Shipwrecks – The Searchers

What Sir John Franklin’s High Arctic Cenotaph is Made of – A Whaler of a Tale!

A cenotaph to lost Royal Navy personnel – a National Historic Site of Canada – and archival records that show that it is made from an American shipwreck! Readers may recall the very origins of this website were to help explore and add provenance to relics and artifacts connected to Canadian military cenotaphs. So in a sense, after interpreting the history and shipwrecks connected to the lost 1845 Sir John Franklin Expedition in search of a Northwest Passage, we’ve come home!

We recently posted about the history of the “Franklin Cenotaph” at Beechey Island, Nunavut. This isolated monument is an incredibly rare memorial to the crews of the lost 1845 Sir John Franklin Expedition and the searchers who died looking for them. It is identified by Parks Canada as a “character-defining element” of the Beechey Island Sites National Historic Site of Canada. It is important to understand what the cenotaph is and what components combine to create it.

Beechey Island sites, photographed from the air in 1997. This shows the Franklin Cenotaph at the top center above the crucifix made out of empty tins. The ruins of Northumberland House (the supply depot) are down towards the beach, while other memorials are located at right. Credit: Ansgar Walk, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons

The column itself, built in the arctic summer of 1854, under the direction of Captain W.J.S. Pullen, HMS North Star, is thought to be made out of the machinery of a lost American whaling ship, the McLellan. This little-known detail further solidifies the Anglo-American character of the commemorative program of the monument.* We ended our earlier post with a series of questions we hoped could be answered about the column’s origins. We also wondered if it really could have been made out of the capstan of the McLellan, as has been reported.** A capstan, as defined by wikipedia is “a vertical-axled rotating machine developed for use on sailing ships to multiply the pulling force of seamen when hauling ropes, cables, and hawsers.”

An image of the “Franklin Cenotaph” and surroundings (left) compared to a capstan located at Whitby, England. One origin story of the Franklin monument is that the central “Belcher Column” is made from the capstan of the American whaling ship *McLellan*. The model of capstan at right exposes the octagonal spindle, which more often formed the core, surrounded by a substantial drum. Credit: (left) NWT Archives/Stuart M. Hodgson fonds/N-2017-008: 0918 / (right) Neil Reed / Capstan, Whitby East Pier, 2009 via wikimedia commons.

McLellan was a 366-ton barque-rigged wooden ship which had served as a general merchant in the 1830s, but had been purchased by the firm Perkins & Smith for the bowhead whaling industry in 1846. It was homeported out of New London, Connecticut, under the command of Captain William Quayle.*** We recently had an opportunity to closely examine a work at Library and Archives Canada which depicts the July 1852 loss of this ship:

Cmdr. Walter W. May (1855) “Loss of the McLellan” (Engr. J. Needham) Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. R9266-2137 Peter Winkworth Collection of Canadiana.

The engraving, made from a sketch by Cmdr. Walter W. May – who witnessed the events –includes many interesting details of whaling ships beset in ice near each other, and Royal Navy vessels. It also shows crew members salvaging items from a visibly-damaged ship.

Walter W. May was a gifted artist and an officer serving on HMS Assistance. This most likely depicts HMS *North Star*, which was nipped, but repaired, *Alexander*, a whaling ship, and *McLellan* at the far right being salvaged. [detail of *op. cit.*]

During the 1851 season, McLellan had been involved in a milestone in the development of the American whaling industry. Quayle had landed a shore party, led by mate Sydney O. Budington, at Nimegen Island, Cumberland Sound. This small group built a stout structure there and hunkered down to overwinter. With the assistance of local Inuit families, crew were able to live in relative comfort into 1852, trading for items and swapping their clothes for warmer furs.****

The plan was for the group to begin whaling far earlier than any ship-based crew could gain access to the area. It was a bold plan and it worked – they were able to land a huge catch of seventeen bowheads. They also became the first commercial interest to overwinter in the Canadian Arctic since the 16th Century voyages of Martin Frobisher. This shore party stayed on until September of 1852, and would eventually have to be taken off by another whaling ship.

The *George Henry* (1841) whaling ship. This ship was similar to *McLellan*, and was later commanded by both Sydney O. Budington and his uncle James Buddington. James would stumble across the abandoned Franklin search ship HMS *Resolute* in 1855. The prominent boarded-up port amidships is for the “cutting stage,” a relatively recent development to flense whales. Credit: Sherard Osborn, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

At the beginning of the 1852 season, McLellan, on the return voyage to the whaling grounds and to pick up Budington’s party, was one of a group of whaling ships that were beset in ice in the Davis Strait near Melville Bay. The ships were in a perilous position, between the land ice and the shifting sea floes. Sir Edward Belcher’s Arctic Squadron, comprising HM Ships North Star, Assistance, Resolute, Pioneer, and Intrepid, were on their way up to Lancaster Sound to launch a sustained effort to locate Sir John Franklin and the crews of HMS Erebus and Terror (by this time missing for seven years). On June 20th, just as the naval squadron was coming up with the group of whalers, the veteran Kirkaldy whaling ship Regalia was crushed by ice. What followed seems unusual nowadays, but was apparently the accepted practice: The ship was quickly stripped of valuables, crew set out to find another whaler to serve in, something of a party broke out on the ice, and the hulk was burned to ensure it would not menace other ships.

