Naval History Forums

Shinano.

19kilo wrote:Shinano.

Ouch. Straight off the slipway and down she goes, almost as if she was deliberately stalked!

But not quite as fast as the Wasa,

lwd wrote:Didn't the Mary Rose suffer a similar fate?

Mary Rose suffered the fate of quite a few ships of her time, top heavy and unseaworthy. She sailed into the Solent and rough seas upset her 'balance' and she capsized and sank. Pretty to look at but - bloody useless.

mike kemble wrote:

lwd wrote:Didn't the Mary Rose suffer a similar fate?

Mary Rose suffered the fate of quite a few ships of her time, top heavy and unseaworthy. She sailed into the Solent and rough seas upset her 'balance' and she capsized and sank. Pretty to look at but - bloody useless.

From what I've read she was unseaworthy because HVIII had her refitted with more guns, which meant more holes in her side close to the waterline.
And when the captain (who was not a professional mariner but a 'gentleman' who bought his comission) tried to manoeuvre the ship with too much canvas up she heeled over (which was normal) but too far and the gunports (which were open because she was going into battle) went underwater.

I think thats probably quite accurate.

Having said my previous post I saw a tv program about the sinking of the Mary Rose and how archeologists were examining it. They have found that more than half the crew were actually Spanish! This meant communications problem between the top deck and the gun deck which may well have caused the sinking.

This last post could almost breed a conspiracy theory.......Mary Rose sunk by the Spanish!

I saw a documentary on the MR and they said the ENGLISH crew .................

The tv program was called 'Ghosts of the Mary Rose' on the National Geographic channel. It will probably be repeated soon, check it out.
Does seem like perfect material for a conspiracy theory!

the one I saw was the actual raising of the ship from the Solent and Naval people were running down the lists of what should be on board, from original manifests, and this included the crew.

How about HMS Curacoa, run over by the Queen Mary that it was trying to protect!

Nobody mentions Glorius which was very unlucky in having a captain of questionable sanity. Glorius should never have been at sea with just two destroyers after Norway but Hughes was frothing to court martial a subordinate so he had to get back to Scapa. Hughes wouldn't even authorize a combat air patrol which would probably have driven off Scharnhorst and Gneisgnau because German admirals were forbidden to risk damage to their capital ships. Heck, even after sinking Glorious, Acasta and Ardent Admiral Marschall was sacked because Scharnhorst took a torpedo. To top it all off Scharnhorst scored an astounding 26,000 yard hit on Glorius, destroying some ready to go Swordfish and rendering the flight deck unusable. And after Glorius was sunk aboout 900 men who went in the water were left to die. That's bad luck.

frankwl wrote:Nobody mentions Glorius which was very unlucky in having a captain of questionable sanity. Glorius should never have been at sea with just two destroyers after Norway but Hughes was frothing to court martial a subordinate so he had to get back to Scapa. Hughes wouldn't even authorize a combat air patrol which would probably have driven off Scharnhorst and Gneisgnau because German admirals were forbidden to risk damage to their capital ships. Heck, even after sinking Glorious, Acasta and Ardent Admiral Marschall was sacked because Scharnhorst took a torpedo. To top it all off Scharnhorst scored an astounding 26,000 yard hit on Glorius, destroying some ready to go Swordfish and rendering the flight deck unusable. And after Glorius was sunk aboout 900 men who went in the water were left to die. That's bad luck.

There are two points here.

Firstly it is unlikely that an air patrol would have deterred Marschall. Air attack at sea on warships at that time was a largely untried concept; Glorious was carrying I believe land based aircraft and other primitive planes hardly likely to worry the Germans.

Secondly the fault of Scharnhorst being hit by Acasta was that of Captain Hoffman, Scharnhosts CO in misjudging the combing of torpedo tracks. Marschall was not on board as Gneisenau was flagship. Whilst the fact that Scharnhorst was torpedoed was undoubtedly used by Raeder it was not the main reason for Marschall being sacked by Raeder, which was down more to a clash of personalities between a Commander in Chief and a subordinate who was something of a ''loose cannon'' for excerising his own initiative more than Raeder liked. Note that Hoffman wasn't sacked or even reprimanded over the torpedo hit on Scharnhorst.

I might add that Scharnhorst did pick up six survivors from Glorious. For the rest, yes they were left to die as the Germans needed to get out of the area fast.