I’ve always thought the Hungarian pisztoly FEG 37M Femaru was one of the sleeper Axis WWII-era pistols when it came to deals, and have been fortunate enough to pick them up in recent years for as low as $400, still in excellent condition.
I mean look at that gun– picked up for $380 just three years ago, complete with Royal Hungarian Army marks.
Of course, German-marked martial examples– they were popular with the Luftwaffe– run much more, and non-import marked “bring backs” earn a premium, especially if they have paperwork.
For illustration, I noticed this beautiful circa 1943 specimen at the recent Milestone auction:
Graded “near-pristine,” this recently discovered, fresh-to-the-market gun came to Milestone together with two magazines with matching serial numbers, and capture paperwork dated 2 October 1945 and made out to Lieutenant Colonel Richard C Dickinson.
In its first public appearance, the above pistol exceeded its $3,000-$5,000 estimate to reach $7,500, proving M37s may not be a sleeper any longer.
Sorry, am on the road in North Alabama at an industry event so we have a shorter than normal WW this week. Will return to full-sized installments next week when I have returned home to my “more defensible location.”
101 Years Ago Today: A British-designed American-built Felixstowe F5L flying boat underway to making spotting practice with battleships. The mightly new U.S. Navy dreadnoughts, USS Oklahoma (Battleship No. 37), and USS Florida (Battleship No. 30) are in the background. Photographed March 16, 1921.
U.S. Navy photograph, 80-HAN-53-16, now in the collections of the National Archives.
With an impressive 103-foot, 9.75-inch, wingspan (keep in mind a WWII PBY had a span of 104 feet, just a piddly 2.5-inches longer), the F5L was a huge albatross of a seaplane for its era. Capable of spanning over 800 miles on her pair of Liberty V12 engines, her four-man crew was both the eyes of the fleet and capable of dealing damage if needed, with the provision for bombs and two machine guns.
They would be used to help in the bombing and sinking of the captured German battleship SMS Ostfriesland.
From a design by John Cyril Porte, developed at the Seaplane Experimental Station at Felixstowe (England), the F5L first flew in November 1918, just too late for the Great War. In all, just over 200 were built by Curtiss, Canadian Aeroplanes (later bought by the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1919) and by the U.S. Naval Aircraft Factory (NAF) in Philadelphia. The F5L remained in service with the U.S. Navy until the late 1920s when they were replaced by the more advanced NAF PN series flying boats, although it survived with the Brazilain and Argentine Navies and as a mail carrier into the early days of WWII.
The hull of an F5L endures in the Smithsonian while the history of the USS Florida and Oklahoma, who outlived this species of lumbering flying boat in U.S. service, is much better known.
Formed as part of the old Royal Flying Corps in February 1917, today’s No. 100 Squadron RAF has an impressive history that includes four battle honors for the Great War and was the last squadron to land from a combat mission before the Armistice was signed in 1918.
The squadron’s original, and very distinctive, red flag, bearing a skull and crossbones, was apparently liberated from a French bordello in 1918 by one of those daring young flyboys, then embellished with the squadron name and the motto “Blood and Bones.”
As a night bomber unit over the Western Front just 15 years after the aeroplane first flew, you had to have a certain sense of humor.
This relic was carried with the squadron as late as February 1942, at which point the squadron was deployed to Singapore and flew their hopelessly obsolete Vildebeest Mark III torpedo bombers against the Japanese, part of the 10 battle honors earned by the squadron for WWII.
Vickers Vildebeest Mark IIs, K2918, and K2921, of ‘A’ Flight, No. 100 (TB) Squadron, at RAF Seletar, southeast of Singapore, 1939. IWM HU 59786. Roy Mager photographer.
With its aircraft destroyed in the Japanese advance, and its personnel either killed or turned into POWS, the circa 1918 Bone and Brains flag disintegrated while being looked after by a Flight Lieutenant Trillwood, a victim of the hellish conditions along the Irrawaddy.
For the past 30 years, No. 100 Squadron has been flying Hawker Siddeley Hawks, first at RAF Finningley then RAF Leeming and that chapter is coming to an end. The RAF has decided that all Hawk T1s, other than those flown by the Red Arrow demonstration team, would be retired by 31 March 2022.
Last week, RAF Leeming debuted the farewell tail flash on Hawk XX221, depicting the old No. 100 “Blood and Bones” flag.
