Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
was a 78-gun (or 80-gun)
second-rate
In the rating system of the Royal Navy used to categorise sailing warships, a second-rate was a ship of the line which by the start of the 18th century mounted 90 to 98 guns on three gun decks; earlier 17th-century second rates had fewer guns ...
ship of the line
A ship of the line was a type of naval warship constructed during the Age of Sail from the 17th century to the mid-19th century. The ship of the line was designed for the naval tactic known as the line of battle, which depended on the two colu ...
, launched on 25 August 1835 at Pembroke Yard. She was the first of a new type of sailing battleship: a Symondite.
Construction
The ''Vanguard'' was designed by
John Edye
John Edye FRS (7 August 1789 – 1 March 1873)Captain Sir William Symonds. The ''Vanguard'' was the first of a class of eleven. She was ordered from Pembroke Yard in June 1832; HMS ''Collingwood'' was ordered 'as a duplicate frame using the moulds of ''Vanguard'', to test the efficacy of an American scheme whereby duplicate frames were stored for many years.'Lambert, The Last Sailing Battlefleet, p158. ''Vanguard'' was laid down in May 1833; she required 60 skilled men for 16 weeks to set up the frame. She was launched on schedule in August 1835. At the time she was the broadest ship ever built in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
.'' 'Vanguard'' cost £56,983 to build, and a further £20,756 to fit for sea.' Her construction used 3,560 loads of timber and required 186 man-years.Lambert, The Last Sailing Battlefleet, p159.
Characteristics of Symondite warships
Warships designed to the ideas of Captain Sir William Symonds (1782–1856) are known as ''Symondite'' warships, although the adjective has no official use as terminology. His intention was to give the Royal Navy an advantage in speed (under certain weather conditions), allowing it to force action.Lambert, The Last Sailing Battlefleet, p71.
Symondite warships were very broad, and had a sharp 'V'-shaped hull-form. (Preceding designs had a 'U'-shaped hull form.)
* Their wide beam gave them very high stability, which allowed them to carry nearly twice the power of sail as vessels of the old type. Unfortunately the Surveyor's department was understaffed, with the result that their stability was over-done. Symondite warships rolled quickly, heavily and sometimes unevenly. This made them poor gun platforms. The rapid rolling also caused the rigging to wear out more quickly than on previous designs.Brown, Before the Ironclad, p38-41.
* Because Symondite warships got their stability from their great beam, they did not need to carry so much iron
ballast
Ballast is material that is used to provide stability to a vehicle or structure. Ballast, other than cargo, may be placed in a vehicle, often a ship or the gondola of a balloon or airship, to provide stability. A compartment within a boat, ship, ...
as previous designs.
* Their 'V'-shaped hull with its steeply rising floors was inconvenient for carrying stores.Lambert, The Last Sailing Battlefleet, p161.
* They had higher and wider gun decks than preceding designs. This gave the gun crews more space to work in, improving efficiency. It also helped their sailing performance, because they were carrying fewer guns for their size.
* They had an excessively raked stern. In some ships, modifications to their sterns to remedy defects in the original design left "the stern timbers badly arranged, weakly supported and held together with iron straps." The Symondite stern "lacked the defensive strength of the true round stern. There was simply too much glass to offer any protection to the crews of the stern battery in action."
Symondite warships were very sensitive to how they were stowed. If trimmed carefully, they were fast in moderate winds, thought they did not do as well as preceding designs in head seas, or rough seas.
Compared with previous designs, Symondite warships required 19% more loads of wood and 30% more man-hours to build.
Some of the Symondite warships were converted to steam in the 1850s (though not ''Vanguard''). Their 'V'-shaped hull made it difficult to add a steam engine and boilers and to store coal. The extra weight was low in the ship, exacerbating their excess stability, which made their rolling even worse than before. (In fairness, at the time they were designed, it was never anticipated that they would be converted to steam.)
Service Life
''Vanguard'' was commissioned in 1837 by Captain Sir Thomas Fellowes, with the normal picked complement of officers, including
Baldwin Walker
Admiral Sir Baldwin Wake Walker, 1st Baronet, (6 January 1802 – 12 February 1876) was Surveyor of the Navy from 1848 to 1861. and was responsible for the Royal Navy's warship construction programme during the 1850s naval arms race and at th ...
as First Lieutenant and Mr Miller, one of Symonds's favourite sailing masters. The object was clear. Symonds wanted his ships to be tried by men capable of making the best of their qualities... Out in the Mediterranean ''Vanguard'' soon made a name for herself as the fastest ship in the fleet, with the handiness of a frigate when beat out of Grand Harbour
alta
Alta or ALTA may refer to:
Acronyms
* Alt-A, short for Alternative A-paper, is a type of U.S. mortgage
* American Land Title Association, a national trade association representing the land title industry
* American Literary Translators Associatio ...
' At the end of her first three-year commission Captain Fellowes wrote that Vanguard had 'great stability' was 'very easy at sea and works less than ships of her class' and had 'great advantage in all points of sailing.'
