When the Flagship Victoria Went Down

DESCRIPTION: "He was a loving companion, He was a faithful friend"; Jack could always be counted on. But "I lost the best friend I ever had When the flagship Victoria went down." They had been shipmates from the first. His old mother had no other son
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1970 (Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy)
KEYWORDS: navy death sailor mother
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Jun 22, 1893 - HMS Victoria sunk by HMS Camperdown
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy, pp. 143-144, "When the Flagship 'Victoria' Went Down" (1 text)
NOTES [1950 words]: The fullest account of this remains that of Hough, cited in the Bibliography, although it is now very dated. There is also the Life of Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon, K.C.B., by Penrose FItzgerald, available in a lot of cheap reprints, but these are usually so badly printed as to be illegible. There is an unusually good Wikipedia article, but most of it consists mostly of citations of Hough and Fitzgerald. It's worth it for the photos, though.
This tragedy in a sense arises out of the ossification that set in in the Royal Navy. Officers who never had to make decisions became more and more rule-bound and insistent upon spit and polish and fancy formations at the expense of real naval skill. In the years since Trafalgar, nd especially since the Crimean War, the Royal Navy had become so conscious of its naval dominance that independent thinking was all but stomped out; you obeyed orders or else. "'Follow senior officer's motions' had become a fetish instruction, which juniors violated at the peril of ruining their careers" (Keegan, p. 122). Similarly Steel/Hard, pp. 19-20, "It was the low point of the Victorian navy and demonstrated the inherent inflexibility of mind of many, if not most, of its senior officers. They had been brought up and drilled to believe that their admiral was second only to God, with near papal infallibility. The consequences of such mental atrophy would bedevil the fleet for many long years."
Many officers of course knew better. George Tryon was prbably the most important of them. Unfortunately, while he knew things had to change, to a large extent he changed things by exerting extremely detailed control over his subordinates, making the whole machinery of command dependent upon him -- a real problem if he ever made a mistake or were unavailable!
Making it especially hard to dispute Tryon's orders was the fact that he "was a colourful figure, large and bluff and dynamic, with a dashing, rugged personality that perfectly fitted the public's conception of a bold and aristocratic old salt. Not for eighty years had the British been so eager to love an admiral" (Hough, pp. 11-12).
"[E]ven his service contemporaries said of George Tryon that he never took a false step until the one that destroyed him" (Hough, p. 29). He may not have been at his best at the time of this mistake; he was slowly recovering from an ulcerated leg (Hough, pp. 52-53).
And his second-in-command, rear admiral Albert Hastings Markham, certainly wasn't the brightest bulb in the light fixture, and was not Tryon's choice, nor had he had much time to learn Tryon's ways (Hough, pp. 48-50). In Tryon's view, Markham "seemed to lack the ability to concentrate, to make quick decisions, and to anticipate situations in the rapidly changing circumstances of fleet evolutions. Tryon found him an exasperating pupil" (Hough, p. 51). It clearly was not a good working relationship.
Tryon's ship was also new and shiny, being just three years old; she was the fastest and best-armored ship in the British fleet. But she was so over-gunned that it was not clear that her weapons could even be safely used, and they had to sit very low on the hull (Hough, pp. 43-44). She had grounded in Greece when only a few months old (Hough, p. 56). Her known flaws were bad enough that I can't help but wonder if unknown flaws might not have contributed to her rapid demise. The Victoria was a pre-dreadnought battleship of about 11,000 tons displacement, built in 1890, and from the time of her commissioning, she served in the Mediterranean Fleet (Paine, pp. 548-549).
From the moment the final trip started, Tryon was putting his fleet though its paces, demanding a complex and dangerous weaving-together of lines as the ships left port (Hough, p. 53). He did it again as they approached Tripoli; Tryon's own division, and Markham's, were steaming in parallel, six cables (i.e. six tenths of a nautical mile) apart. The goal was to have the two lines pass the harbor entrance, then both turn in 180 degree circles *toward each other*, merge the lines, then take a turn to port and enter the harbor in five or so parallel lines.
It appears that several officers knew that Tryon's order was a mistake, but no one dared day anything. It being peacetime, her watertight doors were open, and no attempt was made to close them until it was too late. (The investigation following her sinking made this the official cause of her loss; Hough, p. 98.) And so the Camperdown drove straight into the Victoria's side. Camperdown's speed at the time was estimated at six knots; Victoria, which had started to slow down but only slightly, is thought to have been moving at five and a half (Hough, p. 66).
After the collision, the Camperdown reversed engines and pulled itself free (Hough, p. 68), which can only have done more damage to Victoria, And the flagship surely was not yet in full watertight condition. The Victoria capsized and sank within minutes (when the wreck was found in 2004, the ship was found to be almost exactly vertical, with the prow stuck in the mud of the bottom like a spear); the Camperdown took so much damage to her bow that it was feared for a time that she might also sink (Hough, pp. 85-86).
Of the 600 or so men on the Victoria, slightly more than 250 survived, including her captain Maurice Bourke (who of course faced a court-martial for the loss of his ship). Many of course died inside the ship, including most of those involved with the engines and boilers, but many who were on the upper decks died as well -- probably because they could not swim well and were overwhelmed or sucked under by the wash of the propellers or the suction from the ship (Hough, pp. 109-110). One who did not survive was Admiral Tryon.