Check out these beautiful images, captured by French photographer and Great War military officer Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud in 1917-18. They have not been colorized but were made with an early color photo process known as autochrome
Flag of a battalion of Chasseurs à Pied, Alsace, 1917, held by a stack of rifle bayonets. Note four Médailles Militaires, a Croix de Guerre with palm, and a Légion d’honneur.
Flag and decorations of the 152e RI (régiment d’infanterie),: four Croix de Guerre with palm (cited in the order of the army), a Croix de Guerre with a star (cited in the order of the division), and a fourragère military medal. Note the Berthier rifles.
The pennant given by the city of Gérardmer to the 152e RI (régiment d’infanterie), adorned with the Croix de Guerre with four palms and a star). Tracing its lineage to 1794, the regiment was known as the Diables Rouges, or Red Devils, from a supposed reference by the Germans to its red trousers in 1914. Its motto is “Ne pas Subir!” which roughly translates to “never surrender” and the unit is still around, having recently added honors to its flag for Afghanistan.
9 January 1918, “a soldier of the 12th Battalion [aka Hull Sportsmen, or 3rd Hull Pals], East Yorkshire Regiment, on sentry duty on the firestep of a snow-covered trench in the Arleux sector near Roclincourt, France.”
Part of Kitchener’s Pals Battalions of the “New Armies,” the Hull Sportsmen picked up its nickname easy enough as it was originally a service battalion formed at Hull on 2 September 1914– during the Battle of the Marne– by Lord Nunburnholme and the East Riding TF Association. Also known as the Hull Tradesmen’s Battalion, it joined the 10th Battalion, East Yorkshire under orders of 92nd Brigade, 31st Division, and shipped out for Egypt in late 1915, just missing the joy that was Gallipoli.
More needed on the Western Front than in the push against the Ottomans in Palestine, it moved to France in March 1916 and took part in the butchery that was the Somme followed by the Arras Offensive in 1917.
The Medical Officer (of the Royal Army Medical Corps attached to the 12th (Service) Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment (92nd Brigade, 31st Division)) bandaging the face wound of a man of his battalion in the line in the Arleux sector near Roclincourt[Arras], 9 January 1918. Imperial War Museum image Q11545
Suffering extremely heavy casualties, the Hull Sportsmen were disbanded on 8 February 1918, roughly a month after the above image was snapped. Its survivors who could still serve were folded into other units as replacements while those that couldn’t were sent back home.
“Sleeping In.” A Sailor occupies his hammock in the broadside gun casemate of a large U.S. Navy warship, circa the mid-1910s. The original image, copyrighted by E. Muller Jr., from N. Moser, New York, is printed on postcard (AZO) stock. Donation of Charles R. Haberlein Jr., 2008. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 106268
With this week closing out the year, we are taking a break from the normal WW coverage and, in a salute to the sleepy final days of 2021, are looking briefly at hammocks in naval use.
Apparently picked up by sailors after Columbus came to the New World and saw Awawak Indians lounging in the easy-going beds slung between trees, the Royal Navy began using hammocks as early as the 1590s, making them standard across the fleet by 1629, an upgrade from sleeping on a plank or sea chest.
Sailors stowed their hammocks when not needed in a way that they offered a modicum of protection from shrapnel in combat and would easily break free and serve as flotation devices should the ship be lost.
Man swimming with hammock, 1879
The disposition of the crew’s sleeping spaces aboard HMS Bedford, a 74 gun ship of the line, in 1775. Sailors’ hammocks are in blue, the Marines are in red– closer to the officer’s berthing and captain’s cabin. Via the Royal Museums Greenwich.
Enlisted personnel which included petty officers slept in canvas hammocks slung on the berth deck. When suspended, this canvas formed a receptacle for a mattress and blanket; when not in use, the canvas was wrapped tightly around the bedding and bound with a lashing and stowed in the nettings in clear weather and below when for any reason, such as rain, they could not be taken on deck. During his first year (Regs. of 1818) a man was allowed one mattress and two blankets.
From the 1800s through WWII, this meant the average Sailor learned the “Lash Up” that included carrying their hammock along with their seabag, taking the assigned netting with them when transferred ashore, or being sent to the infirmary or sickbay. Their issued hammock even remained their property in death as it served as a funeral shroud for their burial at sea, if required.