In early July, McLellan ran afoul of North Star, the depot ship of the Expedition, and the Alexander, a Dundee whaler. It damaged the cathead of the North Star, and the bowprit of the Alexander. The mizzen mast of McLellan had to be cut away to avoid further damage. The American whaler was severely nipped by the encroaching ice. The crew were preparing to abandon ship and the whalers in the area looked forward to commencing the usual “sacking and burning.” Instead, Belcher purchased the damaged vessel from Captain Quayle. The Royal Navy crews set about repairing the whaler. The repairs held until the ship was nipped more forcibly on 8 July. McLellan was gradually crushed over the next week. Naval crews salvaged spars, stout timbers, fittings, machinery, and cargo from their newly-purchased hulk. Valuable items were shifted over to North Star and the search ships.

Crew members salvage boats, casks, and other items as *McLellan* is destroyed. [detail of *op. cit.*]

Two years later, these parts were a ready source of materials for the program of construction and “beautification” that Belcher and W.J.S. Pullen organized at Beechey Island, the site of the Expedition’s depot. We originally believed that the (interior) spindle of McLellan’s capstan had been transformed into the central element to the Franklin Cenotaph. At the time of our earlier post, we were concerned about one issue: not all whaling ships had capstans. For example, the most similar ship to McLellan remaining in existence, the Charles W. Morgan, isn’t fitted out with this prominent piece of machinery. To effectively operate a capstan, a ship required a large crew. Many merchant ships favoured the use of their windlasses, which could be operated with their smaller crews. A windlass, normally situated near the bows, forward or immediately aft of the foremast, is “ A mechanism operating on the same principle as the capstan, but on a horizontal axis, used on board merchant ships, and some smaller vessels of the royal Navy, for weighing the anchor, hoisting and hauling.”*****

Resolute’s apprentice carpenter, William T. Mumford, the subject of our recent post, was an active participant both in the July 1852 salvage of McLellan, and in building the cenotaph during June 1854. He had just arrived back to Beechey after the mid-May abandonment of Resolute off Dealey Island. Mumford’s information, from his records at Library and Archives Canada, has helped us update the provenance of this important memorial. He wrote in his diary on Saturday, June 24th, 1854: “Midsummer Day, Light breeze from the E-N-E full in the forenoon but hazy with sleet in the afternoon. No water on the floe, and the pools on the land coated with ice. Hands cleaned main & lower decks carpenters employed trimming the Pawl Bitt of the McLellan for a monument to the memory of those who died and are buried elsewhere.“

“The Pawl Bitt of the ‘McLellan'” – WT Mumford Diary entry 24 June 1854 (not paginated). Credit: Library and Archives Canada W.T. Mumford Fonds, 1986-018 PIC.

More than almost any other member of the Belcher expedition, Mumford’s occupation and prior experiences make him the expert on the origins of the central monument at Beechey. The “Pawl Bitt” was a strong timber, normally square, that was an important part of a ship’s windlass in the era of wooden sailing ships. It supported the “pawl”, a strong ratchet that ensured that leverage gained by the rotation of the windlass barrel was not lost. The pawl bitt was a substantial structural timber that usually connected straight down to the lower deck. It also usually supported the ornamental bracket the ship’s bell was hung off. This made it an important ceremonial and commemorative site. In this case, the Belcher Expedition carpenters’ efforts at “trimming” seems to have involved carefully working the square timber into an octagonal column, creating a finial ball to surmount the column, carving out or adapting some cavity to house the idiosyncratic “postal office” plaque now located at the rear of the column, and installing the original eight dedicatory plaques to memorialize lost crew members (which are individually identified in a note in our earlier post).

As it happens, there are contemporary examples of both a capstan and a windlass less than three kilometers away from the Cenotaph, on the seafloor of the Barrow Strait! Breadalbane, whose well preserved-wreck is also part of the National Historic Site at Beechey Island, was equipped with both a capstan and a windlass, including a pawl bitt. The pawl bitt is the stout post just forward of the horizontal windlass drum, with the ratchet-like pawl angling down. There was usually a brass ship’s bell sited atop this bitt. This is our scale model interpretation of the wreck. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

As we hope we have shown with both posts about the “Franklin Cenotaph,” this memorial is a powerful site of memory of a great era of polar exploration history. As a very early example of a military cenotaph, it has much in common with First World War battlefield memorials. It was constructed from relics and materials on hand, by comrades who knew the lost and the missing. Ship’s Carpenter William Mumford’s diary has helped enrich the provenance of this important monument by linking it to an identified feature of the wrecked American whaling ship McLellan. We hope that visitors to Beechey Island, Nunavut, who stand in contemplation before the cenotaph can better appreciate this remarkable artifact. To paraphrase a oft-repeated inscription from other memorials: HERE SEARCHED BRAVE SAILORS – YOU WHO TREAD THEIR FOOTSTEPS REMEMBER THEIR GLORY.

