HMS Minotaur (1793)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The shipwreck of the Minotaur, oil on canvas, by J. M. W. Turner
Career (UK)
Name:	HMS Minotaur
Ordered:	3 December 1782
Builder:	Woolwich Dockyard
Laid down:	January 1788
Launched:	6 November 1793
Honours and awards:	Participated in: Battle of the Nile Battle of Trafalgar
Fate:	Wrecked, 22 December 1810
General characteristics
Class and type:	Courageux class ship of the line
Tons burthen:	1723 tons (1750.6 tonnes)
Length:	172 ft 3 in (52.5 m) (gundeck)
Beam:	47 ft 9 in (14.6 m)
Depth of hold:	20 ft 9½ in (6.3 m)
Propulsion:	Sails
Sail plan:	Full rigged ship
Armament:	74 guns: Gundeck: 28 × 32 pdrs Upper gundeck: 28 × 18 pdrs Quarterdeck: 14 × 9 pdrs Forecastle: 4 × 9 pdrs

HMS Minotaur was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 6 November 1793 at Woolwich. She was named after 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 Plantagenet 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.

The sinking was depicted by the famed landscape painter J. M. W. Turner, though the subject was not originally the Minotaur, but a generic "transport ship". Turner had been producing sketches in preparation for the painting as early as 1805, but by the time he had completed the painting in 1810, the recent wreck of the Minotaur was a subject of much discussion, and the painting was named to capitalise on this public interest.^[2]

[edit] References