Naval/Maritime History - 25th of April - Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History (2024)

Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History

4th of June

some of the events you will find here,
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1565 - Action of 4 June 1565
This battle took place on 4 June 1565 between an Allied fleet of 33 Danish and Lübecker ships, under Trolle, and a Swedish fleet of perhaps 49 ships, under Klas Horn. Afterward, the Danes retired to Køge Bay, south of Copenhagen, where Trolle died of his wounds on 25 June. His Second, Jørgen Brahe, died of fever on 28 June.

1629 - dutch East Indiaman Batavia wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos off the coast of Western Australia
Batavia ([baːˈtaːviaː] ( listen)) was the flagship of the Dutch East India Company. It was built in Amsterdam, Dutch Republic, in 1628. Batavia sailed on her maiden voyage for the capital of the Dutch East Indies, Batavia.
The ship wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos off the coast of Western Australia. The wreck killed approximately 40 of its 341 passengers. A mutiny amongst the survivors led to a massacre.
The Western Australian Museum's Shipwreck Galleries in Fremantle displays relics recovered from the wreckage.

Batavia's stern

1666 - Four Days Battle - The Fourth Day
Early next morning five more ships (the Convertine, Sancta Maria, Centurion, Kent and Hampshire) and another fireship (Happy Entrance), joined the English fleet; as against these, six of the most damaged ships were sent home for repair. Thus enforced with 23 'fresh' ships and so numbering in between 60 and 65 men-of-war and six fireships, the English attacked in line on the fourth day with Sir Christopher Myngs now in charge of the van, Rupert of the center, and Monk of the rear squadron. But the Dutch, now to the southwest and reduced to 68 ships (and some six or seven fireships), had the weather gauge and also attacked aggressively.

De Ruyter had tried to impress on his flag officers that the fight of that day would be decisive for the entire war. The English attack, vulnerable from a leeward position, faltered. De Ruyter had planned to disrupt the English line by breaking it in three places, cutting off parts of the English fleet before dealing with the rest. Vice Admiral Johan de Liefde on the Ridderschap van Holland and Myngs on HMS Victory began a close quarters duel; two musket balls hit Myngs, fatally wounding him; he died on his return to London. The English regrouped trying to break free to the south by executing four passes in opposite tack, but Tromp and Van Nes surrounded them. Monck then wore to the north. Tromp's squadron was routed, the Landman burnt by a fireship. Van Nes was forced to withdraw.

De Ruyter, more anxious than at any other moment in the battle and fearing the fight lost, raised the red flag and sailed past Rupert to attack Monck from behind. When Rupert tried to do the same to him, three shots in quick succession dismasted his HMS Royal Jamesand the entire squadron of the green withdrew from the battle to the south, protecting and towing the flagship. Nothing now prevented De Ruyter from attacking Monck and the English main force was routed, many of the English ships were short on powder after three days of fighting. The Dutch boarded and captured four stragglers: Wassenaar captured HMS Clove Tree (the former VOC-ship Nagelboom), and the Frisian Rear-Admiral Hendrik Brunsvelt captured HMS Convertine, the entangled HMS Essex and HMS Black Bull; Black Bulllater sank.

De Ruyter seeing the English fleet escape in a dense fog decided to break off the pursuit. His own fleet was heavily damaged too; his logbook only speaks of a fear for the English shoals. The deeply religious De Ruyter interpreted the sudden unseasonal fog bank as a sign from God, "that He merely wanted the enemy humbled for his pride but preserved from utter destruction".

Abraham Storck: "The Four Days' Battle" Greenwich, National Maritime Museum

An early portrait of ‘Victory’ viewed from the port quarter, approximately dated by the subject and style

1719 - Battle of Osel Island - Russians defeat Swedes under Wrangel
The Battle of Osel Island took place on May 24, 1719 (O.S.), during the Great Northern War. It was fought near the island of Saaremaa (Ösel). It led to a victory for the Russian captain Naum Senyavin, whose forces captured three enemy vessels, sustaining as few as eighteen casualties. It was the first Russian naval victory which did not involve ramming or boarding actions.

1742 - Action of 4th June 1742, 4th June 1742 – HMS Rose
On June 4th, 1742, among the Bahamas, Captain Thomas Frankland, of the HMS Rose, fell in with, and chased, four ships, which showed British colours. He chased under the same, and, overhauling them, fired a gun. The chase then hoisted the Spanish flag, and fought him furiously, using all sorts of missiles, from broadsides of shot to poisoned arrows. Frankland, however, held his fire for the fourth ship, a snow, which seemed the strongest, giving the others only a few guns as they chanced to bear. The first three sheered off badly hulled.
"I then endeavoured," says Frankland, "to lay the sime aboard, which she shunned with the utmost caution, maintaining a warm fire till I had torn her almost to rags, the commander having determined rather to sink than strike, for reasons you'll hereafter lie sensible of: but in about four hours the people, in opposition to the captain, hauled down the colours."
The prize mounted ten carriage' guns, as many swivels, and had a crew of over eighty men.The captain is Juan de Leon Fandino. . . . He is the man that commanded the guard of coast out of the Havana that took Jenkins when his ears were cut oft'. . . . Not but such a desperado with his crew of Indians, Mulattoes and Xegroes could have acted as he did, for we were at least two hours within pistol shot of him keeping a constant fire.

1753 – Launch of HMS Chichester, a 70-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built at Portsmouth Dockyard to the standard draught for 70-gun ships as specified in the 1745 Establishment amended in 1750

Scale: 1:72. A contemporary full hull model of the ‘Chichester’ (circa 1706), an 80-gun two-decker second-rate ship of the line, built plank on frame in the Navy Board style.