*An inscription added later recognizes Anglo-American cooperation in the search efforts over the High Arctic. The United States participated in search efforts such as the two Grinnell expeditions, and Elisha Kent Kane’s later searches. The 1858 addition to the monument of Lady Franklin’s marble (eventually brought up by Captain Leopold McClintock) expresses the shared Anglo-American concern for establishing the fate of the Franklin crews.

**The link between the Belcher column and McLellan is noted in Barr and Stein’s January 2017 article “Frederick J. Krabbé, last man to see HMS Investigator afloat, May 1854” Journal of the Hakluyt Society. (P27) The authors appear to have consulted Mumford’s diary, but mention the source of the column is McLellan’s capstan drum.

***This description of McLellan’s wrecking draws extensively from information in Philip Goldring’s Jan-Feb. 1986 Beaver Magazine article “The Last Voyage of the McLellan” PP39-44. The issue is currently accessible at the Canada’s History Magazine archive: https://www.canadashistoryarchive.ca/canadas-history/canadas-history-feb-mar-2019/flipbook/1/ Captain (later Colonel) William Quayle had a remarkable life, before and after his four years with McLellan, with many notable events outlined in a 20 June 1901 Moberly Weekly Monitor profile of him: https://www.newspapers.com/article/moberly-weekly-monitor-william-quayle/66609/ that article also gives Quayle’s description of McLellan as having been a barque of 110 feet overall length, 27 feet 7 inches wide, 14 feet nine inches deep, of about 326 tons.

****McLellan and the other American whalers had more diverse crews than mid-Victorian Royal Navy ships. It would be interesting to know if Budington’s shore party had brought Black whalers directly into contact with Inuit families.

***** “Windlass” A Sea of Words ; A Lexicon and companion for Patrick O’Brian’s Seafaring Tales (New York: Owl Books 1997) P.458.

HMS Terror (1916-1941)-Queen of Bombardments

24 February 1941 – HMS Terror, a veteran warrior, slipped beneath the waves of the Mediterranean Sea, off the Libyan coast.

*Terror’s* Last Fight. Photograph by Lt. E.E. Allen of a painting by Lt. Cmdr. Rowland Langmaid, Official Fleet Artist depicting the 23 February 1941 air attacks by German JU-88 bombers that contributed to *Terror’s* abandonment the next day. © IWM A 13648

This site has posted on topics related to the wreck of HMS Terror (1813-1849ish), Sir John Franklin’s second ship on the doomed 1845 Expedition to chart a Northwest Passage at the top of North America. That long-lost wreck, which began life more than three decades earlier as a bomb-vessel, was discovered September 2016 in a bay at King William Island, Nunavut. There have been several other commissioned Royal Navy ships named Terror, and at least one of these is also wrecked on the seabed today. This later British warship has not been explored, or even located, in the very different waters of the Mediterranean Sea north of the Libyan coast.* This namesake should not be forgotten: She upheld the reputation of her famous predecessor as an incredibly tough warship. A fierce combatant in two global conflicts, she was scuttled eighty-three years ago today.

Terror, an Erebus class monitor, was built by the firm Harland & Wolff (known as the builders of several White Star liners, including RMS Titanic), at Belfast and completed in mid-1916. A monitor performed the traditional function a bomb vessel did during the age of sail –shore bombardment–albeit with a level of destructiveness that would have been barely imaginable when the 1813 Terror first tasted water. Of all twentieth-century monitors, the Erebus sisters were the only ones to continue the historic lineage of bomb vessel names. They also paid tribute to the memory of the specific Franklin ships. The lead ship, HMS Erebus, remained in commission until 1946.

HMS *Erebus* (FL 693) At a buoy in Plymouth Sound, 1944, around the time of her participation in bombarding targets during the D-day landings. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205120082

A brief comparison of the 1813 and 1916-built Terrors: where the 1813 wooden sailing vessel was armed with two heavy mortars—a 13” and a 10” variety – and some light cannon, the 1916 armoured monitor was fitted with two 15” rifled battleship guns that fired a variety of explosive and armour-piercing ammunition. Secondary armament included anti-aircraft guns. Length: 1813- 100’ on deck, 1916-405’. Breadth: 1813-30’; 1916- 88’. Displacement 1813-330 tons; 1916-8,450 tons, (larger by the Second World War). 1813-wood, later reinforced for Arctic service with a heavy wood ice chock encircling the hull. 1916-High tensile steel armour up to 13” thick on the turret, with a large anti-torpedo bulge encircling the hull. Lastly, the installed power: HMS Terror (1813) was fitted with a single steam locomotive boiler in 1845, generating 25 horsepower for one retractable two-bladed screw – 4 knots maximum speed while under steam. 1916-four large oil-fired boilers generating 6,000 horsepower for the twin screws – 12 knots maximum speed.

