Black Night of Finisterre: The Tragic Tale of an Early British Ironclad Tapa dura - 1999

Descripción de contraportada

This is a definitive account of the loss of HMS Captain and the decade-long public controversy in parliament and the press which preceded and led to the building of the ship in unprecedented circumstances. The lengthy controversy involved a row between Captain Cowper Phipps Coles, RN, the designer of Captain and inventor of the turntable turret gun for warships, and the Admiralty Constructor, Edward Reed, who regarded the design of the vessel as potentially dangerous. Each had his supporters, and the Admiralty made a fatal compromise, for on the night of 6/7 September 1870, only four months after being commissioned, the new ship capsized in a gale off Finisterre and sank immediately. The death toll of British seamen was greater than at the Battle of Trafalgar. Arthur Hawkey has previously written on the ship and the tragedy, but he has recently discovered new and previously unknown information that changes history in relation to the loss of the ship - information that appears to have been suppressed at the court martial of the 18 survivors.