On the night of 30 January 1838, ''Vanguard'' was at
Malta
Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
under the command of Captain Sir Thomas Fellowes. The ship's First Lieutenant, C.M.M. Wright, ordered the Assistant Surgeon, Robert Thomas Charles Scott, to stomach-pump a drunken seaman. Scott expressed the medical opinion that a stomach-pump should not be administered. Wright ordered him to give it anyway as a punishment and reminded Scott that it was an order he had received. A short while later Wright ordered Scott to do the same to another seaman. The next morning Scott reported the matter to Commander Baldwin Walker who reported Scott to the Captain for disrespect and disobedience of a lawful order. Captain Fellowes threatened Scott with a
court martial
A court-martial or court martial (plural ''courts-martial'' or ''courts martial'', as "martial" is a postpositive adjective) is a military court or a trial conducted in such a court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of memb ...
and reported him to Sir
William Burnett
Sir William Burnett, KCB, FRS (16 January 1779 – 16 February 1861) was a British physician who served as Physician-General of the Royal Navy.
Early life
Burnett was born in Montrose, Scotland on 16 January 1779 and attended Montrose Gramm ...
, the Physician-General of the Navy. When this affair became public knowledge, an
Admiralty
Admiralty most often refers to:
*Admiralty, Hong Kong
* Admiralty (United Kingdom), military department in command of the Royal Navy from 1707 to 1964
*The rank of admiral
* Admiralty law
Admiralty can also refer to:
Buildings
*Admiralty, Tr ...
Order was issued banning the use of a stomach-pump as a punishment.
Captain David Dunn commanded ''Vanguard'' from 2 April 1843 to August 1843. ''Vanguard'' again served in the Mediterranean (including operations on the coast of Syria in 1840), and off Lisbon. In October 1843 ''Vanguard'' was out of commission at Devonport.Online history of HMS ''Vanguard'' (1835) /ref>
On 4 February 1845, ''Vanguard'' was commissioned by Captain George Wickens Willes, and served in the Channel Squadron, the 1845 and 1846 Evolutionary Squadrons, and in Mediterranean.
In the first trial of the Evolutionary Squadron of 1845, ''Vanguard'' (Captain George Willes) and her sister ''Superb'' (Captain Anwar Lowry Corry) were the slowest battleships in the squadron. The Surveyor (Symonds) thought that they had been badly stowed and needed recoppering. Once this was done they performed well. ''Vanguard's'' captain wrote: 'such an entire change has taken place in her motion at sea, steering and working generally (although she is still deficient in her weights low down) that I can scarcely bring myself to believe she is the same ship.' ''Vanguard'' was refitted after the 1845 trials (as were ''Superb'' and ''Canopus''). In the August 1846 trials, ''Vanguard'' and ''Canopus'' were 'nearly alike in performance, with the former superior in smooth water, and the latter in rough.'Lambert, The Last Sailing Battlefleet, p162. (The significance of ''Canopus'' is that she was regarded as one of the best of the previous type of 84-gun two-deckers.)
In May 1846 Evolutionary Squadron exercised firing the stern batteries. This was a rare occurrence and reflects no credit on any of the two-deckers:
*''Vanguard'' took ten minutes to clear for action and then fired two rounds from each stern gun. However the extreme overhang of the stern prevented the muzzles running clear, with the result that there was a minor fire.
*''Superb'' took 15 minutes to clear for action plus an hour to remove her sashes, and then was able to fire without incident.
*''Canopus'' was excused firing altogether.
Captain Willes died on 26 October 1847. Captain George Frederick Rich commanded ''Vanguard'' in the Mediterranean from 6 November 1847 until ''Vanguard'' paid off in March 1849.
''Vanguard'' did not see service during the Crimean War.
Unlike most members of the ''Vanguard''-class, ''Vanguard'' was not converted to steam.Lambert, Battleships in Transition
Vanguard's last commission was as Coast Guard at Kingston from 18 February 1861 to March 1862, commanded by Commanded by Captain Edmund Heathcote.
''Vanguard'' was renamed ''Ajax'' in 1867, to allow her former name to be given to an ironclad
battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...
then being laid down in the ways. ''Ajax'' (ex-''Vanguard'') was broken up in 1875.
Notes
References
* Brown, David K. ''Before the Ironclad, Development of Ship Design, Propulsion and Armament in the Royal Navy, 1815-60'', published Conway Maritime Press, 1990.
*Fincham, John ''A History of Naval Architecture'', pub Whittaker, 1851, reprint Scolar Press, 1979.
* Lambert, Andrew ''The Last Sailing Battlefleet, Maintaining Naval Mastery 1815-1850'', published Conway Maritime Press, 1991.
* Lambert, Andrew ''Battleships in Transition, the Creation of the Steam Battlefleet 1815-1860'', published Conway Maritime Press, 1984.
*Lavery, Brian (2003) ''The Ship of the Line - Volume 1: The development of the battlefleet 1650-1850''. Conway Maritime Press. .