The monitors were a novel way of fitting the 15″ guns of a more conventional design of British battleships, such as the Queen Elizabeth (1912) class – with four turrets and eight 15″ guns – to a smaller, lighter, shallower hull. Brassey’s Naval Annual, 1923 edition, artist not identified, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Early in the First World War, a new design evolved for monitors. With Belgium in enemy hands, there was a role for heavy coastal bombardment of land targets. Battleships, with their deep draughts, could not work close enough inshore to strike deep into occupied territory with their 12′ or larger guns. A boxy, very wide, shallow hull was required to accommodate a rotating turret with what – to most observers – would look like absurdly oversized guns.

HMS *General Wolfe*, an earlier Lord Clive class monitor. In addition to the regular forward turret armed with twin 12″ guns, she was one of only two monitors to receive a single 18″ gun, the largest fitted to a warship until the Second World War Japanese Yamato battleships. This massive gun was fitted aft, in a fixed structure pointing off to starboard. *Wolfe* achieved the longest accurate bombardment in Royal Navy history: A target at Snaeskerke, Belgium, 32.2 km distant. Credit: William Lionel Wyllie, Royal Museums Greenwich PAE2675

As monitors went, the Erebus class pair of ships were enormous. They were a significant improvement on the preceding Marshal Ney class, and the design remedied shortcoming of all previous British monitors with heavy guns.** Their length of 405′ was similar to the battleships of the 1890s that were still serving in the fleet. Their breadth (width) was proportionally even greater – on par with newest dreadnought battleships. This ensured the ships were stable firing platforms for their formidable armament: a rotating turret armed with twin 15” BL MkI guns with 42 caliber barrel lengths. These were the premier Royal Navy capital ship armament, and equipped generations of the Grand Fleet’s battlewagons, from 1915 to 1959. Where the 1813 Terror could lob a 13”, 200-pound explosive or incendiary shell about 3.8 kilometers, the 15” gun could fire a 1,940 pound shell out to about 24 km.

Animation of loading process of a 15” BL MK1 gun. This model of gun delivered one of the longest hits in battleship history when HMS *Warspite* struck the Italian battleship *Guilio Cesare* 23.8 km away in July 1940. Via wikimedia commons CC-BY SA

During their First World War service, the Erebus sisters bombarded targets in German-occupied Belgium, as units of the Dover Patrol, and assisted the Allied land armies in bombardments during the Fifth Battle of Ypres (28 Sep-2 Oct. 1918). On October 19, 1917, while operating off Dunkirk, against several German torpedo boats, Terror was torpedoed three times, and was severely damaged, with much of the bows blown off. After an agonizingly-slow tow from Dover to Portsmouth – with some of it backwards to try and keep the forward bulkheads from giving way – the ship was rebuilt. Back to the Dover Patrol to participate in famous April 1918 Raid on Zeebrugge, the Erebus sisters and Marshal Soult – another monitor – bombarded targets. Following the November 1918 Armistice, many of the monitors were decommissioned, laid up in reserve, converted to other purposes, or scrapped. Terror continued in commission on various peacetime assignments, and was assigned to HMS Excellent, the gunnery school at Whale Island near Portsmouth. She was used as a testbed for different artillery, firing on targets which included worn-out battleships.

With the outbreak of the Second World War, the sisters were again required for the bombardment of enemy fortifications and positions. Terror was under long refit in Singapore. Her anti-aircraft defences were upgraded-they would become vitally important to Terror’s survival. Returning to Europe in 1940 by way of the Mediterranean, the monitor became implicated in defending Malta, under siege from Italian air and naval forces. She endured aerial attacks, helping to defend the beleaguered garrison from Italian bombing. Her massive guns bulked up the Island’s coastal batteries. After a stint in Greece, her next assignment was to proceed to the North African coast in early 1941 to assist in the opening of the Libyan campaign against occupied North Africa.

HMS *Terror* under aerial attack 2 January 1941 off Bardia, Libya, in the lead up to the Australian assault on Italian fortifications: Operation Compass. *Terror’s* accurate bombardment caused the partial collapse of a cliff, which took Italian short fortifications and artillery positions with it. Credit: Damien Peter Parer, Australian War Memorial 127943

During mid-February the vessel was at Benghazi. On the 22nd, while leaving the port, Terror was damaged by two nearby mine explosions. The damage was not significant enough to delay the departure. The next day, off the African coast, a lone Hurricane fighter covering the embattled monitor had to turn back to refuel. Terror was soon under air attack from three German Junkers JU-88 bombers. Though there had been no single decisive hit, flooding from the accumulated damage was becoming uncontrollable. Though destroyers were coming to Terror’s aid, the help did not come soon enough to save the vessel. Lt- Cmdr John Kellar made the difficult decision to scuttle the ship.*** The entire crew of 300 were evacuated to nearby escorts and Terror sank at position 32.04N 24.05E. A careful perusal of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s site reveals that this Terror remained a lucky vessel: in both World Wars, despite torpedoing, air attacks, and mine damage, almost no one died while serving in Terror.****

We have not heard of any effort to locate and survey this wreck. Nor, happily, is there evidence it has been quietly found and salvaged for the significant metal content. The amount of information about the search for and exploration of HMS Terror (1813) effectively hampers research into this topic! The Terror (1916) wreck would be an outstanding example of an unusual type of warship. She had an important record of service with substantive contributions to First and Second World War campaigns. As we eagerly follow the archeological study of the earlier ship, it is worth sparing a thought for this other Terror shipwreck.