The court which investigated was officially directed at Captain Bourke. but during its ten days, it called several of Admiral Tryon's staff -- and Admiral Markham and several of his officers. I would summarize the court's conclusions (as given on pp. 128-129 of Hough) as folows: (1) that Victoria was lost by collision, and that the collision was Tryon's fault and no one else's, (2) that the attempts to save the ship afterward were appropriate, (3) that Bourke was innocent, and his men did well, (4) that it was "to be regretted" that Markham didn't try harder to avoid the collision (but Markham wasn't on trial), and (5) the court was not in a position to rule on why the Victoria sank so quickly.
Other sources have this to say about what happened:
"On June 22, 1893, en route from Beirut to Tripoli, the fleet was steaming north-northeast in parallel columns six cables (1,200 yards) apart. For reasons never adequately explained, [fleet commander] Vice Admiral Sir George Tryon ordered the two divisions to turn 16 points toward each other.... Camperdown's ram struck Victoria just abaft the anchors 12 feet below the waterline, making a breach nearly 28 feet long.... [T]he inrush of water was so great that she quickly went down by the bows, taking with her 22 officers and 336 men" (Paine, p. 549).
Compare Herman, p. 475n: "The sense that the navy was running out of control was reinforced on June 22, 1893, when the battleship Camperdown collided with Admiral Sir George Tryon's flagship Victoria because of Tryon's faulty signal, which no one had the courage to countermand -- although the collision cost Tryon his life and those of 358 officers and men."
Bruce/Cogar, p. 60, sum up as follows: "A collision between the British warships Camperdown and Victoria in the Mediterranean resulted in the Royal Navy's most costly peacetime disaster. The Camperdown, a twin-screw battleship of 10,600 tons, which was launched in 1885, rammed and sank the fleet flagship Victoria, a battleship of 10,470 tons, during the Mediterranean fleet's maneuvers off Tripoli in 1893.
"These ships headed the two divisions of the fleet that had been moving ahead in parallel until they were ordered to turn inward in a practice maneuver.... [T]he order to turn, which had been issued by Vice Admiral Sir George Tryon, commander in chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, was clearly incorrect. It was impossible for the leading ships to compete the maneuver without colliding, but corrective action was not taken.
"The Victoria sank after the Camperdown hit her and 360 officers and men, including the unfortunate commander in chief, were lost. An inquiry was held into the disaster, but no satisfactory explanation has been found for Admiral Tryon's bizarre conduct in issuing an order that he must have known would result in a collision."
Massie, p. 393: "Vice Admiral Sir George Tyron (sic. -- Massie uses this spelling throughout), Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, was regarded as a man who one day would be First Sea Lord. A brilliant officer and an outstanding seaman, Tyron also possessed a mathematical mind which he applied in devising ever more intricate and daring maneuvers for his ships to perform. He delighted in changing formations from column in line to column abreast and back again, setting his ships on seemingly irretrievable courses, then saving them from collision with a signal from his flagship at the last possible minute. If these novel and spectacular maneuvers, intricate as a quadrille, astonished and frightened his captains, so much the better. It was Tyron's worry that Royal Navy captains would lose their edge in peacetime; his complicated naval ballets were designed to keep them on their mettle. Nor did Tyron's officers dare to question his orders. The Admiral was an overbearing man and an iron disciplinarian; besides, he had always been right."
Massie adds that Tryon's fleet consisted of eight battleships and five cruisers, and that his second-in-command was Rear Admiral Markham, who flew his flag in Camperdown. "At two-twenty P.M. Tyron hoisted a signal for the next maneuver: the vessels were to change formation, passing through each other's columns by turning inward toward each other." Page 394: "At three thirty-seven P.M., Tyron sigalled that his command was to be executed: 'Second divistion alter course in succession 16 points to starboard' and 'First fivision alter course in succession 16 points to port." The when the executive officer of the Victoria suggested the captain speak to Tryon, "[Captain Maurice] Bourke angrily told him to be silent. To question Tyron, one needed a braver man than Bourke." At one time or another, Markham and some junior captains questioned the maneuver, or asked for the order to be repeated. Tryon's signal to Markham was "'What are you waiting for?' This was a public rebuke, witnessed by the entire fleet, which Markham could not ignore." So the Camperdown made its turn, and the Victoria made its.
"Twenty-two of the ship''s fifty-one officers were drowned along with the admiral. The other twenty-nine were court-martialed, along with Rear Admiral Markham. All were acquitted, although Markham's career ceased to prosper. The grounds of his acquittal were that 'it would be fatal to the best interests of the service to say that he was to blame for carrying out the orders of the commander-in-chief present in person'" (Massie, p. 395).
The British do seem to have drawn at least one proper conclusion. Normally a front-line battleship would be expected to last at least a quarter century. But as best I can tell, not one of Tryon's ships was still in service, even in a secondary role, once World War I began. They were all gone. As they should have been. The Victoria's sister Sans Pareill, for instance, was sold for scrap in 1907 when only about seventeen years old (Hough, pp. 97-98). - RBW
BibliographyLast updated in version 5.3
File: Tawn108

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography

The Ballad Index Copyright 2024 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.