HMS Captain 1870         

 

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 The Story of HMS Captain (cont)

The Court Martial

The Court Martial - a formal name for what was actually a court of enquiry or inquest - began just three weeks later, on board HMS Duke of Wellington, in Portsmouth Harbour.

Arthur Hawkey’s book provides a lot of the detail of the Court Martial, which questioned the surviving crew, officers from other ships in the Fleet that fatal night, specialists from the Admiralty, William Laird the shipbuilders, and former Chief Constructor, E.J. Reed.

Some points were brought up more than once - the unspoken pressure on Captain Burgoyne to keep his new ship on station; that although several other ships in the fleet had reduced sail in the conditions, HMS Captain had not; that despite this overload of sail, sailing ships in a storm usually only had torn canvas, and were not turned upside-down. Many confirmed that the weather did not cause anxiety for the safety of any ship in the fleet - “it was a rough night, but no danger”.

  Cover of published Court Martial          

  (Thanks to Carole Hollow)

 The Court Martial ended within two weeks, and a week later reconvened for the President to read out the findings.

”The court, having heard the statement of Mr James May (the most senior survivor) and taken his evidence and that of the remaining survivors and other evidence they deemed necessary, and having deliberately weighed and considered the whole of the evidence before them, do find that Her Majesty’s Ship Captain was capsized on the morning of the 7th September 1870 by pressure of sail, assisted by the heave of the sea, and that the sail carried at the time of her loss (regard being had to the force of the wind and the state of the sea) was insufficient to have endangered a ship endued with the proper amount of stability.

The Court, before separating, find it their duty to record the conviction they entertain the Captain was built in deference to public opinion expressed in Parliament, and through other channels, and in opposition to the views and opinions of the Controller and his department, and that the evidence all tends to show that they generally disapproved of her construction.

It further appearing in evidence that before the Captain was received from the contractors a gross departure from her original design had been committed, whereby her draught of water was increased about two feet and her freeboard was diminished to a corresponding extent, and that her stability proved to be dangerously small, combined with an area of sail, under those circumstances, excessive. The court deeply regret that if these facts were duly known and appreciated, they were not communicated to the officer in command of the ship, or that, if otherwise, the ship was allowed to be employed in the ordinary service of the Fleet before they had been ascertained by calculation and experience.”

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