A monitor at Chatham dockyard during the Second World War that we titled “target B”. The elevated large turret can be seen just to the right of midships, while the circular features show the powerful secondary and AA armament. This is one of the oldest captures in Google Earth catalogue. From identifying features, this is *Erebus*.

*We have been unable to locate any sources suggesting the wreck location has been surveyed, or the wreck has been visited. Please let us know if it has!

**Though the primary role of a monitor at this time was to fit large guns for shore bombardment, there were several more balanced designs that were armed with 9.2″ or 6″ guns. One monitor of this type, HMS M-33 is preserved at Portsmouth.

***Naval History.net entry with additional information about scuttling: https://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-03Mon-HMS_Terror.htm

****This Commonwealth War Graves Commission website search show the incredibly low fatal casualties of Terror’s crew while serving in two World Wars.

Breadalbane Part 3: Building a Beautiful Wreck in Miniature

One-hundred-and-seventy years ago today, a ship was dying, incredibly far North. Early on 21 August, 1853, ice suddenly penetrated the Breadalbane’s cargo holds, where vital supplies had been stored a few days previously. The crew scrambled away to safety. The ship sank like a stone in 330’ of water. All these years later, what remains of this relic of the great searches to find the lost Sir John Franklin Expedition? What if today we had the technology to “Drain the Barrow Strait” (to borrow a National Geographic-inspired dramatic device) and check up on Breadalbane? Well, on this important day, we are doing just that – in reduced scale!

“A ship above and a ship below”–The wreck diorama accompanied by a contemporary view. E.A. Inglefield’s illustration of HMS Phoenix towing the ship, Credit Library and Archives Canada mikan 2837866 AND http://www.warsearcher.com

This third post will show our construction of an archeologically-inspired scale diorama of the Breadalbane wreck site–part of the Beechey Island National Historic Site of Canada. The first post summarized the loss of this supply ship in the High Arctic in Aug. 1853, while provisioning search expeditions looking for the Franklin Expedition. The second post described the original 1980s discovery and exploration of the wreck.

330” scale feet–or 28 inches–under snow and ice, lies the Breadalbane model, represented at her 1980 moment of discovery. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

Following on from our work on an HMS Terror diorama during 2022, we had the idea to build Breadalbane after seeing the state of preservation and the incredible marine life populating this remote spot, south of Beechey Island, Nunavut. Photos and video from the original 1983 expedition and the 2014 check-up (the 1984 National Film Board documentary and the contemporary Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 2014 coverage and clips) show a riot of colour in the dark, freezing waters off Beechey.

In addition to the binnacle cabinet and ship’s wheel, a site of importance to the 1980s explorations, the transom has been represented with three closed scuttles, which both C.A. Inglefield’s and another contemporary illustration of the sinking show. Credit:www.warsearcher.com

Draft marks are present climbing up the stern post, with the fallen rudder and lower mizzen mast underneath. The stern post is perched a few feet off the hard bottom. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com.

The main cargo hatch, mainmast, pumps, companionway leading down to the aft portion of the lower deck, the ship’s capstan, and the open forward face of the deckhouse. The model also has detailed interior areas of both the lower deck and main hold, which may be explored in a future post. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

The Breadalbane was a casualty of Beechey Island’s local conditions, like the three Franklin crewmembers (and one HMS Investigator member) buried nearby, so we gave the diorama a nameplate inspired by the original 1840s-1850s appearance of the Beechey gravestones: Black board with white lettering.

The model’s bows, showing the placement of the port Bower anchor, and the damaged bowsprit and head rails. The beginnings of the copper cladding are damaged at where the stem meets the keel. Credit: http://www.warsearcher.com

The diorama was originally conceived of as an engaging way of interpreting the information gathered about the wreck by Dr. Joe MacInnis’s 1980s team and by Parks Canada’s visits to the wreck site 2012-2014. We owe both teams a debt of gratitude for supplying us information, and would like to reiterate the acknowledgements from the first post. We are not done with Beechey, or rather Beechey is not nearly done with us. Spare this sunken, beautiful barque a thought today, and stay tuned!

The starboard side, showing the deckhouse, and the enormous and fatal hole in the ship’s bilges. At the very left corner of the diorama, we chose to represent Breadalbane’s female figurehead, resting on the seafloor. This feature appears ro have been sheared off during the sinking, and has not been found. Credit:www.warsearcher.com

Three Thousand Shipsearcher views, many more pages, and 2021 debrief!

A while back we posted about reaching the milestone of a thousand shipsearcher warship views, and pointed to some of the most interesting captures and ship stories. We have now found more than 3,000 warships using open satellite imagery, and added these to the Shipsearcher database of pages! We continued our mission to travel the World and the Seven Seas to document 24 more navies, and added a special consolidated page of large or notable naval units from all smaller navies.* During 2021, we welcomed more than 20,000 visitors to our pages, with about 50,000 views.

