Our March meeting discussed the sad end of an illustrious battleship.
In a packed session we took the unusual step of hearing the short talk first. This was Richard Blake’s intriguingly titled Admiral Sir Jahleel Brenton KCB (1770-1844): stellar captain, Cochrane’s colleague, Napoleon’s prisoner, sailors’ advocate. Brenton lived at the time of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars when the Royal Navy established its dominance over the world’s oceans. Born in the USA, educated in France, he developed into an all-round commander – not only a superb seaman and tactician but a humane and inspirational leader. He demonstrated these qualities while a prisoner of war in France, earning the respect of his captors. After his seagoing career he worked tirelessly to promote the dignity and respect of sailors.
For the main course Richard Holme, author of The Last Days of HMS Warspite in Cornwall 1947/56 gave us an overview of HMS Warspite’s service career followed by a more comprehensive discussion of her drawn-out fate after her decommissioning in 1946.
Built in the First World War as one of the Queen Elizabeth class fast battleships, then the most powerful warships in the world, Warspite survived both wars and earned the greatest number of battle honours awarded to any ship of the Royal Navy. She was badly damaged several times during her career, most seriously at Salerno when she was hit by a Fritz-X guided bomb which left a large hole in her bottom. From 1946-7 she was stripped of useful parts at Portsmouth, then set off under tow for breakers at Faslane. Then the weather intervened. She only got as far as Prussia Cove in Cornwall. The years of difficult, dangerous work to scrap her in place form a fascinating but little-known tale.
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