HMS Invincible

“ She carried only ten four-inch guns and two torpedo-tubes, and with these she could not hope to put up a fight against such a powerful adversary as the "Invincible." In an old, time-worn phrase, she questioned not the order of her going, but, putting her helm about, fled like a startled roe at very sight of those who had marked her down. ”

“ The Invincible (Captain R.H. More-Molyneux) , on board which ship Sir Beauchamp Seymour had his flag for the day,—the Alexandra was really his flagship, but he had removed into the Invincible a short time before because of her lighter draught in order to enter the harbour,—had also numerous dents in her armour near the water-line, and the unarmoured parts of her hull had holes through it in several places. ”

“ These tactics resulted in Gneisenau and Scharnhorst being destroyed by Invincible and Inflexible, the whole crews of both German ships being either killed or captured, while the two battle-cruisers had three casualties only. Invincible was actually hit by twenty-two shells, Inflexible by only three, and it was the latter ship who had the only three men hit. Cornwall received eighteen direct hits and, like Invincible, had no casualties at all, while Glasgow had one man killed and five wounded. ”

“ The Invincible, of 74 guns, bearing the flag of Rear-Admiral Totty, and commanded by Captain Rennie, sailed from Yarmouth on the morning of the 16th of March, 1801, to join the fleet of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker in the Baltic. ”

“ The battle cruiser Invincible suddenly sprang into a sheet of flame and parted in half. A German shell had struck her vitals.
A cry of despair broke from the British as the Invincible—the greatest British ship to suffer so far—dived beneath the waves.
CHAPTER XVII THE MAIN FLEET ARRIVES It was by a miracle, it seemed, that the Queen Mary, the Indefatigable, the Marlborough and the Lion, now in the front line, had escaped being struck in their vitals by the German shells that flew all about. On the Queen Mary, dead men and wounded men strewed the deck. ”

“ They are followed in this turn by the battleships of the High Seas Fleet which, for more than an hour, have been faithfully hammered by Evan-⁠Thomas’s Queen Elizabeths, and show up against the sky a very ragged outline. The range of the battle cruisers is now down to 8,000 yards, and they get well home upon battleships as well as upon opponents of their own class. We do not ourselves escape loss, for the Invincible, which has become the leading ship, is shattered by concentrated gun-fire. ”

“ Every effort was made to save life as quickly as possible, both by boats and from the ships; life-buoys were thrown and ropes lowered, but only a proportion could be rescued. The Invincible alone rescued 108 men, fourteen of whom were found to be dead after being brought on board ”

“ Gathering pace, the two battle-cruisers from the north soon overtook and outstripped the Carnarvon and Kent, the position at eleven o'clock, with the squadron as a whole making about 20 knots, being as follows—the Glasgow was still leading, but had been ordered to remain within two miles of the flagship Invincible; next came the Invincible herself, with her decks flooded by hoses to prevent fire and wash away the last of the coal-dust ”

“ When the Cawdor memorandum was issued, it was generally (though wrongly) assumed that only two of the four ships would be battleships, and two “armoured cruisers.” And at that time the public had certainly no idea what the “Invincible” Fast Battle Cruiser type was like, with its 6 knots superiority of speed to everything afloat, and the biggest guns alive. The “Invincibles” are, as a matter of fact, perfectly fit to be in line of battle with the battle fleet, and could more correctly be described as battleships which, thanks to their speed, can drive anything108 afloat off the seas. ”

“ In the Invincible the wing-passage and its bulkhead is done away with, and in place of it the web of the transverse frame is deepened considerably, carrying the double-bottom arrangement up to the armor-shelf ”

“ The fishing-smack, with the admiral on board, remained at anchor during the night, without being able to afford the slightest assistance to the crew of the Invincible. At daybreak, as soon as the tide permitted, the cable of the smack was cut, and she stretched under the stern of the ship, endeavouring by all possible means to get alongside of her, but before that could be accomplished, the ill-fated vessel began to sink. About sixty men jumped into the launch, but they had only just time to clear the poop, when the gallant ship went down with four hundred men. ”