We created a release history page, so that visitors can see when pages/navies were added to the project, with all pages hyperlinked. We hope to do updates when/if we can. We know for some navies, such as the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, the pace of new additions to the fleet has rendered the information dated as soon as it came out! The images below link to the relevant page. It’s a hyperlink-rich environment, folks, so click often and please share!

A project that began as a quick look at active and retired United States Navy carriers has now documented more than 50 World navies, from the largest carriers to museum and sail training ships, down to large patrol boats. We also went back and retrospectively added in pages for submarines into the arrangement of every navy that operates these nefarious boats!

The resource has a total of more than 400 pages. Navy index pages (found under shipsearcher menu above) lead to sub-categories of warships. We also built pages for supercarrier scrapping and Chinese island fortress construction, and terms of use and sources for our images, which also explains how we go about trying to identify ships. Recently, we took a side trip to document the World’s sailing warships and replicas, and fairly ridiculous pirate ships!

Using the search box can trawl up some interesting results across pages. For example searches for unique ship types such as hydrofoils, museum ships or wrecks will guide you to the relevant pages. Just do a “control F” search in the page to get to the ship. So what are some of the most interesting or odd captures we’ve located since our last round-up post? Check out below, with links to posts and pages, and keep exploring the database!

FakeUScarrierwreckBandar Abbas2020-08 — And the post-exercise wreck…after it had blocked the approaches to the main naval port of Bandar Abbas and then been hauled aside.

Prinz Eugen cruiser wreck Kwajalein Atill 2013

Cleveland class Light Cruisers San Francisco 1946

Great Wall Type 031 SSB Qingdao museum 2020 — The Chinese Navy submarine page is a recent addition. It proved a challenge to locate submarines in the many bases of the People’s Liberation Army Navy. The Qingao Naval Museum has several historic PLAN units, including the Type 031 “Great Wall 200” (lower boat), a Chinese-built, modified Soviet Golf class submarine important to the ballistic missile program, and the Changzheng 1 (1974-2000) the first PLAN nuclear-powered boat (upper). To see these and newer boats, visit the page.

Black Pearl - Queen Anne's Revenge pirate ship castaway cay

HTMS Phosampton Algerine class Ban Samet Ngam 2015

HTMS Thonburi Coastal Defence memorial Thai Naval Academy 2015

*As a general – sometimes disregarded -convention, navies with 3 or more frigates, or a mix of a destroyer or submarines, or a powerful force of corvettes or ocean patrol vessels, have their own pages, while notable ships from other navies get added to the “Small Navies – Great Ships” pages.

A Thousand Shipsearcher satellite views launched, and some highlights!

The Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe, in his celebrated play, Dr. Faustus, wrote of a mythic age, when a thousand warships were launched to grab back Helen, the most beautiful woman. Here at Shipsearcher, the Ship Identification Section (SIS) can’t tell you if any of that happened in distant antiquity – satellite imagery of the Trojan War is poor, to say the least! We can tell you that we’ve now launched over a thousand warship views and loaded these in our Google Earth satellite imagery database!

With the recent pages for the Norwegian, German, Danish, and Dutch navies, we have now found more than 1,100 warships using open satellite imagery! A project that began as a quick look at active and retired United States Navy carriers has now documented 27 World navies, from the largest carriers to museum and sail training ships.

The resource has a total of 198 pages: Navy index pages (found under shipsearcher menu above) and sub-categories of warships. This includes the stand-alone pages for supercarrier scrapping and Chinese island fortress construction, and the page on terms of use and sources for our images, which also explains how we go about trying to identify ships. Using the search window at right can trawl up some interesting results across pages. For example searches for unique ship types such as hydrofoils, museum ships or wrecks will guide you to the relevant pages. Just do a “control F” search in the page to get to the ship.

So what are some of the most interesting or odd captures we’ve located out there in the wild World? Check out below, where we’ve loaded captions with links to posts and pages to keep exploring the database. It’s a hyperlink-rich environment, folks, so click often and please share!

Olympias trireme Palaio Faliro 2016 — The commissioned Greek warship HS Olympias, a reconstruction of an ancient Trireme. We couldn’t read her pennant number or deck code letters…but we’re pretty sure about this ID!

Typhoon_class_submarine — The largest submarine yet, a Typhoon class nuclear ballistic missile submarine, captured by US satellite in 1982 alongside at Severodvinsk, the main Russian site of submarine construction and repair, in the days of the Soviet Union, and today. US Government, released 2012 by the National Reconnaissance Office / Public domain

Typhoon TK208 Severodvinsk 2019 — And the same spot almost 37 years later, with the last active Typhoon, Dmitry Donskoy TK-208.

It used to be that the Chinese carrier program involved training mock-ups, fake carriers in amusement parks, and buying Soviet missile cruisers to use as hotels and casinos. That all changed when they bought the dead carrier hulk Varyag from Ukraine, and retrofitted it as the Liaoning. The facility above helped plan for the new naval program. A new carrier, a new class of amphibious assault ship, and massive building programs of surface combatants is transforming the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

Riga class wreck Boyuk Zira Island, Azerbaijan 2012 — We stumbled across these Riga wrecks by complete accident…but they seemed relevant, and were added to the Russian / Soviet frigate page.