Naval Training Station, Great Lakes, Illinois. Recruits learning how to lash up a hammock, circa the World War I era. Color tinted postcard, published by S. Gold, Naval Station Photographer, North Chicago, Illinois. A facsimile of the reverse of the original postcard is filed with this image. Description: Courtesy of Commander Donald J. Robinson, USN(Ret), 1983. NH 101219-KN
Sailors in barracks 1917. Note the lashed up hammocks to the right
The use of hammocks even gave rise to the term “Trice Up,” in nautical lore, meaning to make your rack as the hammocks had a trice or hook to secure it to the bulkhead or wall. Hence the term “All hands heave out and trice up.” Or jump out of your rack and make it, allowing compartment cleaners to sweep and swab. The term endured even after canvas racks replaced swinging hammocks.
1899 USS Olympia crew three sailors relaxing in their quarters, one man is in a hammock Frances Benjamin Johnson photo LOC 2015647057
Airing hammocks (U.S.S. New York)
Siesta on the Focsle 1909 snoozing sailors on the OLYMPIA’s focsle during the Naval Academy summer cruises. At right, Hammocks and blankets are being aired on the lifelines.
USS New Hampshire (built as a ship of the line, then became a storeship, later renamed Granite State in 1904 to free her name up for Battleship #25), sailors below deck in hammocks. Photographed by Detroit Publishing Company, probably 1904. LC-DIG-DET-4a30637
USS Maine (ACR-1): Arrangement of Hammocks Berth Deck Plan. National Archives Identifier: 167817728
USS Maine (ACR-1): Stowage of Hammocks – Main Deck. National Archives Identifier: 100382280
U.S. Navy protected cruiser, USS San Francisco (C 5), stowing hammocks. Detroit Publishing Company, 1890-1912. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
USS Maine (BB-10). Packing hammocks, August 1916. George C. Bain Collection, Lot-10391. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. LC-B2-3944-13
U.S.S. New York, taking a nap over gun 1897 hammock
U.S.S. Brooklyn, hammocks on deck
U.S.S. Massachusetts, on the berth deck hammocks
U.S.S. Brooklyn, good-night hammocks note there was little to no segregation below decks
Hammock and bedding inspection sailors Delaware class battleship, USS Florida
“Recruits looking over their new home.” These men are being transferred to a battleship of the Pennsylvania class (BB-38/39), having completed their preliminary training. The canvas bundles at their feet contain bedding, hammock, and clothes, 1 February 1918. Photographer: Underwood and Underwood. National Archives Identifier: 45512294. Local Identifier: 165-WW-333A-11.
Hammock inspection on the forecastle of the USS Oklahoma (BB-37) sometime in 1916
Hammocks even came to the aid of a drifting submarine, with the early “pig boat” USS R-14(SS-91)having to literally sail home in 1921 after the sub ran out of fuel during a SAR mission, leaving the salty crew to craft a sail out of canvas battery covers, hammocks, officer’s bed frames, and their radio mast to make it back to Hawaii.
The use of hammocks was very much “old-school” Navy.
Steve McQueen as Machinist’s Mate 1st Class Jake Holman in The Sand Pebbles toting his seabag, lashed with hammock.
Starting in 1924 with the retrofitting of the crew’s berthing spaces on the recently-completed battleship USS California (BB-44), hammocks started phasing out in favor of triple-decker folding sleeping racks made from rope laced canvas on a pipe frame with each topped with a 3-inch mattress supported by chains attached to the bulkhead. Such bunks had been standard on several early submarine classes such as the K-class, which served in the Great War.
Triple decker folding racks that you could still “hot bunk” with after flipping the mattress and putting your sheet on the flipside. Seen on the 1930s-vintage USCGC Taney, a 327-foot gunboat built to the same rough design as the USS Erie (PG-50) class. Note the individual lockers.
This luxury was slow to expand to the rest of the fleet. For instance, it wasn’t until about 1940 that the Great War-era battleship USS Texas (BB-35) ditched hammocks for racks and reportedly the USS Tennessee (BB-43) never got the upgrade, still having hammocks at Pearl Harbor and continuing to use them through VJ Day despite the fact the old battlewagon received a nearly year-long modernization in 1942.
This meant that many Bluejackets went to WWII still swaying from hammocks at sea. The art of “clewing,” packing, and stowing a hammock was essential knowledge.
