown sliced a huge hole in the starboard side of Victoria, which sank in just 13 minutes. It happened too quickly to launch lifeboats and about 360 men drowned, including Tryon. However, 300 or more survived, picked up by boats from the other ships of the fleet. A court martial found Tryon entirely to blame for the tragedy. Witnesses had even heard him exclaim that it was all his fault shortly before the ship went down.

Finding out more
There are a number of sources that can help you find more detail about the loss of a Victorian naval vessel. Contemporary newspapers are extremely helpful and may yield eyewitness accounts of events, lists of the victims and even interviews with survivors. TheGenealogist has digitised copies of the Illustrated London News, which is a particularly useful source because it often includes images of the ship, the sinking and the leading figures involved. Books were sometimes written at the time to commemorate naval disasters, or have been published subsequently, and these can add a lot of detail for genealogists.

If there was a significant loss of life, you will often find that a memorial was erected afterwards, and you may be able to visit this or see illustrations of it online. They typically outline the nature of the catastrophe and list all the men known to have died. For example, there is a monument to the victims of HMS Eurydice in the Royal Navy Cemetery in Portsmouth, consisting of the ship’s original anchor surmounting a huge stone plinth. It remains one of the worst peacetime naval disasters, and the memorial identifies 362 men and boys who died.

When a ship was lost, the Admiralty inevitably convened a court martial to establish what had caused the ship to sink. They are the military equivalent of a civilian wreck inquiry. Court martials are generally found in series ADM 1 at TNA, which has an index at ADM 12. Although some have not survived, they do tend to have been preserved for most major disasters. A court martial typically includes interviews with selected survivors, so you may actually find your ancestor’s own words preserved for posterity. They also seek to establish the cause of a loss, which includes apportioning blame to individuals where that is due and recommending disciplinary action if required. In the case of HMS Seagull, for example, which sank in 1845, the officer on duty was the ship’s master, William Crane, and he was found guilty of gross neglect and immediately dismissed from the service.

So next time you are looking at an ancestor’s Royal Navy service record, take a closer look at the list of ships he served upon in case one of them hides a frightening or tragic secret. {