Santissima Trinidad Puerto Belgrano ARG 2013 — ARA Santissima Trinidad, a British designed Type 42 Argentinian destroyer, capsized at Puerto Belgrano after long inactivity. The destroyer was supposed to have become a museum ship dedicated to the Falklands War, which she participated in.

SS United States Philidephia 2019 — The SS United States appears in our post on the visible shipwreck of the SS America, as a comparison and product of the same naval architect, William Francis Gibbs. Classy lady, classy shadow!

Expeditionary Mobile Base San Diego 2017 — And now for something different, we have this new type of ship, made from converting a design for an oil tanker. We don’t know what it is, or what it does…but if an oil tanker wants to be some version of an amphibious warfare ship…then good for you, USS Lewis B. Puller!

USN 4-stackersSF1938-2 — A highlight of the extensive USN retired destroyers page was this 1938 view of a four stacker USN destroyer at San Francisco…and we found more!

Scrap Saratoga CV60 TX 2015-01 — Four months along the scrapping process near Brownsville, Texas, former USS Saratoga, CV-60, shows the stages a massive carrier is “broken”. We explored the scrapping of US supercarriers in our most popular single post and a more extensive stand-alone page a while back.

HM Monitor Chatham Kent SWW — Second World War views of Chatham Royal Navy Dockyards provided by the Kent County Council, allowed us to document some unanticipated views of Royal Navy ships, including this monitor, which looks like HMS Erebus, and another view that can be found on the RN page of HMS Argus.

USS Iowa BB-61 Suisun BayCA2007 — The fate of most ships in inactive status at a “warship boneyard” like Suisun Bay, California, is not a happy story. USS Iowa BB-61, Iowa class Battleship, by contrast, had groups bidding to preserve her as a museum ship. Since 2012 she has been moored at the Pacific Battleship Center, Los Angeles.

VOC Amsterdam 2018 wreck Bulverhythe Beachdistance — Wreck and Replica of Dutch East India Company VOC Amsterdam (1748) together! Composite view with 2017/05 Amsterdam view of Netherlands Maritime Museum replica overlaid onto 2018/05 Bulverhythe Beach, UK, capture, from our new page on the Royal Netherlands Navy.

USS George Washington CVN-73, Nimitz class nuclear-powered supercarrier, is displaying her powerful air complement. In our experience we see the aircraft surprisingly rarely in views of these ships in their home-ports.

USS LST-480 wreck HW 2015 — The wreck of LST-480 (Landing Ship – Tank), sunk during the West Loch disaster, Pearl Harbor 21 May 1944, which resulted in the tragic loss of at least 163 lives. Shipsearcher staff have tried very hard to track down many surviving LSTs.

INS Vikrant IAC-1 Error — In the category of best Google Earth splicing errors: Two overlapping images gives the future INS Vikrant another 270′, making it fictitiously a 1,130 foot, double-islanded behemoth! HMS Queen Elizabeth beware!

USS Inaugural wreck St Louis MO 2012 — A wrecked museum ship, the former USS Inaugural minesweeper, makes of an oddly beautiful capture with the corrosion and tidelines patterning the hull.

usns mercy san diego 2013 — If you don’t love giant hospital ships, there may be something perverse about you. USNS Mercy, and sister-ship USNS Comfort, on the Atlantic coast, were not hard to find, and have been in the news quite a bit lately about the COVID-19 response. Stay safe and watch for U-boats!

HMS Victory 1765 Portsmouth 2014 — We all need more HMS Victory in the World, and we said as much in a post.

SS America / USS West Point shipwreck

SS America NHHC L45-304.03.02 — SS America before the US entry into the War. L45-304.03.02. Courtesy of the Naval History and Heritage Command.

The SS America, completed in 1939 for the United States Lines, was a beautiful ocean liner. Graceful sweeping curves and two flared funnels with small winged caps gave her an art-deco styling, like other great liners of the era. Until the construction of the SS United States, in the early 1950s, she was the biggest and best of US domestically-built liners, at 723-feet long and 35,400 tons displacement.

SS America NHHC 19-N-24561 — SS America undergoing conversion to a troopship-USS West Point AP-23- in June 1941. The United States Lines livery and neutrality markings are being painted over by wartime grey. 19-N-24561 Courtesy of the Naval History and Heritage Center.

Requisitioned as a troop ship from 1941-1946, named USS West Point AP-23, she was reconfigured to take as many as 7,600 troops at a time. Over the course of her military service, she transported 350,000 soldiers, marines, sailors, airmen, and other passengers to and from service overseas.*

USS Westpoint - SS America NHHC detail 80-G-K-5783-A — USS Westpoint with returning soldiers, New York City July 1945 [Detail of]. 80-G-K-5783-A Courtesy of the Naval History and Heritage Command.

