Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Isle of Wight by M J Trow

Author:M J Trow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: TRU000000: TRUE CRIME / General
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781783037476
Publisher: Wharncliffe
Published: 2009-06-18T04:00:00+00:00

But Kempenfelt is gone,

His victories are o’er,

And he and his eight hundred

Shall plough the waves no more.

– wrote the poet, W Cowper. But if England felt the loss, the navy was anxious to cover up a disaster of its own making.

As the bodies washed ashore in Portsmouth and on the north coast of the Island, a ship’s surgeon wrote, ‘Portsmouth and Gosport were in a state of commotion. Almost everyone had lost some relation, friend or acquaintance. Every hour corpses were coming ashore on the beach. Every hour the bell was tolling and the long procession winding through the streets.’

There had to be an enquiry, but the navy was in no mood to blame its officers, whose fault the loss of the Royal George blatantly was. Five admirals sat in judgement in the captain’s day quarters on the Warspite, all powdered wigs and gold lace, Waghorn’s sword on the table before them. It is unlikely any of them had much respect for Waghorn per se, but he was the symbol of authority and control in the navy – Admiral Kempenfelt even more so. If men like this could not be trusted, then what hope had Britain of holding its colonies together, much less obtain command of the seas? The blame was shifted to the Navy Board, the dockyard authority composed largely of civilians.

Seizing on the evidence of two of the thirteen witnesses they called, the Admirals noted a shipwright who claimed that some of the George’s timbers were rotten and a long-serving gunner who swore he heard a ‘bodily crack’ as the ship heeled to. It is true that neglect had been the order of the day for years, with laxity and embezzlement proving obstacles to efficiency. The George, however, had just put to sea after a refit, so it is unlikely she was that rotten.

Waghorn’s sword was returned to him. Hollingsbury, whose arrogance had contributed massively to the disaster, was not only acquitted of all blame, but rose to become a ship’s captain in his own right.

For sixty years, the Royal George sat at the bottom of the Solent, her topmasts visible above the water line, a navigational hazard for pilots weaving their way around her. William Tracey put forward a plan to raise her in the months following the sinking, but the Navy Board, convinced of its own guilt, made it impossible for him through a lack of co-operation. Not until 1839 did Colonel Palsey, a pioneer in deep-water diving, lift the remaining cannon and destroy the George with gunpowder. By that time, the ship and her guns were obsolete; the last naval battle using sail was fought off Navarino Bay against the Turksin 1827. The melted bronze was used to build the great memorial to Nelson in Trafalgar Square.

A number of stone tablets were erected to the dead of 29 August. One, in St Mary’s church, Portsmouth read, ‘A Testimony of Sympathy for the Unfortunates who perished by the sinking of the HMS Royal George … Erected by one who was a stranger both to officers and the ship’s company.

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