Hammock layout for inspection onboard USS Saratoga (CV 3), April 24, 1933. Note the name tapes on each item. Official U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-221144
Naval Air Station, Seattle, Washington. Lashing a hammock for duty, in Barracks 184, 26 April 1944. Men are (left to right): Coxswain Third Class William Howard Trice; Seaman Second Class James Armstrong; Coxswain Third Class LeRoy Young, Master at Arms; Seaman First Class Clifford Summers. Note Young’s rating badge and Master at Arms shield. 80-G-233270
Even new construction continued the trend, with circa 1937-40 constructed Sims-class destroyers and 1936-39 Benham-class tin cans still including a few hammocks in their berthing although almost all enlisted had rack. The preceding Bagley-class destroyers, completed in 1937, had 32 hammocks in mess spaces to augment 183 crew berths.
USS Rhind (DD-404), a Benham-class destroyer commissioned at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard on 10 November 1939, still showing nine hammocks in her pre-war final book of plans before she would add 100 Sailors to her crew to man increased AAA and ASW suites for the upcoming conflict. The ship earned four battle stars during World War II and was scuttled off Kwajalein, 22 March 1948 following the Crossroads Atomic bomb tests. National Archives Identifier:167818528
It was only with ALNAV 278-45, (Navy Department Bulletin, 30 Sept. 45-1283), effective 15 October 1945, that mattresses and hammocks were decreed to be the property of the shore establishment or ship, rather than the Sailor issued them. Hammocks themselves had stopped being issued to new recruits the year before.
ALNAV 278-45, via the Nov 1945 issue of “All Hands”
By the end of 1947, with ancient war wagons like Tennessee mothballed, hammocks were quietly removed from inventory. It should be noted, however, that the Coast Guard continued to use them well into the 1950s, with New London underclassmen sailing on the training ship USCGC Eagle,still swinging from hammocks while on their annual Mids summer cruise.
Meanwhile, the British continued to use the devices for a stretch longer, with the training ship HMS Fife (D20), a repurposed County-class destroyer, rigging hammocks for embarked cadets in one of the mess areas as late as a 1986 cruise and “may have been the last men of the Royal Navy to sleep in that fashion.”
New Zealand sailors learning how to sling hammocks in HMS Philomel c1938.
Convoy, cruiser HMS Hermione (74)’s ship’s cat, sleeps in a hammock whilst members of the crew look on
Hammocks rigged on Dido class cruiser for accommodations on HMNZS Royalist, c1958
Still, that is not to say that the devices remained in limited use in the U.S. Navy for the past few generations since Truman dropped the A-bombs. The practice unofficially continued on submarines through the early 2000s on the old Sturgeon-class submarines, with some junior enlisted bubbleheads preferring to “rig nets” in out-of-the-way compartments rather than hot bunk in racks.
For more on the early life of sailors at sea and their personal gear, check out What’s in Your Seabagby James L. Leuci, MCPO, USN(Ret.) as well as the 175-page thesis Hammocks: A Maritime Tool by Michele Panico.
Donation of the Montana Historical Society. Collection of Philip Barbour, Jr., 1958. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 86250 click to big up 1000×787
Back to our regular Warship Wednesday format next week.
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Recruiting poster for British Army shows four Army units, Hussars, Highlanders, Infantry, and the Army Service Corps. Of note, the Highlanders are carrying the latest Short Magazine Lee-Enfield rifles. Drawings of soldiers in uniform by Ernest Ibbetson and John McNeill. Published by Gale & Polden, Ltd, Printers, Aldershot, March 1914.
Official caption: “British and German officers meeting in No-Man’s Land during the unofficial ‘Christmas truce,’ Dec. 25, 1914. British troops from the Northumberland Yeomanry (Hussars), 7th Division, Bridoux-Rouge Banc Sector.”
City of Vancouver Archives, Photo Credit W.J. Moore
Here we see, some 100 years ago this month, the fine early Royal Navy heavy cruiser and “commerce raider hunter” of the Hawkins class, HMS Raleigh, visiting Vancouver, British Columbia. As a scholar of naval history– or else, why would you ever be on this page– you’d think you would have heard and seen much more of this beautiful warship before this post. Well, there is a good reason for that as Raleigh would have a short career indeed.
The five cruisers of the Hawkins class were large for any era, pushing over 12,500 tons (full) on a 605-foot long hull with a 65-foot beam, giving them a slender 1:9.3 length-to-beam ratio. Generating 60,000 shp on four geared steam turbines fed by 10 coal-fired/oil-boosted boilers, they were rated for 30 knots, still a respectable speed these days. Their armor scheme was light, running just 3-inches at its thickest, while their armament was fairly impressive, made up of seven BL 7.5-inch Mk VI singles and a battery of torpedo tubes along with secondary and supporting guns.
