Loss of HMS Serpent Torpedo Cruisers Tartar Archer 1890

Pricing & History

Sold for
Start Free Trial or Sign In to see what it's worth.
Sold Date
Source eBay

This is a vintage engraving and article describing the shipwreck and total loss of the HMS Serpent off the Spanish coast in 1890. The illustration is titled "Torpedo Cruisers of the Tartar and Archer Class." and shows ships similar to the HMS Serpent. The print is in excellent condition. The article describes the ship in great detail and gives details of the wreck near Camarinas. This was published in a British engineering journal and is dated May 14, 1890. HMS. SERPENT was a twin-screw third-class cruiser, laid down at Devonport in November 1885 and launched on 10 March 1887. 1,770 tons, 225 x 13.6 ft, she was armed with six 6" guns and eight 3-pounders. The original number of ten 14" torpedo tubes had been halved because she was over the designed displacement. She was the first vessel in the Royal Navy to use galvanising to protect metal plates exposed to bilge water. In 1888 and 1889 SERPENT had only been commissioned for the annual manoeuvers before returning to the Reserve, but on 24 June 1890 she was commissioned by Cdr. Harry L. Ross for service on the Cape of Good Hope and West Coast of Africa Station. His officers were:- Lieuts. Guy Greville (navigating), Peter Richards and Torquill Macleod. She sailed from Plymouth on Saturday 8 November. During the night of Monday 9th three seamen from SERPENT, were cast up on a rocky shore, exhausted, bruised and bleeding. They must have walked several miles because the morning was well advanced before they reached a remote and impoverished Spanish town w they were treated with great kindness. The whole town was roused and hundreds hurried along the coast to w wreckage was coming ashore. No trace could be found of other survivors and by the following morning nothing could be seen of SERPENT. On Wednesday 12 November a despatch reached Madrid that a British man-of-war SERPENT had been wrecked on the previous Monday night near the small coast town of Camarinas in the old Spanish province of Galicia with the loss of 147 of the officers and crew. By 7 o`clock on Thursday morning rumours of the loss had reached Plymouth and Admiralty House and Devonport Dockyard gates were besieged by relatives and friends anxious to learn if any news had been received by the Admiralty. Early in the afternoon a special edition of the local newspaper, The Western Morning News, gave some details of the wreck but no confirmation came from the Admiralty, leading the poor people waiting at the gates to hope that their men might have been saved. Officials who had started out for Camarinas along mountainous roads and mule tracks on Wednesday, returned to Corunna on Saturday afternoon and the steam gun vessel HMS LAPWING which had arrived at Corunna on the Friday morning sailed with the first and second officers of HMS TYNE to recover bodies and look after salvage. She returned on Sunday evening with the three survivors and the news that thirty bodies had already been recovered by the Spaniards and buried in the graveyard near the remains of the crew of a British steamer wrecked in the bay two years previously. The bodies of Cdr. Ross and two unidentified officers were found on Friday and by the evening 50 bodies had been found and interred. Telegrams arrived in Plymouth throughout the weekend giving more details based on the survivor`s stories and large crowds read them as they were posted outside the newspaper offices. The weather had been thick off Camarinas on Monday night and although no actual gale was raging t was a heavy sea. SERPENT was steering a course which should have taken her well clear of Cape Villano but, partly due to compass defects, she was more than ten miles off course and was virtually doomed by the time she entered Punta Bay north of Cape Villano, a place littered with rocks, some submerged, others as much as 100ft above low water. The officers were on the bridge and six men were on watch when she struck Boy Rock going at a speed of eight or nine knots, ripping the hull as far back as the first coal bunkers. She remained impaled on the rock for a short time... read more

Items in the Price Guide are obtained exclusively from licensors and partners solely for our members’ research needs.

Flag item for content or copyright

If this item contains incorrect or inappropriate information please contact us here to flag it for review.

If you are the originator/copyright holder of this photo/item and would prefer it be excluded from our community, contact us here for removal.