The Royal George

[cs]

In another thread I made mention of the sinking of the Royal George and thought I would go and pull this out since I think it dserves a thread of its own.

First a little history. The Royal George was launched 1756 and at 2047 tons was one of the largest ships or her time. At the end of the Seven Years war she was laid up in "ordinary" for 16 years where her upkeep was subject to the corrupt dockworkers. In 1768 she received a major re-build, but when put back into active service 10 years later she was still in terriable shape. In Oct of 1780 her rudder just dropped off while she was in the channel. Admiral Milbank said: "When the Royal George docked at Plymouth ... I saw her opened up and asked many questions. I found her condition so bad that I can't remember seeing one sound plank through the opening".

On Aug 29 the Royal George was being heeled over to make repairs to a water release valve below the water line. There was not sufficiant time to take her to dry dock, so the decission was made to heel her over. Instead of heeling her over by tying lines to another ship the decission was made to alter her center of gravity by shifting guns. I'm not sure whether it was to starboard or larboard that she was heeled, but the guns on the downhill side were ran out and the other the guns on the other side shifted toward the centerline.

A couple of hours after the work was started a carpenter felt that was something was amiss, but his pleas were ignored by the officer of the watch. He than went to the captain and the captain immediantly ordered the guns shifted back to their orginal position, but by this time it was to late.

Different opinions have been put forth about the sequeance of events. Some say that a large crack was heard and others say that a stiff breeze blew up at an inopurtune moment. The angle of heel was great and water began pouring in and within minutes the ship rolled on to her side and sank. Was the loud crack a cannon breaking loss, or perhaps it was knees breaking under the weight. Maybe it was a combination of it all, poor dockyard maintance, water coming through open gunports, guns breaking loose and knees breaking compounded with a stiff breeze.

Whatever happened 1400 lives were lost including Rear-Admiral Richard Kempenfelt. The loss of the Royal George was a main reason for the corruption of the dockyards to come under investigation. Richard Woodman gives his fictional version of the event in his book "Ebb Tide" where his hero Nathinal Drinkwater was on board the George at the time awaiting his commision for Lt.

<center><font color = blue>Toll for the brave
The Brave that are no more,
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore.

Eight hundred of the brave,
Whose courage was well tried,
Had made the vessel heel,
And laid her on her side.

A land breeze shook the shroud,
And she was overset,
Down went the Royal George,
With all her crew complete.</font color></center>

Chad

[cs]

and couple of more things I forgot to add. The Royal George was a 100 gun first rate with 28 × 42pdr, 28 × 24pdr, 28 × 12pdr, 16 × 6pdr.

Here is a painting showing the George at a launching of a third rate even though the full outfitted George (as shown) would not have been able to be at that paticular point in the river (as per what the web site said.)

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/uploads/jpg/BHC3602.jpg

Chad

[Dale R. Hamilton]

damn- what were 1400 people doing aboard a ship that was so severely heeled her bottom was exposed. Couldn't possibly walk a deck.

[cs]

Dale they were getting ready to embark as flagship of a squadron. There was a lot of work going on on the ship getting it ready and visitors to boot. If you notice the lower tier gunports are fairly close to the water line anyway and with just a little bit of a chop and you got water coming in.

I believe though that it was a combination of many little things, you know the straw that broke the camels back.

Chad

ps I beleive that the regular crew of the George was just over 800. The number of 1400 lost is an estimate

[John Meachen]

While it does not relate directly to the Royal George, I have,in the last year or two been reading the diaries of Samuel Pepys.He was a farily significant individual in the administration of the Royal Navy in the late 17th century,if you haven't heard of him.His accounts of the bribery and corruption that were endemic at the time together with the descriptions of dockyards and common working practices make it all too easy to understand how unnecessary some of the loss of life was in those days.
By the way,the illustration is very well done,any idea of the artist?

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Reading Richard Woodman's account of the event re-kindled my interest in it. It's fair to point out that the durability of wooden ships was not as well understood in the mid-18th century as it was by the early 19th.

However, by all accounts she was not in good structural order. She did sink at a time when the very long running struggle for power between the Admiralty (responsible for naval operations) and the Navy Board (responsible for building maintaining and outfitting the fleet) was particularly intense.

It seems most unlikely that the operation of running out the guns on one side, with the guns on the other side run in, would heel her enough to allow water to lap over the lower gunport sills, because by definition all wooden warships would find themselves in just that condition during a battle. I seem to remember in Richard's fictionalised account that something more was done to heel her.

Just speculating, if she was in poor condition the immersion of more topside than usual would always increase the inflow of water into the bliges through bad seams, etc.

This might have been hard for the pumps to deal with, due to the heel. A build up of such bilge water would adversely affect the GM due to its free surface effect and would tend to bring the lower deck gunports closer to the water.

A gust might heel her enough to start water entering via a gunport sill and once that occurred, the situation would become irretrievable almost immediately.

It is amazing how many ships still sink during repairs as a consequence of water lapping in through an opening cut too near the waterline. A brand new cruise ship being outfitted sank in Europe a couple of months ago and at our best yard in China we are in the middle of a fearsomely expensive wreck removal for the same reason (litigation involved, here, so I won't say who I think was to blame).

[cs]

John the painting is:
The Royal George at Deptford showing the launch of The Cambridge
By: John Cleveley the Elder

Andrew I don't think that just running the guns out was all that was done. There may have been some shifting in the hold. The ship didn't need to be heeled that much. The sinking was probably a culamation of several events.

If all the guns are shifted, as indicated, to one side or the other and a knee underneath one broke, this would cause a sudden shifting and water could come in, and thus the unreverersable process of going turtle starts.

And if as Woodman suggest the rush of people to the heeled side of the boat to escape didn't help.

Chad