Intended for anti-merchant cruiser and trade protection roles, they were ordered in 1915, at a time when the Royal Navy was still smarting after chasing down wily German vessels like the light cruisers SMS Emden and SMS Königsberg and commerce-raiding converted freighters such as SMS Möwe and SMS Meteor. The light armor, fast speed, and long legs of the Hawkins class made sense against such a foe. After all, they were a good eight knots faster than the comparatively-sized armored cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau— the most heavily armed ships the Royal Navy fought in the Great War outside of European waters– which had a much better armor scheme than Hawkins and slightly heavier guns (21 cm SK L/40s) albeit with a shorter range (10.1 mi at +30° for the German guns vs 12 mi on the British guns at the same elevation).
While four of the five were completed just after the end of the Great War, in a period where German surface raiders were extinct, the class was still an influencer on future cruiser design.
The construction of these ships had far-reaching repercussions. They were the direct cause of Britain’s endorsing the 10,000-ton, 8-inch treaty cruiser, a new type of warship that ultimately proved something of a failure. The Hawkins provided the basis for the “County” classes and thus gave the British a head start in the development of the heavy cruiser.
The ships of the class are sometimes called the “Elizabethans” as they were named for famed English naval commanders, courtiers, privateers, and explorers of that period (Sir John Hawkins, Sir William Cavendish, Lord Howard of Effingham, Sir Martin Frobisher, and Sir Walter Raleigh) whose names were often better remembered in the New World than the old. Speaking of which, the first warship named after Raleigh, the first to attempt the establishment of an English settlement in North America, was actually American: a 131-foot 32-gun fifth-rate that was one of the original 13 fighting ships authorized by the Continental Congress on 13 December 1775.
Sail Plan of the Frigate Raleigh built at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1776. Copyright 1929 by C.G. Davis. Copied from drawing in book “Ships of the Past.” NH 2020
Commanded during the Revolutionary War by the famed John Barry, an Irishman who was No. 7 on the first list of captains begun by Congress, Raleigh was engaged in a nine-hour running fight with three Royal Navy ships in 1778 and, abandoned by her crew after she was run ashore, was refloated by the British and commissioned as HMS Raleigh, serving up the curious twist of being the first ship with that name in the Royal Navy. Of further curiosity, the colonial frigate endures on the flag and seal of the state of New Hampshire.
The second HMS Raleigh was an 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop active from 1806 to 1839 while the third was a 50-gun fourth-rate that had her short career ended in 1857 when she was reefed.
The new 50-gun fourth-rate HMS Raleigh, circa 1850 off Portsmouth, by artist Robert Strickland Thomas (1787–1853). The old hulk of Britannia is visible inside the harbor. Photo credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London http://www.artuk.org/artworks/hms-raleigh-175747
The fourth HMS Raliegh was never completed while the fifth, a “sheathed” iron-hulled screw frigate with a hermaphrodite sailing rig and gave lots of detached colonial service in the last quarter of the 19th century. Here, her figurehead with Sir Walter depicted, via the collection of the RMG.
This leaves our HMS Raleigh as the sixth such vessel in the Royal Navy.
Meet the cruiser Raleigh
Laid down in Scotland at William Beardmore & Company, Dalmuir on 4 October 1916, as the flower of Britain’s youth was drowning in the Somme, HMSRaleigh‘s construction was slow-rolled, only launching in 1919 and commissioned in July 1921.
Built to a modified design, Raleigh carried 12 boilers rather than 10 and Brown-Curtis turbines rather than the Parsons installed on Hawkins, boosting her shp from 60K to 70K, making her capable of clocking 31 knots.
The spanking new cruiser was soon designated the flagship of VADM Sir William Christopher Pakenham, head of North America and West Indies Station. Commander of the 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron at Jutland, ironically his great-great-uncle was Edward Pakenham, the highest-ranking British officer ever killed in military service in North America, felled at the Battle of New Orleans.
With that, HMS Raleigh was off to her first duty station, making extensive visits throughout the Americas in late 1921 through most of 1922. Her first landfall in the Americas was on 11 August 1921, in Bermuda.