“ The advantage in weight of metal and range of guns lay on the side of the British, and the battle was decided at long range. Admiral von Spee, refusing to surrender, in spite of the odds against him, went down with his ship. The flagship of the victorious admiral, Sir Frederick Sturdee, was the modern battle cruiser Invincible. A number of the German sailors were rescued by the British after the engagement and sent as prisoners of war to England. The total German loss was over 2,000 officers and men. ”

“ Many other and more minute remarks might be made on different ships in this season of hard service; but to do this would be tedious, and the inspection of the Tables may suggest observations to the reader. There is a striking and instructive fact, however, with regard to two ships, which I cannot help relating. The Alcide and Invincible, both of seventy-four guns, in working to windward, after the action with the French fleet, on the 29th of April, anchored at Montserrat on the 11th of May, in order to water. ”

“ Of all the vessels engaged, the Queen Mary was the largest. The Marlborough, advancing rapidly, came next and then the German dreadnaught Westphalen. The British battle cruisers Indefatigable and Invincible were the next most powerful, in the order named, and the other German vessels were by far superior to the British. ”

“ There was no cheering, either then or even a few days later, when the Inflexible and the Invincible, the latter flying Admiral Sturdee's flag, came nosing in from the Atlantic and dropped anchor at the 'Base'; but the promise of action in the immediate future was like wine to the men. They were simply tumbling over themselves to carry out the most ordinary routine duties, and so it continued right up to the moment that Von Spee's foretops, gliding along above the low promontory of Port William, brought them to 'Action Stations' with real work to do at last. ”

“ The cruiser Invincible, launched by Armstrongs at Elswick in April 1907, is a first-class armoured cruiser 530 feet in length and of 17,250 tons displacement, and has turbine engines of an equivalent horse-power of 40,000 and a speed of 25 knots. ”

“ At a quarter to ten the Carnarvon, Inflexible, Invincible, and Cornwall weighed and stood out to sea in the order named, and overtook the Kent and the Glasgow, which had gone out and joined her a few minutes earlier. The German ships were now in full sight to the south-east—hull down, and doing the "Goeben glide" for all they were worth. In the British ships the stokers were working furiously, the smoke belching in thick volumes from the funnels; and, with every man at his post, their decks flooded with water as a preventive against fire, and hoses ready, the vessels gradually gathered way. ”

“ At length they were stopped entirely by a volley from one small part of the enemy, who had entrenched themselves at a turn of the road, supported by a second a little higher up, who opened a masked battery of two field-pieces. A horrible butchery then ensued; and shortly afterwards the remainder of these poor wretches, amounting to above 3,000, tamely submitted to be led away prisoners by less than as many hundred French. The launches and gun-boats went from the ships the instant the enemy were observed by the Invincible (which lay to the westward) to be collecting in their trenches ”

“ In 1895 the cruisers Amphion and Arethusa proved themselves able to exceed their designed speed of seventeen and a half knots, and thence onwards the increase in speed has been continuous, until we have the Invincible in the British [Pg 254] Navy capable of exceeding twenty-nine knots under service conditions and in only moderately fine weather, and the Von der Tann, in the German navy, possessing a speed of twenty-eight knots under the most favourable conditions of weather and lightness of stores. ”

“ After-turret gone. 5.40. Hit, hit! On fire everywhere. 5.41. Hit, hit! burning everywhere and sinking. 5.45. Hit! men dying everywhere. 5.46. Hit, hit!" The ship must have been an inferno. At last she could only fire a single gun at intervals, and at 5.40 the Invincible, Inflexible, and Carnarvon closed in on the stricken leviathan and the "cease fire" was sounded. At six o'clock she turned slowly, slowly, over to port till only her rounded side was visible lying in the water like a great whale, with those of her crew who survived walking and crawling over it. ”

