Maritime Notes and News

This is Dean Calin; in addition to being the founder of the Maritime Music Directory International, I am also the founder, in 2003, of the maritime music vocal group, Bounding Main. Bounding Main was performing together for just one year when they were hired in 2004 by Patti Lock to perform at Kenosha Days of Discovery, a five-day celebration of maritime adventure that included three tall ships in the city harbor. For us, this was a magnificent confirmation of our purpose – to honor the history of maritime music, associated with the age of sail. We joined veteran performers Tom & Chris Kastle and David HB Drake, whom we would come to know well and to entertain with at many, future tall ship events. Between our shows we explored the harbor park, meeting vendors such as Ships of Glass and Linda Anderson Photography. We saw many people waiting for deck tours of the U.S. Brig Niagara out of Erie, Pennsylvania, Milwaukee’s own S/V Denis Sullivan, Bob Marthai’s Windy II from Chicago’s Navy Pier, the Boston Harbor pilot boat, the Highlander Sea and, famously, the Bounty, a Lunenburg-built reproduction for the 1962 Marlon Brando film, Mutiny on the Bounty. We were all rather amazed and star struck by the whole thing. This was our first exposure to real tall ships and it was a great deal to take in. The lines for the tall ships were considerable, but suddenly, there was a break in the line for the Bounty so we clambered aboard! We sought out a deck hand to ask permission to sing aboard her – permission was granted! Decked out in our Elizabethan era clothing we sang in anachronistic delight aboard this 20th century reproduction of an 18th century British armed vessel! The crew and customers seemed to enjoy what we sang almost as much as we loved singing it! The Bounty was the first tall ship that we ever sang upon. We have gone on to perform maritime music across North America and Europe for over two decades and counting. We later learned that our friend, David HB Drake, had been hired, on an emergency basis, to play the shantyman on the Bounty by his old environmental theater friend, Bob Dawson. Drake was doing a deck tour of the Bounty when she was in port in Milwaukee during a tall ship festival there. Surprised to see each other,… Read more »

In the first unqualified defeat of a British naval squadron in history, U.S. Captain Oliver Hazard Perry leads a fleet of nine American ships to victory over a squadron of six British warships at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. The battle was closely contested for hours, and Perry’s flagship Lawrence was reduced to a defenseless wreck. He then transferred to the Niagara and sailed directly into the British line, firing broadsides and forcing the British to surrender. Perry had won a complete victory at the cost of 27 Americans killed and 96 wounded; British casualties were 40 dead and 94 wounded. After the battle, Perry sent a famous dispatch to U.S. General William Henry Harrison that read, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” The Battle of Lake Erie forced the British to abandon Detroit, ensuring U.S. control over Lake Erie and the territorial northwest. Read the full article on History.com

The loss of the side-wheel steamship Lady Elgin was one of Lake Michigan’s most tragic maritime disasters. On September 8, 1860, the ship, returning to Milwaukee from Chicago, sank following a collision nine miles off Winnetka, Illinois. Read the complete article on the Wisconsin Historical Society website.

Sir Robert Dudley (7 August 1574 – 6 September 1649) was an English explorer and cartographer. In 1594, he led an expedition to the West Indies, of which he wrote an account. The illegitimate son of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, he inherited the bulk of the Earl’s estate in accordance with his father’s will, including Kenilworth Castle. In 1603–1605, he tried unsuccessfully to establish his legitimacy in court. After that he left England forever, finding a new existence in the service of the grand dukes of Tuscany. There, he worked as an engineer and shipbuilder, and designed and published Dell’Arcano del Mare (1645–1646), the first maritime atlas to cover the whole world. He was also a skilled navigator and mathematician. In Italy, he styled himself “Earl of Warwick and Leicester”, as well as “Duke of Northumberland”, a title recognized by Emperor Ferdinand II. Read the complete article on Wikipedia.com. A tip of the hat to our European editor, Tony Goodenough, for identifying the subject of this article.

Royal George sank on 29 August 1782 whilst anchored at Spithead off Portsmouth. The ship was intentionally rolled so maintenance could be performed on the hull, but the roll became unstable and out of control; the ship took on water and sank. More than 800 lives were lost, making it one of the most deadly maritime disasters in British territorial waters. Several attempts were made to raise the vessel, both for salvage and because she was a major hazard to navigation in the Solent. In 1782, Charles Spalding recovered fifteen 12-pounder guns using a diving bell of his own design. From 1834 to 1836, Charles and John Deane recovered more guns using a diving helmet they had invented. In 1839 Charles Pasley of the Royal Engineers commenced operations to break up the wreck using barrels of gunpowder. Pasley’s team recovered more guns and other items between 1839 and 1842. In 1840, they destroyed the remaining structure of the wreck in an explosion which shattered windows several miles away in Portsmouth and Gosport. Read the complete article on Wikipedia.com.

