Of course we are back this week with the loss of the Titanic, in 1912, but it was not, by any means, the largest loss of life in this particular week in maritime history.

14: The most famous shipwreck, that of RMS Titanic (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) on its maiden voyage, occurred on the night of April 14-15, 1912. The “RMS” in the ship’s name refers to the fact that Titanic was designated a “Royal Mail Ship,’ providing specific service in delivering British mail to and from North America. Titanic, of course, did not have enough lifeboats for all of the passengers who were on board. The disaster did lead to significant safety changes associated with travel at sea, particularly around carrying sufficient lifeboats, and the required use of radios on passenger ships. 

For more on Titanic, see the following websites:

• Encyclopedia Titanica
• Royal Museums Greenwich’s RMS Titanic Facts
• National Museums Liverpool’s Titanic page

April 16: The German troop transport ship MV Goya (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) was sunk in 1945 by the Soviet submarine L-3 (Wikipedia, ShipIndex), leading to one of the greatest losses of life at sea. Goya was built in Norway in 1940 and seized by the German government and incorporated into the Kriegsmarine. In 1945, as part of Operation Hannibal, Goya sailed from Poland to Germany, to evacuate over 7000 citizens, soldiers, and sailors. The ship was attacked from the air by Soviet bombers, suffering only minimal damage, but then was spotted by a minelayer submarine. Goya was slowed by engine problems on one of its convoy vessels, giving L-3 an opportunity to fire four torpedoes at the ship, two of which hit. Goya sank immediately, and only 183 on board survived.

April 18: In 1990, the wreck of the five-masted schooner Cora F. Cressey (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Cora F. Cressey was launched in 1902, at the Percy and Small Shipyard in Bath, Maine, and was one of the largest wooden ships ever built. After retiring from service in 1928, the ship spent ten years as a floating nightclub in Massachusetts and Maine. Eventually, Cressey was intentionally sunk to act as a breakwater near Bremen, Maine. Portions of the vessel are on display at the Maine Maritime Museum, which is at the original Percy & Small Shipyard, where Cressey was originally built.

April 20: The 1657 Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife took place during the Anglo-Spanish War of 1654-60, in the Canary Islands, in an attempt to take the Spanish treasure fleet from the Americas. The fleet had already arrived in Tenerife and was safe from the English navy, but Admiral Robert Blake succeeded in destroying most Spanish ships in the harbor, without taking on any serious damage to his fleet.

Here are some other interesting bits in the maritime world this week:

48° North, a newsletter of maritime happenings in the Pacific Northwest, has a great story about the reuse of the 115-year-old mast of 1907 schooner Martha. When Martha needed a new mast, they turned to Northwest Maritime’s boat shop, where manager there suggested that the mast be used to build a new boat. There’s much more to it, and you should read the whole story.

At the Hudson River Maritime Museum, in Kingston, NY, their solar-powered tour boat, Solaris, will begin its 2025 season on May 2. Tickets are now on sale/sail — if you’re in the area, be sure to book a trip. (I think I’ll book a ticket for May 3, so if you’re around, let me know!)

For more about these ships, check out ShipIndex.org. And let us know if you have events that you think we should include!

We look at a number of ship losses this week, including the most famous one.

April 7: Japanese battleship Yamato (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) was sunk in 1945, during Operation Ten-Go, in World War II. Yamato was launched in 1940, and at the time was the most powerfully built battleship ever, along with its sister-ship, Musashi (Wikipedia, ShipIndex). Yamato served as the flagship of Japan’s combined fleet, and in 1942 Admiral Yamamoto directed the Battle of Midway from Yamato’s bridge. Operation Ten-Go was a Japanese plan to attack Allied forces that had invaded Okinawa. Yamato was to be beached near Okinawa to attack Allied forces until it was destroyed. But through codebreaking, the Allies knew of the plans for Operation Ten-Go, and Allied forces attacked Yamato before it could approach Okinawa. Allied forces battered the ship throughout the day, and in the afternoon the ship finally sank after an incredible explosion of Yamato’s magazines, creating a mushroom cloud that was visible 100 miles away. Of 3,332 crewmembers, about 3,055 were lost. Yamato has remained a significant symbolic touchstone in Japanese culture.

April 10: USS Thresher (Wikipedia, Shipindex), a nuclear-powered attack submarine, was lost off the US eastern seaboard in 1963, while doing deep-diving tests. All on board were lost. 

April 10: RMS Titanic began its maiden voyage from Southampton, in 1912. The next day, Titanic arrived at Cork, Ireland, then set sail for New York, and movie history.   

April 11: SMS Blücher (Wikipedia, ShipIndex), the last German armored cruiser, was launched in 1908. Blücher was lost at the Battle of Dogger Bank, in 1915, during World War I, with the loss of perhaps as many as 1000 sailors. 

For more about these ships, check out ShipIndex.org. And let us know if you have events that you think we should include!

Storms play an important part this week, from the nearly-always-stormy Cape Horn, in 1840, to the sinking of a Newfoundlander sealing ship in 1915.

March 30: In 1881, SS Aberdeen (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) sailed on her first voyage, from London to Melbourne, via Cape Town, then to Shanghai, and back to London via the Suez Canal. Aberdeen was special because it was the first ship to be successfully powered by a triple expansion steam engine, a major improvement on the two-cylinder compound engines. In 1906 Aberdeen was sold to the Ottoman government and renamed Halep, then was sunk by a British submarine in World War I, while serving as a Turkish troopship. 

