Ship Wreck: HMS Birkenhead and the Disaster Off Danger Point

HMS Birkenhead was one of the first iron-hulled ships built for the Royal Navy, and she is remembered for the soldiers who stood in ranks as she sank off the South African coast in 1852. She was designed as a steam frigate but was converted into a troopship before she entered service. Her loss gave the world one of the best-known examples of discipline at sea, and it is still remembered in Britain and South Africa.

Principal Particulars

• Length, 210 feet (64 m)
• Breadth, 37 feet 6 inches (11.43 m)
• Load water-line draught, 15 feet 9 inches (4.80 m) at the designed displacement
• Displacement, 1,918 long tons (1,949 t) on the load water-line
• Hull weight at launch, 903 tons
• Propulsion, two 564 horsepower steam engines by Forrester and Co driving paddle wheels
• Builder, John Laird’s yard at Birkenhead

These figures are taken from the recorded designs and launch details. Calculated from them, the length is about 5.6 times the breadth, and the breadth is about 2.4 times the designed draught. The length to breadth figure is typical of the long, narrow steam warships of the period. Older register entries were often framed around measuring tonnage rather than hull shape, so a single dimension needs careful reading.

Building the Birkenhead

The ship was laid down at John Laird’s shipyard as the frigate HMS Vulcan. She was renamed Birkenhead soon afterwards after the town where she was built. Laird, her designer, said the approved design was about 20 feet longer than any vessel of her class built until then. The Admiralty moved the paddle shaft several feet further forward, a change Laird considered unfortunate because it made the ship trim by the head unless the hold was stowed with care.

She was divided into eight watertight compartments, and her engine room was split by two longitudinal bulkheads into four more, making twelve in total. Her bow carried a large figurehead of Vulcan holding a hammer. Her armament was intended to be two 96-pounder pivot guns and four 68-pounder broadside guns.

Construction Material

The Birkenhead was built of iron, which made her one of the earliest iron warships in the Royal Navy. Iron hulls of this period were normally framed with angle bars and built up from riveted plates, with transverse bulkheads that split the hull into watertight compartments. This method gave a stronger hull than timber of the same size, and it allowed a longer hull without the strain that bent wooden frames. Iron was also heavier than wood and could be more easily damaged by a sharp blow from a rock.

Iron ships had clear advantages. They could be built larger, they resisted rot and shipworm, and their compartments gave better protection against flooding. The drawbacks included corrosion below the waterline, fatigue in the plating under repeated working, and the tendency of thin plates to tear when they struck a rock. Naval architects of the day were still learning how iron behaved against cannon shot, and some trials suggested that a shot could leave a jagged hole that was hard to plug.

Conversion to a Troopship

The Birkenhead was launched on 30 December 1845 and made her maiden voyage to Plymouth in 1846. She stayed laid up for a time before being used around England, Scotland and Ireland. In 1847 she helped refloat Brunel’s iron ship SS Great Britain after it had run aground in Dundrum Bay.

She was never commissioned as a frigate. The Royal Navy switched to propeller propulsion after an experiment in 1845, and the Admiralty doubted the value of an iron hull against cannon fire. As a result she was converted into a troopship in 1851. A forecastle and poop deck were added, and a third mast gave her a barquentine rig. Even so, she made the voyage from the Cape in 37 days in October 1850, which was faster and more comfortable than most wooden troopships of the time.

In September 1847 she ran down and sank the brig Oratio in the English Channel. The Admiralty Court found her to blame because she had no look-out posted and was nineteen men short of her full crew.

The Wreck of the Birkenhead

In January 1852 the Birkenhead left Portsmouth under Captain Robert Salmond, carrying troops from ten regiments to the Eighth Xhosa War. She picked up more soldiers and some officers’ families at Queenstown, now Cobh. Most of the women and children were landed at Simon’s Town on 23 February, and nine cavalry horses, hay and 35 tons of coal were taken aboard for the last leg to Algoa Bay.