“ Nowadays the ship armed with the heaviest and longest-ranged guns—if her gunners know their work—seems to be able to "knock out" a slightly less powerfully gunned opponent before she can get in any effective reply. The present war has given us many illustrations of this fact. The Scharnhorst—a crack gunnery ship—with her heavier broadside, was able to sink the Good Hope with little or no damage to herself, and in her turn she was simply demolished by the heavy guns of the Inflexible and the Invincible off the Falkland Islands. ”

“ Her mainsail measured: 80 feet on the head, 100 feet on the foot, with a drop of 47 feet 3 inches, and 49 feet 6 inches on the leach. She had four reefs in her topsails, and single reefs in her topgallant sails, and carried skysails, studdingsails, and ringtail. She was owned by N. L. & G. Griswold, of New York, and was commanded by Captain Robert H. Waterman, late of the Sea Witch.
The Invincible, owned by J. W. Phillips and others, of New York, was 1767 tons register, and measured: length 221 feet, breadth 41 feet 6 inches, depth 24 feet 10 inches. ”

“ No enemy could have fought against overwhelming odds more gallantly and persistently than did von Spee, his officers, and his highly trained long-service men. Many times, even at the long ranges at which the early part of the action was fought, they brought off fair hits upon the battle cruisers. One 8.2-⁠inch shell from the Scharnhorst wrecked the Invincible’s wardroom and smashed all the furniture into chips except the piano, which still retained some wires and part of the keyboard. ”

“ In 1811–13 he commanded the Invincible, of 74 guns, in active operations on the coast of Spain, and after the peace was for many years captain of the royal yacht, till in May 1825 he was promoted to the rank of rear-admiral. He became vice-admiral in 1837, and admiral in 1848. ”

“ But worse still—Not one word of commendation for the Admiralty for its unparalleled work in gaining fighting efficiency and instant readiness for war by the institution of the Nucleus Crew system—the introduction of Battle practice—the unexampled advance in Gunnery (the “Invincible” with her 12-inch guns hitting the target 1/14th her own size 15 times out of 18 at 5 miles, she herself going 20 knots and the target also moving at an unknown speed and unknown course) and getting rid of 160 vessels that could neither fight nor run away—Not one word of appreciation of all this by the Committee! ”

“ While A is turning, then he is safe from gunfire except by a chance shot. B cannot engage while he is himself turning unless he can integrate his own movements with A’s. It is this latter difficulty which largely explains the duration of modern actions. At the mean range of each engagement, with ships standing still, Sydney could have98 sunk Emden in ten minutes; Inflexible and Invincible could have sunk Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in fifteen. But it was ninety minutes before Emden was driven on the rocks, 180 before Scharnhorst sank, and 300 before Gneisenau went under. ”

“ In 1910 he became rear-admiral of the first Battle Squadron, and commanded the 2nd Cruiser Squadron (1912–3) . During the World War he was commander-in-chief, on the “Invincible,” of the squadron which won the battle of the Falkland Is., Dec. 8 1914, and he took part in the battle of Jutland. He was created K.C.B. (1913) , and K.C.M.G. (1916) ; and a baronetcy was conferred on him in 1916, with the title “of the Falkland Is.” In 1918 he became commander-in-chief of the Nore. ”

“ On a calm day in 1782 the great hundred-gun line-of-battle-ship Royal George sank at her anchors in the harbor of Spithead, carrying down almost a thousand souls; thirty years ago the Captain, then one of the finest of England’s steam turret-ships, capsized at sea, and not a man survived. Each of these vessels was perhaps the best of its kind in the world. No better navigators exist than naval officers, yet they ran the historic old steam-frigate Kearsarge on Roncador Reef, in the Caribbean Sea, in broad daylight, and left her there a total wreck. ”

“ The German battle-cruisers were now close enough for their hulls to be distinguishable. The outline of each ship stood forth, clear-cut and black, against the sky-line. Each was rushing forward at its topmost speed, bearing down with inevitable precision upon the defenceless cargo ship, which, like an exhausted, hunted animal, strained every bolt, bar and rivet to save herself from unutterable disaster. Suddenly, it became apparent that, in addition to the Dreadnought cruisers, the sea was alive with a host of smaller craft--light cruisers and torpedo-boat-destroyers. ”