The Most HOPELESS Battleship: HMS Captain

[Music] it's 1870 and Victorian England is gripped by devastating newspaper headlines the finest newest ship in the Royal Navy has gone down with nearly all hands in a storm that modern battleships should easily be able to survive testimony from the lucky few who made it tell a terrible story the ship has rolled over and sunk in just 3 minutes but this was not a disaster no could see coming quite the opposite in fact for years now two men had been in a heated disagreement over it the vessel's designer a celebrated war hero versus the Navy's

Chief Architect the brain behind some of the most revolutionary designs in the Victorian Arsenal this is a twisting tale of Bluster incompetence and design mismanagement that would result in one of the Royal Navy's bloodiest days ladies and gentlemen I'm your friend Mike Brady from ocean liner designs and this is the tragic unb believable true story of HMS Captain the battleship that was doomed by [Music] Design Our Story begins in 1860 where in the British admiralty some interesting things were happening riding at aner was an absolutely revolutionary ship for the Royal Navy the first ever iron

Hall warship HMS Warrior she' been built in response to the buildup of the French Navy in a tit fortat game that had lasted decades back in the days of Napoleon warships very much looked and behaved the same way they had done for centuries they were made of thick Timber typically Oak and fired iron balls among other types of shot out of guns and carad that were rated by the weight of the shot they could hurl the smallest could be around 9 lb 4 kg and the largest up to 36 lb or 16 kg the guns

were limited in range and accuracy so engagements were often undertaken at close ranges in slogging matches that saw the iron balls fired Point Blank into the oak holes spraying deadly splinters out into the cruise inside it was nasty business but that was the way it was done for hundreds of years then slowly some new and novel ideas began to catch on inventors and boffins had been playing with steam engines for decades and some even had the bride idea of applying them to small boats in fact at the same time as Napoleon's armies were marching on

Russia some clever people had fitted steam engines to boats designed for towing other ships into Port now the idea caught on by the 1820s the tugboat had changed World Commerce because big ships could be unloaded quicker and more conveniently by the way we did a video on that you should go watch it if you're interested the steam engine had obvious military potential the Americans built a steam powered frigate back in 1815 through the 1820s the Navies of France and Britain began to experiment as well of course on land steam engines were catching on too the

birth of the Industrial Revolution meant that improved manufacturing techniques could be implemented on ships as well the stage was set for an unprecedented technological boom and the Industrial Revolution began suddenly ships began to get bigger and more daring in their construction steam engines became the norm and then guns got bigger too firing shot as heavy as 68 lb or 30 kg in 1859 the French introduced gu Or Glory the first oceangoing ironclad which had a wooden Hull L protected by Iron plating now this was a modern warship designed to fight the same kind of battles

as French ships of the land had fought back in the days of Napoleon Toe to Toe At Close Quarters broadside to broadside now the British couldn't let the challenge go and answered of course so they built Warrior now it sounds impressive that Warrior was the first Iron hold warship sure but the Navy was actually a little bit late to the party in a way because ismad brunell's famous SS Great Britain the first true ocean liner had featured an iron Hull in 15 years earlier the benefits of an iron Hull in an ocean liner were very

clear the ship could be built larger and lighter and it would be better protected from the elements for a warship the benefits were even greater gl's old-fashioned guns couldn't touch it the balls would just rattle harmlessly off the side in fact the warrior was impervious to any gun then in service what followed Warrior's introduction was the inevitable game of tit forat as competing navies introduced ships that began to move further away from the broadside style Battleship of the line that GL had so resembled in burst a key player for the Royal Navy in this battle

of Supremacy sir Edward J Reed Chief Constructor of the Navy from 1863 and a real innovator and Visionary Reed knew that the battle between guns and armor would require a new and Fresh Approach and although his ideas might now seem to be common sense you have to remember that in this age there was absolutely no precent and the engineers simply had to make things up as they went G's designers had built a ship that would have dominated the Battle of Trafalger of 1805 but was rendered obsolete within a year of launch by Warrior Warrior's Armor

had been impervious to any projectile back in 1860 but within a few years gun technology had caught up Reed needed to design Britain's ships for a completely new kind of warfare his first idea was the center battery ship now this was partly inspired by the Battle of Hampton Roads between the union Ironclad USS Monitor and the Confederate CSS Virginia Reed's idea was that the guns and powder could be housed in a central casemate structure heavily armored and protected now doing this meant that the rest of the ship could be less armored and the ship itself

could be smaller and therefore theoretically more maneuverable critically a shorter ship meant that it would be cheaper to build and maintain which for a peacetime Navy was a big deal HMS bifan was the first Central battery Ironclad after tests had been done on smaller designs and converted sloops and she marked a major departure for the design of battleships now for one thing the ship's guns were immense compared to the old style cannons they were breach loaded they fired a 9in 229 mm shell the ship's waist was protected by an armored belt and her gun turrets

were housed in casemates 6 in or 152 mm thick now this presented the formula by which warships were armored for nearly the next 100 years and the modern Battleship was born there was however still a persistent issue the guns were fixed in place just as they had been on the oler style broadside warships to truly be effective the modern warship would need to be able to engage the enemy on any course without moving the entire ship this is where we have to introduce our second important character a clever idea had come from a certain Captain

