The most enlightening story of HMS Captain was written in 1963 by Arthur Hawkey in his book, “HMS Captain”, published by G Bell and Sons. This was subsequently re-published, with new material, in 1999, under the title of "Black Night off Finisterre", published by Airlife Publishing Ltd. Much of the information given in the section of this website  "The Story of HMS Captain"  is summarised from Arthur Hawkey's two books.

In addition, much of the text for `The Building' section of the website has been drawn by the website author from his copy of the Court Martial - a complex document over 340 foolscap pages (younger readers look that up!), much of it in small print.

Arthur Hawkey was a reporter for the London Evening Standard when, in 1954, his attention was caught by the two memorial plaques in St Paul’s Cathedral, London. He then devoted much of his leisure to research in Admiralty records and newspapers of the period from which he pieced together the account.

The blurb on the dust cover of the book says -

"In “HMS Captain” Arthur Hawkey recounts the history of an ironclad of revolutionary design. The technical problems that she was intended to solve excited extensive public debate at the time. Some four months after commissioning she lay at the bottom of the Atlantic. There were only eighteen survivors from a complement of over 500.

The memorial to the ship in St Paul’s Cathedral records the finding of the Court enquiring into her loss `that the Captain was built in deference to public opinion expressed in Parliament and through other channels, and in opposition to views and opinions of the Controller and his Department’. 

Behind this blunt criticism of Parliament - surely astonishing in a public memorial - lies a controversy of unusual interest which Arthur Hawkey has reconstructed from contemporary sources.

The protagonists were Sir Edward Reed, Chief Constructor to the Navy, and Captain Coles, a half-pay naval officer who won wide support in Parliament and the Press for his theories of battleship design.

It was a period of naval experiment when the introduction of steam, of armour and of gun-turrets in place of broadsides posed formidable problems, on which the public did not hesitate to support Coles’ views and ultimately compel a reluctant Admiralty to allow the construction of a ship to his plans.

The disaster that followed is graphically told. The loss of life shocked the nation. The midshipman son of the First Lord, recently transferred into Captain at his own request, was amongst the dead and, mercifully, Coles himself went down with the ship.

On 30 April, 1870, when HMS Captain was commissioned, the ensign was accidentally hoisted upside down. Never has an omen been more tragically of swiftly fulfilled.”

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