HMS Minotaur (1793)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

HMS Minotaur was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line launched in 1793 named for the mythological bull-headed monster of Crete.

The ship fought at the Battle of the Nile in 1798, engaging the Aquilon with HMS Theseus and forcing her surrender, an operation which cost Minotaur 23 sailors dead and 64 wounded. She was present at the landings in Aboukir Bay during the invasion of Egypt in 1801 where she lost four men, and was finally present at the Battle of Trafalgar under Captain Charles John Moore Mansfield, where she was instrumental in capturing the Spanish ship Neptuno. During her career, she also managed to capture the French frigate Franchise, as well as attack shipping outside Genoa, Algeciras and Fredricksham in Russia.

Whilst sailing from Gothenburg to Britain, she struck the Haak Bank on the Texel off the Netherlands in the evening of 22 December 1810, after becoming separated from her consorts, HMS Plantagentet and HMS Loire. She rolled on her side rapidly, where waves dismasted her and pounded her hull which began to split. Prior to the roll, 110 of her crew had taken to her boats and soon reached shore, where they informed the Dutch authorities of the disaster. The authorities however placed the survivors under custody and refused to dispatch any rescue vessels until the following morning. The rescue party found however that apart from four men who reached shore by clinging to wreckage, no survivors remained on the vessel or in the surrounding water, with the death toll being between 370 and 500[1].

Three and a half years later, when the prisoners were released, the customary court martial decided that the deceased pilots were to blame for steering the ship into an unsafe position, having misjudged their location by over 60 miles because of the weather. The Dutch authorities were highly criticised for their failure to despatch rescue boats sooner.

See HMS Minotaur for other ships of the same name.