Cowa fips Kohl's this name will be very important later on by the way while he was a Gunnery officer of some Renown in the Black Sea in 1859 he patented the design for a revolving turret the idea had partly come from the crian War when he and a team of officers and Men constructed a floating raft that mounted a 32 pounder gun and shelled Russian positions on the land it sparked an obsession with the idea of ships as floating batteries with protected gun Shields sitting low in the water like his raft had to present a

smaller Target as possible his design for the revolving gun turret then known as aapola received important support and the admiralty was listening they agreed to build a prototype and mount it to a ship for testing the results were impressive the the gun 40 lb breach loader could fire faster and more accurately without the need for complex and delicate tackle aside from the fact the gun could fire in nearly all directions the rate of fire was significantly increased so too was the crew Comfort because there was less smoke and heat although the noise was apparently nearly

deafening Cole's kapola gun needed only nine men to operate versus the 11 men required for a similar broadside gun and not only that but the Capa when fired upon by a 100lb gun for testing received 30 5 hits without any real damage at all save for One cracked plate now one key Advantage was that the further the target got the more difficult the shot became where broadside guns accuracy would drop off the Capa gun just got better the admiralty was impressed and two older ships were converted into turret ships mounting Coal's designs so the road

to the design of HMS Captain had winded and twisted its way through inovation and clever Design Concepts in a world that had never before seen this kind of technology in action Reed's designs had changed the warship forever into what we know today as the battleship the Cole's turrets improv Naval Gunnery in the extreme both men were confident in their abilities more emboldened in their designs and Cole's mind drifted back to his Crimean War raft and the dream he had had of a ship presenting as little a Target as possible while mounting massive turret guns he

wanted to have it built and he would get his way he lobed the admiralty to build a turret ship to his design and specification they instructed him to take one of Reed's designs instead the HMS Palace of 1865 and size it up the result was HMS Monarch designing these ships was not easy at all for one there were problems caused simply by the nature of their construction iron hold steam ships were by that stage too fuel hungry to be able to cross the world's oceans on steam power alone that's why ships of that age held

on to their sails and Ms as a kind of auxiliary power the issue was that tyrants on ships added a fair amount of weight themselves and mounted too high up on the hull presented seaworthiness issues you could have masts and sails and your ship could go further but turrets would upset balance and the ship could roll dangerously or you could have a reduced sail rig and mount the turret guns but the ship would be limited to Coastal and Home Defense duties it couldn't cross the oceans now kl's would have none of it he began to

Lobby hard for a fully rigged turret ship that could be the Vanguard of the fleet a seagoing ocean Crossing turret ship now Reed who had served as Chief Naval Constructor for some time now recognized the issues and warned that to do so could cause issues with seaworthiness the two men began to butt heads which culminated in a furious debate at The Institute of Naval Architects but Kohl's had good popular support in 1865 a committee was established to explore his ideas and the viability of an oceangoing turret vessel he' asked the admiralty for assistance in a

new design and that had given him the services of Naval architect Joseph scullard chief draftsman of the Portsmouth dockyard the pair had drawn up designs for an oceangoing ship filling a single tet a group of naval officers nominated by the admiralty although Kohl's had hilariously offered to nominate his own members in a totally non-biased way of course sat down and examined scullard and Cole's designs to give their opinion the outcome was that they liked the idea but they rejected it almost purely because the design was too small and mounted only one turret they wanted more

in case that one turret jammed for example or it was knocked out in action more importantly although maybe later run was the matter of freeboard that is to say how much of the ship actually Rose above the waterline reduced freeboard in Cole's previous ships wasn't an issue because they were designed for Coastal operations in calm water but a reduced freeboard in an oceangoing ship could be a recipe for disaster if it wasn't handled well because it would be difficult to keep the ocean from getting into the hatches and the vents the issue with turret ships

is that they needed Lo freeboard though because of their sheer weight if the hull was built Too Tall then the ship's center of gravity would be dangerously High Reed pointed out that there could be ways to avoid this issue and said that nothing but the greatest carelessness could make a ship of that sort unsafe from the wash of the sea over her he did not object to designing or building an oceangoing turret ship but he was worried about Cole's authority over the matter and the fact that it seemed like he was putting all the responsibility

for the design onto scullard who had really only just been brought on to assist the result of all of this was approval for a test vessel the first oceangoing turret vessel HMS Monarch crucially the ship was designed by Reed who recognized the issue that filling two turrets high above the waterline might present to assist in how the ship would behave at Sea she was given a fil deck which would provide more buoyancy towards the bow but of course this blocked the firing arcs of the forward gun turret and it irritated Kohl's who seemed to prioritize