She sailed from Simon’s Bay on the evening of 25 February with between 630 and 643 people aboard, though the exact number is in doubt. Salmond chose to keep close to the coast to make the best speed, staying within about 3 miles of the shore. The sea was calm and the night was clear. Shortly before 2 am on 26 February she struck an uncharted rock near Danger Point, close to Gansbaai. The rock is clearly visible in rough seas but is hard to see in calm weather.

Salmond ordered the anchor dropped and the engines reversed. As the ship backed off the rock, the sea poured through the hole and she struck again, buckling the plates of the forward bilge. The forward compartments and engine rooms flooded, and over 100 soldiers drowned in their berths. About ten minutes after the first impact she struck a third time beneath the engine room and broke in two just aft of the mainmast. The forepart sank at once, and the stern floated for a few minutes before it too went down, about twenty minutes after the first strike.

The Soldiers on Deck

The surviving soldiers mustered on deck while their officers gave orders. Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Seton took charge of the military personnel and stressed the need for order. Sixty men were sent to the chain pumps, sixty more to the lifeboat tackles, and the rest were gathered on the poop deck to raise the forward part of the ship. The women and children were put into the ship’s cutter alongside. Only three smaller boats could be used, because one large boat was swamped and another could not be launched due to poor maintenance.

Just before the ship sank, Salmond called on all who could swim to jump overboard and make for the boats. Seton judged that a rush for the boats would swamp them and endanger the women and children, so he ordered the men to stand fast. Only three men made the attempt. The cavalry horses were freed and driven into the sea in the hope they could swim ashore. Eight reached land, while a ninth had a broken leg.

Survivors later described how many men died in the water. Some swam or clung to wreckage for hours to reach the shore, and many were taken by sharks. The next morning the schooner Lioness found one cutter and rescued the occupants of another, and in the afternoon she found 40 survivors still in the rigging. It was reported that only 193 of about 643 people aboard were saved. Captain Edward W.C. Wright, of the 91st Argyllshire Regiment, was the most senior army officer to survive, and he was later made a brevet major for his conduct.

The Court Martial and Its Findings

Several sailors were court martialled over the loss. The hearing took place on 8 May 1852 aboard HMS Victory at Portsmouth and drew a great deal of attention. None of the senior naval officers survived, so no one was found blameworthy. Wright told the court that the order on board from the moment the ship struck until she disappeared had far exceeded what he had thought discipline could achieve.

Memorials and Legacy

In 1895 a lighthouse was built at Danger Point to warn shipping of the reef. In 1936 a remembrance plate was fixed to its base by the Navy League of South Africa. A memorial to the Birkenhead was erected nearby in 1995 and later moved closer to the lighthouse in 2001. A memorial in St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, commemorates Seton, Ensign Alex. C. Russell and forty-eight men of the 74th Highlanders. The King of Prussia, Frederick William IV, reportedly ordered an account of the incident read at the head of every regiment in his army. Thomas Hemy’s 1892 painting of the sinking became widely known through prints.

Women and Children First

The sinking of the Birkenhead is one of the earliest maritime disasters in which the principle of women and children first is known to have been applied. The idea had earlier roots. During a fire aboard the packet Poland in 1840, passengers agreed that women and children should be cared for first when taking to the boats. The principle was later widely quoted in fiction and history, although it was not applied in every real disaster.

The Birkenhead Treasure

A rumour held that the ship carried a military payroll of about £240,000 in gold coins, stored in the powder room. Several salvage attempts have followed. A 1958 dive recovered anchors and brass fittings but no gold. In 1986 to 1988 an archaeological and salvage excavation recovered a few gold coins, which appear to have belonged to passengers and crew. Because the wreck lies in shallow water at about 30 metres and is a war grave, the British and South African governments reached an agreement in 1989 to share any gold recovered.

Term Definition

Watertight compartment means a section of a hull separated by bulkheads so that water entering one part does not flood the whole ship. Barquentine describes a sailing rig with a square-rigged foremast and fore-and-aft rigged main and mizzen masts. Trim by the head means a ship sits lower at the bow than at the stern, which can make steering and handling harder.