Oh, like this doesn’t happen every day …
That Time Two Luxurious Ocean Liners Fought an Intense Naval Battle
4 Likes
A bit bald, and a bit inaccurate. Both ships altered their appearance to resemble the other. Cap Trafalgar took the guns from a German gunboat (Eber from memory) 2x4.1” and a dozen heavy calibre machine guns. Carmania was “called up” on outbreak of war and had 6x 6” guns installed from old cruisers. Carmania caught Cap Trafalgar replenishing at Trinidad Island in mid South Atlantic. Both ships opened fire but Cap Trafalgar’s guns outranged Carmania who took dreadful punishment to get into range. Carmania was on fire forward and several guns were out of action but she closed to point blank range and contemplated boarding, although at that range Cap Trafalgar’s machine guns were effective. Carmania got a clear shot and fired a broadside into CapTrafalgar’s waterline. Shortly after, Cap Trafalgar sank. The battle was a very close run thing, the fire nearly caused Carmania to disengage. The whole story is in The Ship That Sank Itself, good read but I can’t remember the author.
1 Like
maybe ‘The Ship That Hunted Itself’ by Colin Simpson?
https://www.amazon.com/Ship-That-Hunted-Itself/dp/0812819268
1 Like
Saved me going to dig it out. The human stories behind the engagement are worth a study, Carmanias Merchant Captain (Captain Barr) did everything he could to make the ship successful. I think the Admiralty should not have armed her with 30 year old guns that were so inferior to the German 105mm, had Carmania had modern (1900 on) 6” guns she could have stood off and battered CapTrafalgar.
I presume that the more modern guns were reserved for more capable ships.
The merchant cruisers had to make do with the guns that were available …
Exactly, but then what is the use of arming ships with such outmoded weapons? These guns were used in the small monitors as well and really didn’t have the required performance there either. Fisher during his first period as First Sea Lord scrapped a lot of obsolete Naval ships, saying they were too weak to fight, too slow to run away. Yet, in 1914 the Navy created a whole new class that fitted that description, the AMC. Both ships were lucky that the other was an AMC. Had either been a cruiser the battle could have been a lot shorter.
Obsolete ships were scrapped and Fisher started building modern ships.
He retired in 1910, aged 69, and then came back in 1914 (73 or 74 years old?).
In 1914 there was an urgency to get hulls with guns out on the seas.
If the rebuilding/rearmament had been done faster (hard to allocate money in peacetime) …
The HMS Dreadnought made whole navies obsolete …
1 Like
Armament was not 6" guns but eight QF 4.7-inch naval guns, probably Mk V.
HMS Carmania, armed merchant cruiser - British warships of World War 1 (naval-history.net)
Regards,
M
Dug out the book and you are right 8 x4.7” QF on Carmania. The conversion was done in ONE WEEK! My comments of the battle were slightly wrong as the reason for Carmania closing on the Cap Trafalgar, it was actually the other way round as the 3.7cm machine cannon had a range of only 3000yards against 9300 for Carmania’s 4.7”s cap Trafalgarhad practised close range and boarding manoeuvres. Meanwhile the fire that started early in Carmania didn’t let her turn away.
1 Like
Quick, but perhaps unsurprising. Carmania was classed as RMS - Royal Mail Ship - which attracted a government subsidy at the building stage to cover necessary modifications to make the vessel readily convertible to an AMC, a role to which the high speed required for carrying mails suited them. For example, “Titanic” and her sisters, and the “Lusitania”, “Mauretania”, and “Aquitania” were all built to the Admiralty Standard with structural reinforcement and fittings ready to accept a designed armament, and although these ships proved to big and fuel-hungry to remain in that role “Mauretania” and “Olympic” carried their guns while acting as troopships.
Regards,
M