Firepower Above All Else Reed had also increased the free B from Cole's proposed 10 ft to 14 ft and even though the admiralty was delighted with their new toy and turret guns could at last take to the Open Seas Reed was himself not thrilled with his creation he wrote that the middle of the deck of a fully rigged ship is not a very eligible position for fighting large guns the major issue was that the sheer amount of rigging in the way all those ropes and Stags would need to be cleared away for Action which was

an incredibly timec consuming and complex process Kohl's was also unimpressed with Monarch because the design had departed from his concept the folkal he saw as unnecessary and he took issue with the increased freeboard and the height of the belt armor and the turrets Kohl's went on the attack publicly condemning Reed's efforts which such vems the admiralty had to step in and censure him it got so bad that his contract as consultant to the Navy was cancelled but Kohl's was a well-respected war hero and a designer he had powerful allies in politics and the civilian world

who trusted his judgment and saw his as a a revolutionary mind after something of an apology the admiralty reinstated his role as consultant but they were feeling external pressure to adopt his ideas in their purest form in a new design Kohl's had lobbied hard for his design to be approved and even had backing from the first Sea Lord not only that but the public had taken considerable interest because warships were so interconnected with national Glory the greatest strides in design and Technology had cultivated a strong sense of public pride and feeling and Kohl's the loudest

voice in the room was lorded as a kind of technological Sant the admiralty board eventually caved and agreed that Cole's design could be built but with one little important caveat Kohl's would need to wear the responsibility of the design and oversee it in its entirety constructed at a yard approved by the admiralty entirely under Cole's own supervision the admiralty and Reed did not trust Cole's ideas and they were not going to be the ones to where the embarrassment if the design should fail as they feared it would K's agreed and the stage was set HMS

Captain was born it would lead to the death of nearly 500 men including Kohl's Kohl's informed the admiralty that a shipyard of choice was leads at burken head England and soon a pair of designs was submitted for Reed to review Reed who was no great fan of the concept or Kohl's to begin with was actually unusually generous in his assessment reporting that the designs were clearly well thought out but he flagged the tiny freeboard just 8 ft and he suggested the drawings required a Fuller and more exacting examination before approval could be given his request

was ignored by the first Lord John packington who told Kohl's that he had approval to build his ship quote on the entire responsibility of yourself and messes lead for their part the admiralty would inspect the workmen and the materials to make sure they were up to standarded Reed was dismayed by this and he made it clear that the designs and plans were entirely lead's own and that anything sent to him would not be marked approved in the usual way but as no objection is seen even so as construction began Reed voiced his concerns in a

letter to leads stating that on investigating the matter I find that the center of gravity of ships armed and plated in the proposed manner is situated higher than would appear probable at First Sight and I would advise mess Le be requested to satisfy themselves thoroughly on this point but his objection was virtually all bit ignored as it happened leads had only conducted basic estimates of the center of gravity of their ship before construction and then when the ship was finished 4 years later at last completed a more thorough estimate which showed it had risen by

a foot even worse it soon became clear that the ship had been built terribly overweight with some 735 tons of excess weight having not been taken into account at all during the construction process this would soon have serious ramifications of course towering over all of it with a heavy gun turrets and above that the tall masts and the complex rigging for the sails in fact Kohl's decided to fit his ship with the heaviest possible Mast and Spa plan in an effort to counter any of the sluggish seaf fairing behavior from those early steampowered warships in

most vessels the MK height might reach about 86 ft to the top but captains soared to 96 it was a lot of weight above the waterline and Reed was very unimpressed he had raised alarms the entire time Captain was being built but in return he earned criticism and Scorn he became too much before Captain was finished Reed resigned in Outrage and with his departure went all resistance to HMS captains design deficiencies Captain was completed in 1870 and given she was a bit of a prototype novelty the admiralty was Keen to compare her against contemporaries especially