HMS Raleigh, likely along the Canadian coast, 1921
December 1921, at Vancouver. According to her logs, she was at the Canadian port from 27 December 1921- 9 January 1922. City of Vancouver Archives, Photo Credit W.J. Moore
Operation of Panama Canal HMS Raleigh in Upper West Chamber, Gatun Locks Feb 18, 1922. “In both number of ships and amount of tolls collected,” a record was set in the Canal by Raleigh that day, with the cruiser and 18 merchant vessels clearing with tolls of $79,808.50 paid. Panama Canal Company photo via the National Archives. National Archives Identifier: 100996554
Raleigh at the Washington Navy Yard, Note the detail on her 7.5-inch turrets, Carley floats, and her gunnery clock on the mast. Harris & Ewing, photographer, taken 29 May 1922. According to her log, she hosted the British Ambassador, Lord Geddes, and President Harding during her visit to D.C. Of interest, Geddes was a primary negotiator of the Washington Navy Limits Treaty that was signed that year. LOC LC-DIG-hec-31715
Same photographer, day as the above, LC-DIG-hec-42320
Rowing crew of the battleship USS Delaware racing a crew from HMS Raleigh, Washington Navy Yard, 3 June 1922. Via LOC.
On 8 August 1922, Raleigh, in heavy fog, ran aground at L’Anse Amour, Newfoundland, with the high winds pushing her into the rocks and eventually tearing a 260-foot gash in her hull.
3.24pm: Altered course 360º. Ran into fog. Commenced sounding 3.37pm: Land ahead & on Port bow. Reduced to eight knots 3.38pm: Sighted breakers on Starboard bow. Full speed astern. Hard a-starboard. Sounded Collision Stations 3.39pm: Grounded 3.40pm: Stopped engines. Ship bumping heavily 3.41pm: Hard a port. Ship’s stern swinging to Eastward. Full astern starboard 3.43pm: Stop Starboard Full ahead Port. Engines as requisite to prevent stern swinging on rocks 3.49pm: Finally stopped engines. Position 262º – 4.8 cables from Amour Point Light. Heading 292º. Hard aground on starboard bilge and bumping heavily 4.07pm: Let go Port anchor. Cutter & crew washed ashore on rocks 4.15pm: Two lines ashore by Coston gun. Commenced abandoning ship by lines & Carley Floats 8.00pm: Ship abandoned
Sadly, during the evacuation of her crew to shore, 11 Tars perished in the cold water.
BASHFORD, Herbert, Stoker 1c, SS 123275 EFFARD, Edward P, Stoker Petty Officer, 303078 FIELD, Silas, Stoker 1c, K 59500 FISHER, George, Stoker 1c, SS 120369 LLOYD, John E, Stoker Petty Officer, 306551 PETTET, Pat, Able Seaman, J 42323 SOWDEN, William J, Leading Stoker, K 20564 THORNHILL, George M, Stoker 1c, SS 122759 TRIPP, Sydney G, Leading Stoker, K 14053 TYLER, Reuben, Leading Stoker, K 18030 WEAVER, James, Able Seaman, 213937 WHITTON, William R, Able Seaman, J 34371
Her career had lasted just 13 months and she never fired a shot in anger.
HMS Raleigh aground at Point Amour Labrador, August 1922
Wreck of H.M.S. Raleigh, Forteau, Labrador. Donald Baxter MacMillan collection via the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum Accession Number: 3000.3.274
H.M.S. Raleigh on Rocks, Forteau, Labrador. Donald Baxter MacMillan collection via the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum Accession Number: 3000.33.2652
Epilogue
Embarrassed by the still very recognizable hulk of a brand new cruiser hard aground on the rocks with a hull too shattered to refloat, the Royal Navy was ordered to salvage what they could from Raleigh and break apart the vessel with depth charges in September 1922.
After helping wreck their once-proud ship, the crew of HMS Raleigh arrived at Liverpool on the liner SS Montrose.
On 3 October Commander Arthur Bromley left Quebec for Britain on the liner Empress of France. Commander Leslie C Bott, O.B.E., his second-in-command, was tried by Court-martial on 26 October and severely reprimanded and dismissed H.M.S. Victory. Bromley was tried on the following day by a Court presided over by Rear-Admiral Hugh F. P. Sinclair, charged with negligently or by default stranding and losing his ship. In his defense Bromley argued that had the charts he had been supplied with been accurate then his ship would not have stranded. The Court found the charge proved, and he was severely reprimanded and dismissed his ship. He was placed on the Retired List, at his own request, dated 7 November.