1795 – Launch of HMS Dryad, a fifth-rate sailing frigate of the Royal Navy that served for 64 years, at first during the Napoleonic Wars and then in the suppression of slavery.
HMS Dryad was a fifth-rate sailing frigate of the Royal Navy that served for 64 years, at first during the Napoleonic Wars and then in the suppression of slavery. She fought in a notable single-ship action in 1805 when she captured the French frigate Proserpine, an action that would later earn her crew the Naval General Service Medal. Dryad was broken up at Portsmouth in 1860.

1804 – Launch of French Président, a 40-gun frigate of the Gloire class in the French Navy, built to an 1802 design by Pierre-Alexandre Forfait.
Président was a 40-gun frigate of the Gloire class in the French Navy, built to an 1802 design by Pierre-Alexandre Forfait. She served with the French Navy from her completion in 1804 until late 1806 when the Royal Navy captured her. Thereafter, she served as HMS President. In 1815 the Navy renamed her Piemontaise, but then broke her up in December.

1805 - Boats of HMS Loire (40), Cptn. Frederick Maitland, destroyed a battery and fort at Muros Bay, took the privateer Confiance and burnt privateer Belier .

The Anson taking the Loire, 18 October 1798

1833 – Launch of Ann McKim, one of the first true clipper ships.
The opening of new Treaty ports in the East in the early 1840s eased an access of the US merchants to China, which demanded the ships that could move cargo faster than then-traditional slow-moving, high-capacity merchant ships.
Ann McKim was one of the first true clipper ships. The opening of new Treaty ports in the East in the early 1840s eased an access of the US merchants to China, which demanded the ships that could move cargo faster than then-traditional slow-moving, high-capacity merchant ships. The Ann McKim was one of the ships that had answered the demand in the early years and sailed between New York and China in 1840-1842, until newer and faster cargo-carriers, such as the nearly 600-ton clipper Houqua, the 598-ton China packet Helena, Witch of the Wave, and Rainbow, with the last two built expressly to outperform the Ann McKim started dominating the shipping world of the US-China trade and the Ann McKim was shifted back to the South American trade routes

A model of Ann McKim in Addison Gallery of American Art.

1849 - Battle of Heligoland
The Danish corvette Valkyrien, Andreas Polder, and the paddle steamer Gejser, Lt. Cmdr Jørgen P. F. Wulff, of the North Sea Squadron engages 3 Schleswig-Holstein naval paddle steamers, under Rear Ad. Bromme off Heligoland.
The first Battle of Heligoland took place on 4 June 1849 during the First Schleswig War and pitted the fledgling Reichsflotte (Imperial Fleet) against the Royal Danish Navy, which had blocked German naval trade in North Sea and Baltic Sea since early 1848. The outcome was inconclusive, with no casualties, and the blockade went on. It remained the only battle of the German fleet

RMS Britannia before being converted to SMS Barbarossa, Brommy's flagship

1855 - Major Henry C. Wayne departs New York aboard the USS Supply to procure camels to establish the U.S. Camel Corps.
The United States Camel Corps was a mid-19th-century experiment by the United States Army in using camels as pack animals in the Southwestern United States. While the camels proved to be hardy and well suited to travel through the region, the Army declined to adopt them for military use. The Civil War interfered with the experiment and it was eventually abandoned; the animals were sold at auction.

Drawing of loading a camel

1861 - SS Canadian was a British passenger ship which struck an iceberg and sank in the Strait of Belle Isle 4 nautical miles north of Cape Bauld while she was travelling from Quebec, Canada to Liverpool, United Kingdom.

1898 – Launch of HMS Highflyer, the lead ship of the Highflyer-class protected cruisers built for the Royal Navy in the 1890s
HMS Highflyer

1939 – The Holocaust: SS St Louis: The ship of Jewish refugees nobody wanted
The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, in the United States, after already being turned away from Cuba.
Forced to return to Europe, more than 200 of its passengers later die in Nazi concentration camps.
Motorschiff St. Louis was a German ocean liner infamously known for carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany in 1939 intending to debark in Cuba, where they were denied permission to land. The captain, Gustav Schröder, went to the United States and Canada, trying to find a nation to take them in, but both refused. He finally returned the ship to Europe, where various European countries, including the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, accepted some refugees. Many were later caught in Nazi roundups of Jews in occupied countries, and some historians have estimated that approximately a quarter of them died in death camps during World War II. These events, known as the "Voyage of the Damned" in one account, have inspired film, opera, and fiction.

1942 - The Battle of Midway begins.
During that morning, after sending planes to attack the U.S. base at Midway, the Japanese carriers Akagi, Kaga and Soryu are fatally damaged by dive bombers from USS Enterprise (CV 6) and USS Yorktown (CV 5). Later in the day, USS Yorktown is abandoned after bomb and torpedo hits by planes from Hiryu. The latter is, in turn, knocked out by U.S. carrier planes. Compelled by their losses to abandon their plans to capture Midway, the Japanese retire westward. The battle is a decisive win for the U.S, bringing an end to Japanese naval superiority in the Pacific.

Yorktown at the moment of impact of a torpedo from a Nakajima B5N of Lieutenant Hashimoto's 2nd chūtai

Mikuma shortly before sinking

1944 - The hunter-killer group comprises of five destroyer escorts and USS Guadalcanal (CVE 60) captures German submarine, (U 505).
This marks the first time a U.S. Navy vessel captures an enemy vessel since the early 19th century. The feat earns Lt. Albert L. David, who led the team to board the sub, the Medal of Honor.