Several large, modern warships have been lost in the last 100 years due to the most basic of causes: they were run aground and sank, or became so stuck that salvage was not possible. The loss of a capital ship in this manner is hard to understand, and several questions have been posted via email or the website discussion board, most simply asking, "How could such a thing happen?"

Investigation into three such incidents has led to this article, which deals with the losses of the pre-dreadnought HMS Montagu, the dreadnought France, and the dreadnought Espana.

HMS Monagu, May 30, 1906

HMS Montagu was a Duncan Class pre-dreadnought battleship, built at Davenport between 1899 and 1903. In 1905 she was transferred to the Channel Fleet. The following year she was fitted with wireless gear and began a series of tests. On May 29, she moored just off Lundy Island, preparing to make runs up and down the Bristol Channel while transmitting to a receiving station at Lands End. She sailed around 8 in the evening in clear weather, but by midnight a heavy fog had set in so the ship was ordered to return to her anchorage.

However, her captain and navigation officer were paying attention to the new wireless equipment, rather than to the ship's course, and HMS Montagu failed to sail a true reciprocating course back the way she came. At 0200 on the 30th, the ship suddenly slammed into the rocks, running hard aground. No one was injured, and the ship did not appear to be badly damaged, merely stuck. The captain and navigation officer did some quick calculations, and decided that they had wandered off course by some 9 miles to the West, and were aground near Harland Point on the mainland. The captain sent a boat to the North to contact Harland Lighthouse and report their plight, which they soon spotted. Rowing ashore, the landing party soon found themselves arguing with the lighthouse keeper: he informed them that he was in fact the keeper of the North light on Lundy, and he was quite sure of which lighthouse he was stationed at. The battleship had been off course some two mile to the East, and was run up on the rocks on Lundy, 11 miles East of where her commanding office thought she was. For gross negligence and incompetence costing the Royal Navy one of its newest battleships, both the commanding officer and navigation officer were court marshaled and run out of the service.

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It was thought that the ship could be easily re-floated and repaired, but gradually salvage experts came to realize that the ship was too firmly aground on the granite to be pulled off, and was too badly bent along the keel to be repaired. She was declared a total loss and the Liverpool Salvage Company was contracted to remove the guns and fittings. A lighter and the salvage vessel Plover were brought alongside, the top plates removed from the turrets, the guns trained on the beam, and sheer legs used to remove the 12-inch weapons. An aerial footway was strung from the top of the cliffs to the charthouse, to allow salvers to walk to the vessel and salvage the ship's fittings. The operation was completed on October 1st. The wreck was sold for 4,250 pounds, a small fraction of the 1,096,000 pounds the warship cost prior to just three years of service. Today little remains of the wreck, except some two-meter high piles of armor plate and some live 12-inch shells scattered across the bottom. The wreck is a popular dive site, as the private owner allows divers as long as they do not attempt to remove anything from the site.

France, August 26, 1922

France entered the dreadnought race late, laying down the Courbet class in 1910-11. The last of four units of this class to be completed was named after the nation, and the battleship France entered service in late 1914. She served as fleet flagship for a time, and following the end of the First World War she served as one of France's seven dreadnoughts.

France, along with her sister ship Paris, was returning from a gunnery training exercise in a storm on the night of August 25-26, 1922, when she entered Quiberon Bay, heading for Port-Navalo. This large bay had been used as a fleet anchorage for over 200 years, and the battleship was traversing through a well-traveled lane. Yet suddenly the ship shuttered three times from collision: the battleship struck an uncharted rock a couple of minutes before 1AM on the 26th. Captain Guy ordered a full stop when the ship grounded, but the ship's momentum carried it over the rock until it floated freely again. The vessels was only miles from the fleet anchorage, and at first it appeared that the ship was not badly damaged. Rather than drift in heavy seas, the captain ordered the ship to continue on its original course at 10-knots while an inspection was completed.