her forbear HMS Monarch now right off the bat it was obvious that not all was well with Captain for one she sat far lower in the water than she had been intended when the ship was first floated she sat 13 in or 33 cm lower in the water than designed the result was an overweight top heavy ship with a freeboard of just 6' 7 in remember she was meant to have 8 ft above the waterline at least in a moderate sea she rolled up to 14° but this was considered acceptable with her Captain Victoria Cross

winner hubero going so far as to say the captain was a quote complete success and in my opinion one of the most efficient Men of War in the world the big question was whether Captain's guns would be impacted by all the riggings surrounding the turrets and a Gunnery trial was organized where Monarch and Captain alongside a third warship the central battery ship Hercules designed by Reed at the same time as Captain would fire under Steam on a Target the results were bad very very bad Hercules outgunned Monarch and Captain both in terms of accuracy and

rate of fire Reed's ship fired 17 rounds and hit the target 10 times Captain only managed 11 shots and four hits that wasn't all Captain began to exhibit some bizarre worrying Behavior with their guns blazing the ship began to roll the first Salvo sent Captain over by no less than 20° now Reed had warned in a debate at The Institute of Naval Architects that a ship capable of rolling to 20° like that was in danger of losing its writing ability entirely and liable to capsize he would soon be proven tragically correct if it wasn't such

an awful loss of human life you could probably classify the events to be one of the most devastating cases of I toldy so in Naval History on September 6th 1870 Captain was cruising in a squadron of 10 other warships a combined force of vessels from both the channel and the Mediterranean squadrons out of vgo Spain they were both steaming and sailing off the west coast of Spain at Cape finair the rocky Peninsula often at the mercy of the Atlantic Ocean's legendary temper sailing in the Squadron were Monarch Warrior Hercules and other big names from the

early days of British Ironclad battle ships in command of the entire exercise was Admiral Alexander Mill his Flagship the Lord Warden and that morning he stepped aboard Captain to inspect her since she was something of a novelty and he was totally unfamiliar with her with the two formations of ships in column mil and inspected almost every inch of the warship no doubt led by her captain bergoin and her designer Kohl's who was actually aboard for the exercises but then a blow came on and the Sea began to increase mil and his flag officers struck out

in their boat for the Warden but beroy tried to get them to stay worried that the conditions would be too much for the little boat but happily the Admiral and his men made it back to their ship and it would prove to save their lives with the wind freshening and a breeze coming in hard the Squadron forged ahead mil observed clearly that the sea was washing over Captain's deck and that she healed alarmingly from side to side the Squadron had their sails set but slowly they began to reduce canvas as the wind's strength rose up

to a 47 blow the barometer began to fall the rain fell and the Sea Rose angrily by 1:00 a.m. it was a full Gale and all square sails had been taken in the ships relying on their engines and stacil to keep their bows pointed into the waves mil gave the signal for open order so the ships could disperse and reduce the risk of Collision in the dark and the two columns spread apart the Admiral watched HMS Captain battle the Seas of the Wind on her Port bow the ship listing hard over to starboard but as

the darkness spread and the night wore on he could eventually just see her dim bow light in the distance then sometime in the night it blinged out obscured he thought by rain and sea with a dangerous cross sea and with only very limited sail the Lord Warden battled onward through the night and by the morning the Gale had abated the Squadron had scattered and soon enough 10 ships were accounted for but one was missing thinking that the captain had proceeded to the rendevu point the Squadron made Steam and sail but there was no sign of

her a search effort went underway with the big warships gliding to and fro over miles of empty sea Then There came ominous sightings first HMS Monarch found a top Gallant yard a very important Spar from a ship's sailing rig then Admiral mils Lord Warden found another yard still with the sails attached and then finally later that day a kind of debris field was discovered battered and smashed cutter boats floating upside down more discarded yards and Booms and then the body of a sailor with his name name Rose stitched into his shirt Soden and battered floated

a Union Jack Flag which was quickly fished out of the ocean everybody knew immediately that the captain had been lost beroy the celebrated Victoria Cross recipient was gone so to was the ship's designer and greatest advocate Cowper fips Kohl's nearly 500 men were unaccounted for and in fact mil's first report said that the ship had gone down with all hands and what might have happened to her would probably remain a mystery except fortunately he was incorrect a boatload of 18 men was found and they had miraculously survived the battering of the Heavy Seas in their

small wooden open top booat and the story they told was frightening and damning around midnight they said Captain beroy ordered all main sales furled but it was too little too late Captain was rolling to and fro and the Press of so much wind on even a small part of her spread of canvas was extremely dangerous in fact a Survivor said she was only under her topsil and her stacil Captain lurched hard onto her side bergoin called out how many degrees does she heal now the answer was chilling 18 somebody called she lay on her starboard