In 1946, she was refitted for transatlantic passenger crossings and ran a glamorous service. Her long career followed the ebbs and flows of the last great age of the liners. The transatlantic crossings became uneconomical as travelers opted for air travel, and she was sold in 1964 to Chandris Group, renamed Australis and moved to the Southampton – Australia route. There were numerous attempts to modernize or convert the ship to some other use, including cruising, as a floating hotel, and even a plan to convert her to a prison ship.

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A scheme to convert her to a hotel in Thailand led to an attempt to tow the old ship, now named American Star, from Greece, during late 1993. In January 1994, the ship broke free of the tow in heavy weather, and eventually grounded on the coast of Fuerteventura, Canary Islands. Days later the vessel’s keel broke amidships and she was declared a total loss. She became a popular and much photographed shipwreck. The separated stern section quickly fell away and sank out of view by the mid 1990s. As for the bow section, from 1994 to 2007, the 380 foot section from bows to remaining aft funnel only gradually deteriorated. Views of the wreck from the nearby shores show the sublime and spectacular quality to the American Star’s end.

1280px-Shipwreck_of_the_SS_American_Star_on_the_shore_of_Fuerteventura — The wreck of the American Star as it looked in 2004. The stern quickly sank away in the mid-1990s. The missing section near the waterline hints at the deterioration of the whole bow structure, after many years of relative stability. The forward funnel had been removed years before, and replaced by a lower cap. Wollex / CC BY-SA

Although the America is now mostly gone, the SS United States, which is still in existence, shares many similarities with America. Both were designed by naval architect William Francis Gibbs. The significantly larger United States, designed more than a decade later, repeated the clean lines, twin funnels with caps, king posts for lifting cargo to the hold in the bows, and general massing of the superstructure of the America. USS West Point and other wartime transports can be found at the page for US Navy Retired Auxiliaries and Other Ships.

*For additional history of the ship during military and civilian careers, see http://united-states-lines.org/u-s-s-west-point/

The Strangest Wreck on Sable Island?

A lifesaving Bren Gun carrier wrecked on Sable Island?!

Sable Island is frequently called “the Graveyard of the Atlantic,” because of centuries of shipwrecks that have piled up on its shoals. This island, a remote sliver of dunes and scrub far off the Nova Scotian coast, is Canada’s newest national park. Recently I became aware of a curious relic on the island, close to the West Light.

Sable Island UC from AT2 — “Lifesaving” Universal Carrier, Sable Island. (courtesy of A. Taylor) note inventive “barrel” some wag has stuck in the front armoured plate where the Bren Light Machine Gun would have been fitted!

Familiar with Second World War vehicles, the photo, sent to me by a relative currently on the Island, clearly showed the low silhouette of a Universal Carrier, a light tracked-vehicle used for many roles by the Canadian Army from the early years of the War until the mid-1960s. My first reaction was astonishment, but there was an image or two online of the wreck, and a “Motor Museum” enthusiastic online article about building a miniature of this vehicle which explains: “Our model represents a Universal carrier which was used to tow lifeboats, a job previously been done by horses, up and down the coast to launching positions suitable for the crisis at hand. Little is known about it but it is our tribute to the brave souls who saved countless lives and to a weapon of war that ended it’s days saving lives not taking them.”

A fan of Sable Island lore, I decided to see what I could find out at Library and Archives Canada. At least some of the story comes out in 1946-1952 Department of Transportation reports about the equipment on the Island. Shortly after the War, the DOT, then responsible for the facilities on the Island, was evaluating new lifeboats for the Humane Establishment, the lifesaving and shore patrol facilities. Up to this point, horses or oxen had been used to help haul the boats (on a wheeled cradle) out from the station boathouses to launching sites. The file details tests of US Coast Guard designs for modern lifeboats. An idea was put forward that mechanical transport would be preferable to animals, and using surplus carriers seemed an inexpensive solution.

CWM_Universal Carrier no.2MkII — One of the Canadian War Museum’s carriers, painted with markings for the Lincoln and Welland Regiment, Royal Canadian Armoured Corps (author’s photo)

There were mixed opinions of the suitability of a carrier, with some parties (including the Chief of Aids to Navigation) thinking it would soon be immobilized in the sandy dunes. Attempts at procuring a test vehicle were frustrated when a vehicle offered up from War Assets stocks in Debert, N.S., was found to have over 2,000 miles on it (DND ordnance personnel had advised the transportation officials this was too much to guarantee reliability). The eventual 1942 Ford carrier was shipped all the way from Longue Pointe Ordnance Depot, near Montreal, to Dartmouth, N.S., and sent out to the island in the usual steamer resupply on Canadian Government Ship LADY LAURIER, accompanied by a Willys MB Jeep (I have no idea what happened to this). After a lot of casting about online, I located this tweet and image:

Using the carrier to tow a trailer and boat-crew, early 1950s. You’d think pneumatic tires may have helped! (photo credit: Ernest O’Hara, permission graciously granted by Our Sable Island Home)

Whatever the trials and tribulations of this carrier on the Island, the era of modern navigation made shipwrecks (mostly) a thing of the past, and the stations were all abandoned in 1958. The carrier, like much else, became derelict. Today, it is a conspicuous wreck from the last phase of the Humane Establishment’s Century-and-a-half of life-preserving efforts.

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