Aboard Raleigh as a midshipman cadet on that fateful day off Newfoundland and Labrador was the future VADM Sir Stephen Hope Carlill, who went on to command a series of destroyers during WWII and serve as the last British Chief of Naval Staff of the Indian Navy. In 1982, an extensive diary entry from the wreck was published in the Naval Review (Vol 70, pgs. 165-173) which makes interesting reading.
Much of the vessel remains and the Royal Canadian Navy’s Fleet Diving Unit (Atlantic) has conducted extensive recovery operations on the wreck over the past two decades to recover live UXO from her bones although there is still as much as 80 tons of unstable explosives aboard.
Fleet Diving Unit (Atlantic) Port Inspection diver LS Dan Babich enters the water to place C4 explosives on unexploded ammunition at L’Anse-Amour on 25 May 2017 during Operation RALEIGH to remove unexploded ordnance in the area of the shipwreck of HMS RALEIGH that ran aground and sank in 1922. Photo: Master Seaman Peter Reed, Formation Imaging Services Halifax
Shells destroyed in place by RCN clearance divers. Photo by Jeffery Gallant, RCN, via the Diving Almanac.
As for Raleigh‘s sisterships, only one, Cavendish, was completed during the Great War, albeit as one of the Royal Navy’s first aircraft carriers, HMS Vindictive.
Ex-Cavendish as circa 1918 carrier HMS Vindictive, capable of carrying about a dozen light aircraft. Reconverted back into a cruiser after the war, she was demilitarized per the terms of the London Naval Treaty and converted to a training ship in 1936. She spent WWII as a repair ship and was paid off in 1945. IWM SP 669
Jane’s 1946 entry for the class, with Hawkins and Frobisher being the last ones standing. The entry was the final one for the class as well as the last entry under “British Cruisers” in the 1946 edition.
The other three ships of the class, Hawkins (D86), Frobisher (D81/C81), and Effingham (D98)had uneventful interwar service and, like Vindictive, landed their guns in the mid-1930s. They then were rearmed and clocked in for WWII with Effingham wrecked in May 1940 during the Norway campaign. Hawkins, along with Frobisher, won battle honors at Normandy. Both were disposed of soon after VE Day.
Interestingly, just 44 BL 7.5-inch Mk VI naval guns were manufactured– exclusively for the Hawkins class– and, as they were landed in the 1930s and few remounted, at least 17 were recycled into coast defense batteries during WWII. As noted by Tony DiGiulain at Navweaps:
Three were at South Shields between July 1941 to August 1943, seven went to the Dutch West Indies, three to Canada, and five to Mozambique. However, two of the guns intended for Mozambique were lost in transit in 1943. These were replaced by transferring two guns from South Shields.
Dutch 7.5s in their distinctive turrets. Via Lago Colony As Raleigh’s guns were recovered from the stricken cruiser, some of these could have come from her.
Rather than name a seventh ship to continue the name in the Royal Navy, the Admiralty bestowed the moniker HMS Raleigh to a shore establishment on the River Lynher at Torpoint on 9 January 1940. Authorized under the Military Training Act of 1938, during WWII some 300 new enlistees arrived at the base each week for 11 weeks of training and the base in 1944 became a major D-Day embarkation center for U.S. forces headed to Utah and Omaha beaches.
The site became a new entry training establishment for all types of Ratings in 1959 and continues its role to this day as the home of the Royal Navy School of Seamanship with an average of 2,200 personnel on-site on any given day.
Displacement: 9,750 long tons (9,910 t) (standard) 12,190 long tons (12,390 t) (deep load) Length: 605 ft (o/a) Beam: 65 ft Draught: 19 ft 3 in (deep load) Installed power 12 × Yarrow boilers 70,000 shp, 4 × Brown-Curtis geared steam turbines, 4 shafts Speed: 31 knots Range 5,640 nmi at 10 knots with 1480 tons oil and 860 tons of coal Complement: 690 (712 counting flag staff) Armor Belt: 1.5–3 in Deck: 1–1.5 in Gun shields: 1 in Armament 7 × single 190/45 BL Mk VI 4 × single 76/45 20cwt QF Mk I AA guns 2 × single 2-pdr 40/39 QF Mk II AA guns 6 × 21-inch torpedo tubes on the beam
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