March 31: A storm off the coast of Newfoundland in 1914 caused the sinking of the SS Southern Cross (Wikipedia, ShipIndex). Southern Cross was launched in 1896 and served with the Southern Cross Expedition to Antarctica in 1898 to 1900, and was the first expedition to spend the winter on the Antarctic mainland. After that voyage, Southern Cross served in sealing hunts from 1901 until its loss with all hands in 1914. 

April 1: The Battle of Okinawa began in 1945, as the end of World War II approached. USS West Virginia (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) had been bombed and seriously damaged during the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Navy mess attendant Doris Miller was on board West Virginia at the time; he was sent to man an anti-aircraft gun despite having no training, and eventually was awarded a Navy Cross for his actions. In 1945, at the start of the Battle of Okinawa, West Virginia sat just off the island for several days, supporting the invasion through ground bombardment and illuminating the invasion space. One kamikaze aircraft managed to evade West Virginia’s defences and crash into the ship, causing the deaths of four sailors.

April 3: Sailing to San Francisco around Cape Horn in 1849, on board Croton (ShipIndex), Hiram Chittenden drew a picture of the landscapes he saw in Le Maire Strait, at the eastern edge of Cape Horn. The San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park has an image of this drawing, plus some description of it, in a blog post from 2012. As a born- and bred-Seattleite, I of course recognize the name of Hiram Chittenden – as you might, if you’ve ever visited the Ballard Locks, more accurately known as the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, reflecting his important work in Seattle for the Army Corps of Engineers from 1906 to 1908.

April 4: In 1865, President Lincoln visited Richmond, Virginia, aboard a converted sidewheel steamship, USS Malvern (Wikipedia, ShipIndex), after Richmond was taken by Union troops. Malvern served as a Confederate blockade runner under the name William G. Hewes, then Ella and Annie. As Ella and Annie, the ship was captured by USS Niphon in 1863, was renamed Malvern, and added to the Union Navy. After the end of the Civil War, Malvern ended up back with its original owner, and original name, William G. Hewes.

For more about these ships, check out ShipIndex.org. And let us know if you have events that you think we should include!

The ShipIndex team is traveling through Europe for a few weeks. I had initially planned to post one little maritime thing each day, but that has, alas fallen by the wayside. It’s certainly not for a lack of maritime-related items I’ve seen, but more a lack of time sitting at the computer, rather than exploring exploring exploring.

So, now that I’m on a two-hour train ride in France, perhaps I can write some entries of particular maritime relevance.

About a week ago (ten days? four days? Who knows when you’re traveling) my wife and I took my son (11 years old) and nephew (12) to the Royal Museums at Greenwich, home of the National Maritime Museum, the Royal Observatory, the Cutty Sark, and the Queen’s House.

As an aside, we started the day with a visit to the Sky Garden, the viewing platform at the top of the Fenchurch Street building known as the “walkie-talkie building”. This a new place to visit in London, and it’s not super-easy to do, because you need to make reservations in advance if you want to go up there for free. I think you can also go up if you agree to buy some food at the cafe, and I was surprised to see that the prices are quite reasonable, so that could also be a good option. The views from here are great – and maritime, too, if you consider the views of the Thames, and of HMS Belfast, and Tower Bridge, and more on the river.

But then we went on to Greenwich, where we visited the Cutty Sark and saw the production of “Against Captain’s Orders” at the National Maritime Museum.

I love what the folks at Cutty Sark have done with the ship in its recent renovation. I have read long-time ship enthusiasts express dismay at the work, but I honestly don’t know why. The glass around the ship shows where the waterline was – something that isn’t easily done when a ship is permanently out of water. The new event space under the ship, at the bottom of the drydock, is really impressive. The ability to see what the ship is like from underneath is just great. You get an idea of the size of the thing, and you can see what sort of work went into creating this ship long ago. And the idea of creating such a remarkable and unique event space is also great – any historic ship needs some way of generating revenue for any of the work it plans to do, so I see nothing wrong with this. Especially when it is such an amazing layout.

We then went on to the 4pm performance of “Against Captain’s Orders”, a production by Punchdrunk Entertainment for the National Maritime Museum. I don’t know anything about who put this together, but they did a great, great thing. I’m also not going to tell you much of anything about the content of the production itself, since that would ruin the “Adventure”.

It’s a very active performance; you spend time running from room to room. You have to have a child (6-12 years old) to attend – so it was a good thing I had my son and nephew with me. I made it clear to them that they were simply my ticket to see the show, but they did enjoy it a great deal. It can be a bit scary for the youngest kids, though we saw one of the ‘curators’ give a young girl a small electric candle, and we wondered if they’d done that because they thought she might be a bit scared. The performance really does adapt to the audience.

The performance uses important pieces from the museum’s collections to encourage kids to think about the stories behind them, and how they might create their own Adventures (I’ll say we were on board HMS Adventure during the experience) from items of historic significance and historic value.

I honestly think every museum curator, especially at living history museums, should find a child to take to this show, before it closes. I think they’d all come away with crazy new ideas about how to engage kids with the unique or special items they have in their own collection. Even more so, theater groups should see what Punchdrunk is doing, and figure out how they could propose or create such productions for museums or other cultural institutions in their community. The level of detail that appeared here was pretty unreal; we didn’t have anywhere close to enough time to absorb all of it, or pick up all the in-jokes on the walls.

The entire show was about 45-50 minutes long; the only change I would have liked to see would have been some better conclusion, where we could applaud or somehow recognize the two ‘curators’ (really actors) – they sort of left and we didn’t realize that they weren’t coming back. So I’d say to them here, if I could reach them, that the performance really was great, and they did a fantastic job of making it so.

All in all, it was a great experience and I hope its model can be used in many other locations in the future.