At 10 minutes after 1, about 12 minutes after the grounding, the ship suddenly lost all power. Apparently, the rock ripped open the double hull badly enough to cause rapid flooding in the machinery spaces, which extinguished the boilers, and both propulsion and electrical systems were completely lost. Water poured into the coal bunkers and the boiler rooms, rapidly filling these large compartments. Adrift in heavy seas without lights or pumps, and unable even to launch her boats, the vessel was slowly driven towards the shore as progressive flooding caused the ship to list further and further to port. Her captain ordered the anchors deployed, but anchors generally do not 'dig in' when they are simply dropped overboard.

Marine Nationale vessels rushed to the scene, the first to arrive being the battleship Paris at 0146. With the heavy weather she was unable to come alongside or attempt tow, so she anchored nearby and sent boats to start taking off the crew of the France. By 0315 Voltaire, and the cruisers Strasbourg and Metz, had also arrived and lent boats. The list was so bad that Captain Guy slid off the wing of the bridge into the sea, to be recovered with slight injuries. Around 0400 France listed past her point of stability, and she suddenly lurched over, capsizing in a few seconds, stopping when her superstructure hit the shallow bottom.

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The wreck of the France very shortly after her loss.

The end of the storm found the ship on her side in 18 meters of water, with part of the hull awash, and all but three of her crew accounted for. Righting and re-floating the vessel was considered impossible, and the first salvage attempt to recover guns, etc, was a failure. Investigation showed that the ship had a gash almost 80 meters long in the hull, which explained the rapid flooding.

The commander was suspended and a board of inquiry convened to determine if an error in navigation had been made, or if anything could have been done to save the ship after the grounding. The board of inquiry restored everyone involved to active duty and absolved all of the ship's officers of all blame. The Hydrographic Services was blamed, as their chart showed deep water at that location. Investigation revealed that the narrow pinnacle had eluded detection for hundreds of years, despite four major and dozens of minor hydrographic surveys of the bay. At low tide, this rock was only 8 meters below the surface, though the charts showed the minimum depth to be twice that. By some odd quirk of fate, the battleship France had been the first vessel in recorded history to cross that exact spot, at dead low tide, without a shallow enough draft the clear the rock.

Eventually a series of three different companies would purchase and salvage the wreck of the France, the last wrapping up work in 1958. Today very little remains, except leftover junk scattered across the bottom.

Espana, August 1923

Spain laid down her first all big gun ship in 1908, the Espana. The lead ship of what would eventually become a class of three, Espana was an attempt to fit dreadnought firepower onto a very small hull. The resulting design carried considerable firepower for a ship of her size, with 8 12-inch guns, but protection was less than impressive.

Espana served as fleet flagship, protecting the Spanish coast during WWI. In 1920 it became the first Spanish ship to transit the Panama Canal, while cruising to Chili for that nations centennial celebration. She was deployed off Morocco in 1921 during the Riff rebellion. In the late summer of 1923 she was operating off the coast of Cape Tres Forces, Melilla, Morocco. In a heavy fog, she wandered slightly off course on the night of August 23. Her lookouts were unable to spot a reef that did not appear on navigation charts, and the ship ran hard aground. A large breech was opened in the hull along the starboard side, flooding one engine room. No one was injured, and the ship did not appear to be badly damaged. However, she was run aground so badly that she was firmly stuck between two underwater rocks, and it proved impossible to pull her free. Wave action soon bent the keel so badly that repair would have been impossible anyway.

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Espana hard aground The wreck rapidly breaking up

The Spanish Navy knew that they had a limited window of opportunity for salvage, for the action of waves and winter storms would soon destroy the wreck. The main turrets were disassembled and salvaged in their entirety, but the main guns were too heavy to be lifted by the only crane available. Winter storms would soon threaten the wreck, so the guns were simply dumped overboard, latter to be recovered by a submarine rescue ship. The secondary guns and some fittings were removed before the hull broke in half. Too dangerous for further salvage, the wreck was left to its fate, and within a couple of years nothing was left of it. The 12-inch weapons were returned to Spain, where they were installed as coast defense guns.

Espana's two sister ships were also unlucky: Alfonzo XIII struck a friendly mine on April 30, 1937 and sank, and Jamie I, who's completion had been delayed for 6 years because of WWI, caught fire while under repairs June 17, 1937. The fire touched off a magazine explosion, and the ship was a total loss.