Five Spanish ships were lost. The galleass San Lorenzo, flagship of Don Hugo de Moncada, ran aground at Calais and was taken by Howard after murderous fighting between the crew, the galley slaves, the English who eventually killed all Spanish and slaves, and the French, who ultimately took possession of the wreck. The galleons San Mateo and San Felipe drifted away in a sinking condition, ran aground on the island of Walcheren the next day, and were taken by the Dutch. One carrack ran aground near Blankenberge; another foundered. Many other Spanish ships were severely damaged, especially the Portuguese and some Spanish Atlantic-class galleons (including some Neapolitan galleys) which had to bear the brunt of the fighting during the early hours of the battle in desperate individual actions against groups of English ships. The Spanish plan to join with Parma’s army had been defeated and the English had gained some breathing space, but the Armada’s presence in northern waters still posed a great threat to England. Read the complete article on History.com.

On 1st August 1798, Nelson led his fleet into action against the French fleet anchored at the mouth of the Nile in Aboukir Bay, Egypt. In a fierce action, fought in the shallows between the shoreline and the French warships, Nelson almost totally destroyed Napoleon’s naval power in the Mediterranean, leaving him and his expeditionary force stranded in the hostile Egyptian deserts. One fact that is often overlooked about the battle is that Nelson was quite severely wounded – a piece of shrapnel, or rather a splinter from the rail of his flagship, caught him on his forehead, ripping the skin and sending a fleshy flap down over his good eye. For a moment Nelson thought he was blinded, but after being treated soon returned to command the action with a bandaged head, as seen in this illustration below. You can read more about this event on British Battles and the Naval History and Heritage Command website.

Off the coast of Gravelines, France, Spain’s so-called “Invincible Armada” is defeated by an English naval force under the command of Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake. After eight hours of furious fighting, a change in wind direction prompted the Spanish to break off from the battle and retreat toward the North Sea. Its hopes of invasion crushed, the remnants of the Spanish Armada began a long and difficult journey back to Spain. Read the complete article on History.com.

On July 24, 1915, the steamer Eastland overturns in the Chicago River, drowning between 800 and 850 of its passengers who were heading to a picnic. The disaster was caused by serious problems with the boat’s design, which were known but never remedied. The Eastland was owned by the St. Joseph-Chicago Steamship Company and made money ferrying people from Chicago to picnic sites on the shores of Lake Michigan. When the Eastland was launched in 1903, it was designed to carry 650 passengers, but major construction and retrofitting in 1913 supposedly allowed the boat to carry 2,500 people. That same year, a naval architect presciently told officials that the boat needed work, stating unless structural defects are remedied to prevent listing, there may be a serious accident. [Please note that while the MMDI focus is normally on events that transpired during the age of sail, this particular event is, literally, close to home for this editor. — Dean Calin.] Read the full article on History.com. Also, Wikipedia has a comprehensive article on the S.S. Eastland.

15 July 1783 The Marquis de Jouffroy d’Abbans demonstrated his experimental steamship, the Pyroscaphe, on the river Saone at Lyon. An early form of paddle steamer, the ship managed to travel up the river for 15 minutes before breaking down. Read the complete article on Wikipedia.com.

James Cook’s third and final voyage took the route from Plymouth via Tenerife and Cape Town to New Zealand and the Hawaiian Islands, and along the North American coast to the Bering Strait. At Kealakekua Bay, a number of quarrels broke out between the Europeans and Hawaiians culminating in Cook’s death in a violent exchange on 14 February 1779. The command of the expedition was assumed by Charles Clerke who tried in vain to find the Northwest Passage before his own death from tuberculosis. Under the command of John Gore the crews returned to a subdued welcome in London in October 1780. Read the complete article on Wikipedia.com.

In 1970, after Great Britain had been abandoned for 33 years, Sir Jack Arnold Hayward, OBE (1923–2015) paid for the vessel to be raised and repaired enough to be towed north through the Atlantic back to the United Kingdom, and returned to the Bristol dry dock where she had been built 127 years earlier. Hayward was a prominent businessman, developer, philanthropist and owner of the English football club Wolverhampton Wanderers. Now listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, Great Britain is a visitor attraction and museum ship in Bristol Harbour, with between 150,000 and 200,000 visitors annually. She was the largest passenger ship in the world from 1845 to 1853. She was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859), for the Great Western Steamship Company’s transatlantic service between Bristol and New York City. While other ships had been built of iron or equipped with a screw propeller, Great Britain was the first to combine these features in a large ocean-going ship. She was the first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic Ocean, which she did in 1845, in 14 days. Read the complete article in Wikipedia.com [Article by Anthony Goodenough.]