side with water crashing over the bull walk washing men away as they tried to hold on for dear life others were holding on high up overhead in the masts in the battle to reduce canvas and save the ship but it was all in vain with a Roar and a hiss the ship rolled onto her beam ends and then completely C sze trapping anybody below decks and flinging anybody above deck into the ocean it's a miracle anybody survived at all in fact there was no time to lower any of the lifeboats and those lucky 18 men

clambered into one that had simply broken free of its lashings the ship sat bottom up briefly with dozens clambering on top of the kill Captain beroy was thought to be among them until shortly after as little as 3 minutes later she slip below the surface and that was that nearly 500 men were dead and Captain the Royal Navy's newest warship was at the bottom of the ocean along with her inventor immediately all eyes turned to the admiralty and the ship's Builders leads it was a very uncomfortable situation with a huge amount of public scrutiny and

attention a court of inquiry was immediately convened and the admiralty was extremely unimpressed Chief Constructor Edward Reed had been fully aware of Captain's deficiencies since the start remember he had refused to even use the word approved when considering Captain's designs the findings of the inquiry quickly absolved the Navy and blamed the builders entirely saying that a miscalculation on the part of lead through which the ship floated deeper than was intended a discrepancy which the controller described as a serious and unexampled error in construction calculations now this was exactly the kind of admiralty whitewash you would

expect the Navy to produce in the face of an outraged public but the truth was much more complex it's true that the Navy had tried to distance itself from the captain's construction putting for responsibility on leads the builders and calls the designer to create the ship but in this they overstepped Kohl's had wanted admiralty supervision for the ship's construction but the admiralty was so Keen to wash their hands of the damn thing that they refused they did appoint a kind of overseer to make sure the material was quality and up to scratch but not the

material's weight in the end Lads used quality material that was simply too heavy for the ship's design Reed never used the words approved in reviewing the designs instead he marked the drawings not objected to but many of those drawings introduce factors to the design which added to the vessel's weight if the admiralty had just gone above and beyond the basic requirements and cooperated with the builders and coals if they had even taken more than this cursory interest in the ship they're going to be accepting delivery of then maybe the weight issues wouldn't have slipped under

the radar an inclination test that is a test which measures how far a ship can roll before before it lost was completed which showed that lad's calculations were in fact correct the ship would be lost if she rolled more than 21° but the papers weren't marked urgent the results were delayed and when they were finally published they were never given to Admiral milm for his part Reed had resigned his position in office and said I wish the court to believe that my actual departure from the office at length did not arise from this cause but

it had its weight in all that has happened and I had the strongest reason for not keeping up a systematic assertion of the dangers incurred in the captain he was under extreme pressure in fact in a final interaction with Captain beroy Reed had said prophetically I don't want to say any more against her but I'm glad that it is your fate and not mine to go to seea in her Cole's supporters in government and the public were shocked but the man was dead and he couldn't defend himself in my opinion it is true that Captain's

design was dangerous the low freeboard was an issue and it invited big Seas to wash over the deck and swamp her K's needs to take a significant portion of the blame but if the admiralty hadn't simply tried to wash their hands of the ship's development if Kohl's and Reeds and packington's Professional Pride had been swallowed and if they' all worked closer together with leads during the construction maybe the weight issues could have been caught and Captain's major problems may have been resolved on the stocks 472 men may have been saved and Captain could have gone

down in history not as a disaster but is a curious footnote a prototype to compare against the HMS Monarch and then probably just be relegated to use as a Hulk or a reserve training ship in the end HMS Monarch proved to be the star she went on to have a successful career before being broken up for scrap all the way later in 1905 Kohl's had been right in that the turret ship was the future eventually turrets became the norm and battleships boasted all manner of weird and wonderful turret layouts they were finally standardized with the

HMS dreadn in 1906 but that's a story for another day so where is captain now well we know of course she sank off cap finair in August 2022 an effort to ReDiscover the ship instead turned up four unidentified wrecks and it's the fourth that best matches the captain's General dimensions and layout she's suspected to lie in some 1700 M nearly a mile of water at the bottom of the ocean in an area that has probably protected her from trollers and the worst of the ocean's corrosive effects and it's hoped the captain would be in good

condition and an effort led by Maritime historian Dr Howard Fuller from the University of wolver Hampton is trying to raise funds to go back out to the fourth wreck and explore it hoping to lift the veil and shed light on HMS captain for the first time in nearly 155 years but for now she sits in darkness undisturbed by humankind a symbol of the uncertainty of experimentation the danger of Bluster but more importantly a warning of what happens when we refuse to cooperate [Music]