Husky04

A drawing of HMS Blenheim departing to begin her sea trials.

Blenheim was one of the two Blake-class protected cruisers built by the Royal Navy in the early 1890s.  The ship spent much of her active career as a combatant assigned to the Channel Fleet, although she did deploy to China in 1901 as part of the international response to the Boxer Rebellion. In 1907, Blenheim, by then worn out and obsolete, was withdrawn from front-line service and converted into a destroyer tender.  She continued to serve as such during World War I, being used to support the failed Gallipoli operation among other assignments.  Blenheim was finally decommissioned and sold for scrap in July, 1926.

navyhistory:

On 12 June 1775, the first naval battle of the American Revolution took place, when HMS Margaretta, commanded by Captain James Moore, entered Machias Harbor to commandeer a load of lumber for the British Army at Boston. They were engaged by the American sloop Unity led by Jeremiah O’Brien. After an hour-long bloody struggle, the Americans defeated the British. NHHC image NH NH 56401.

sailorgil:

The Bellerophon, Plymouth Sound (Vignette), engraved by E. Goodall published 1836

HMS Bellerophon was a 74-gun ship of the line built by the Royal Navy during the late 18th Century.  Launched in 1786, and first commissioned in 1790, the ship would go on to see extensive service during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, taking part in four major engagements, the Glorious First of June, “Cornwallis’s Retreat,” the Battle of the Nile, and Trafalgar, as well as the escort and blockade duties that  most British warships of this era participated in.  

In 1815, during Napoleon’s brief return to power, Bellerophon was part of the force blockading the port of Rochefort.  After Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, he, along with a number of close associates planned to leave France for exile in America in order to avoid being captured by vengeful Austrians, Prussians, and Russians, sailing for the US aboard a pair of frigates docked at Rochefort.  However, after finding his way blocked by the British and rejecting a proposal from the captain of one of the frigates where he would engage Bellerophon at close range in order to buy enough time for the other frigate, carrying Napoleon and his party, to escape to the open sea as a suicide mission that would be a needless sacrifice, decided to negotiate with Capt. Fredrick Maitland of the Bellerophon, the senior British officer present, in the hopes of finding a way out of his predicament.

Although Capt. Maitland refused to permit Napoleon to sail to America, he did offer to take him to Britain where he could plead his case to the British government were he to surrender himself to the Royal Navy.  Napoleon agreed, hoping that he could persuade the British government to grant him asylum and allow him to retire to a small estate in the English countryside, and therefore, on the morning of July 15, 1815, Napoleon, along with his entourage, boarded Bellerophon and surrendered themselves to Maitland.  Later that day, Maitland’s immediate superior, Vice Admiral Hotham, approved of the arrangements Maitland had made, and ordered him to sail to Britain with Napoleon.  Bellerophon arrived at Plymouth Sound on July 24, and soon attracted a crowd of onlookers, but the admiral in charge there, Lord Keith, ordered that nobody that he did not personally authorize was to board or leave the ship while the British cabinet decided Napoleon’s fate over the next couple weeks.  

Napoleon’s hopes of retiring in Britain were dashed, as the British cabinet felt that it would be unwise to allow Napoleon to retire to a remote estate, as it believed that even if he were kept under virtual house arrest, the risk that he could escape with the help of British sympathizers and die-hard loyalists and again destabilize Europe was too great, while imprisoning him in Britain would have raised awkward legal questions, as he had violated no British laws.  Instead, the British government ordered that Napoleon be exiled and confined to the remote island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic.  However, the Admirality was concerned that the ageing Bellerophon was not up to such a voyage, and ordered him to be transferred to another ship-of-the-line, Northumberland, which would take Napoleon and a small party to St. Helena, the transfer taking place at sea on August 7.

With the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Bellerophon became one of many warships that were no longer needed by a rapidly downsizing Royal Navy, and at the beginning of September, the ship arrived at the Sheerness Dockyard to be stripped in preparation for being laid up in reserve, with the crew being paid off and the ship decommissioned on September 13, 1815.  

However, Bellerophon’s fate was not to linger in reserve until being sold for scrap, but something rather more ignominious for a ship with a record like hers.  In December, 1815, the Admiralty loaned the ship to the Home Office for use as a prison hulk, housing convicts sentenced to hard labor involving maintaining harbors and various unpleasant tasks in naval bases, the work needed to convert the ship into a floating jail taking until September, 1816.  For the next two decades, Bellerophon was used as a prison first at the mouth of the Thames, and later at Plymouth, being renamed Captivity in 1824 to free her name for a new ship-of-the-line, until deporting convicts to Australia replaced the use of prison ships and hard labor in the ports as the preferred method of dealing with criminals.  With no further need of the ship, she was returned to the Admiralty, who promptly disposed of the hulk, which was sold for scrap in January, 1836. 

(via navalarchitecture)

navyhistory:

On 11 June 1871, during the Korean Expedition, Rear Admiral John Rodger’s squadron supported a landing party of 650 Marines and sailors as they attacked and captured Fort McKee (also known as the Citadel), Korea. Read the Naval Historical Foundation publication Marine Amphibious Landing in Korea, 1871, available for free online, to get the full story. This black and white photo of an oil painting by John Clymer, USMCR, depicts the landing of Marine infantry and field artillery, as USS Monocacy provides gunfire support in the background.

theonlymagicleftisart:

(Adara Sanchez)

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xplanes:

art from the highly agreeable-looking “PROJECT TERMINATED - Famous Military Aircraft Cancellations of the Cold War and What Might Have Been”, by Erik Simonsen, Speciality Press

xplanes:

“The Lockheed YF-12A was undoubtedly the most advanced interceptor ever built by the United States and was capable of Mach 3 at altitudes exceeding 80,000 feet. The aircraft was equipped with a longrange radar and three Hughes AIM-47 Falcon missiles with nuclear warheads. Weapons systems tests proved remarkably successful, and after the YF-12 program was cancelled, the radar and missiles formed the basis of the system used on the Grumman F-14 Tomcat” (via)

gildedjuggernaut:

Normandie’s Launch, Jules Lefranc, 1932

(via navalarchitecture)

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chromjuwelen:

(via Real VW Beetles Transformed into a Sphere and Cube)

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navyhistory:

On 31 May 1918, the transport USS President Lincoln was torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-90 while steaming from France back to the United States. Twenty-six lives were lost, and one officer was soon taken prisoner by U-90, but nearly 700 safely escaped in life rafts and were rescued. This was the largest US Navy vessel to be lost in World War I. Painting by Fred Dana Marsh, 1920, courtesy of the U.S. Navy Art Collection, Washington, DC, image NH 86494-KN.

Vincent Van Gogh — Blossoming Almond Tree

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