1 August 1998

Type 23 frigate HMS Somerset sailed into Abukir Bay at the mouth of the Nile in Egypt to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of the Nile, in which a British fleet destroyed their French opponents. An ecumenical service honoured the casualties from both fleets. The battle, in 1798, on 1-3 August, was the defining point of a campaign that began when Napoleon landed a French army in Egypt intent on attacking British India. A British fleet under Nelson had been searching for this expeditionary force, and discovered the escorting French fleet at Abukir Bay, 20 miles from Alexandria, with the French army having already landed. The French believed their anchorage was almost impossible to attack as the ships were lined up, ready for battle, with one flank protected by dangerous shoals. However, when Nelson reached the scene in the early evening he went straight onto the offensive, with one part of his f leet managing to steer between the French and the shore while the other attacked from seaward. The first phase of the battle lasted for three hours and saw the leading French ships caught in a withering crossfire. When reinforcements joined the British attack they concentrated on the central section of the French f leet, a move which saw the French flagship Orient blow up when a magazine caught fire, killing and injuring up to 1,000 people. This prompted the ships to the rear of the French line to attempt to escape the anchorage, scrapping with their British foe as they went. In the end, only two French ships of the line and two frigates escaped the carnage – 11 ships of the line and two more frigates were destroyed or captured. No British ships were lost (though HMS Culloden went aground and was badly damaged) though 218 men died and almost 700 were wounded – the French were estimated to have suffered up to 5,000 killed or wounded and up to 3,900 captured. Nelson, in his f lagship HMS Vanguard, suffered a serious head wound in the thick of the battle that ripped the skin from part of his forehead and caused him severe concussion, but he was patched up and continued. The Battle was also a strategic victory – the French army was trapped in Egypt and Napoleon eventually abandoned it when he returned to Europe; the Royal Navy had wrested the upper hand in the Middle Sea; and it also encouraged other nations (including Russia and the Ottoman Empire) to turn against Napoleon.

2 August 1999

The final performance of the Royal Tournament at Earl’s Court in London was staged on 2 August 1999.. The event began as an Army-only affair, with the first ‘Military Tournament and Assault-at-Arms’ being held at the Agricultural Hall in Islington, London, in June 1880, and although it was not initially a success the crowds gradually came along to support the show in subsequent years. The Royal Navy joined the show in 188, and the first all-Naval element of the Tournament was the cutlass drill and field gun drill, performed by 40 ratings from HMS Excellent in Portsmouth, in 1896. In 1906 the event moved to larger premises, at Olympia, and a crucial element was added to the mix the following year with the introduction of the spectacular Naval Field Gun competition, representing the transport of makeshift artillery pieces by a Naval brigade from the coast to help raise the Boer siege of Ladysmith in 1899 during the Second Boer War. The competition, dubbed the toughest sport in the world, became a huge favourite over the years, and the Devonport Command team saved their best till last, setting the record for the fastest run during the final year of competition in 1999. The Royal Tournament made its final move, to Earl’s Court, in 1950, but by the end of the 20th Century ticket sales were not covering costs and the Strategic Defence Review of 1998 provided sharp focus on military spending; the Tournament was deemed unsustainable and did not make it into the 21st Century.

3 August 1945

HMS Tiptoe and Trump attacked a Japanese convoy in the Java Sea on 3 August 1945 – the last effective torpedo attack by British submarines in the war. Tiptoe was very late to the scene – the 1,600-ton boat was completed in June 1944 and first deployed – in home waters – in the autumn of that year. She sailed for Australia early in 1945, though she undertook her first war patrol from Subic Bay, in the Philippines, in May. At the start of August 1945 Tiptoe and Trump carried out attacks on a small Japanese convoy, escorted by patrol boat PB-109, from Batavia to Singapore, north of the Sunda Strait, sinking the 2,700-ton troop transport Tencho Maru with 121 souls on board. Tiptoe claimed the kill – Trump had attacked the same ship with eight torpedoes earlier the same day but failed to hit her. Tiptoe then came under depth-charge attack but managed to remain undetected until a charge exploded rather to close for comfort, at which point she ran for safety. With the end of the war in the Far East just a few days later the pair returned to Fremantle in Australia along with sister boats HMS Thorough and Taciturn. Tiptoe not only survived the war, but after modification to a streamlined ‘Super T-boat’ served through until 1970, and was scrapped in Portsmouth in 1975 – the last of the T-boats to be retired. Trump spent a good deal of her post-war career based in Australia, but was finally scrapped in the summer of 1971.

4 August 1943

Destroyer HMS Arrow was damaged beyond repair in an explosion in Algiers Harbour on 4 August 1943. The A-class warship was built by Vickers-Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness and commissioned in April 1930, serving in the Mediterranean until 1937. Part of that service included the Spanish Civil War, during which she evacuated British subjects from Spanish ports, carried out patrols and monitored shipping. The first part of World War 2 saw Arrow on convoy protection duties, though she also had work carried out on unreliable turbines. She was switched to the Norway Campaign in April 1940, and was holed when rammed on 26 April by a German trawler flying a false flag in the Romsdalfjord. Her last contribution, in Operation Alphabet, was to help escort a slow convoy of transport and store ships as Allied forces evacuated Norway – she picked up some 80 survivors from two Norwegian passenger ships sunk by German aircraft nearby. Further convoy escort work in the Western Approaches, North Atlantic and Mediterranean followed in 1941-2 before she joined the Eastern Fleet in April 1942. Machinery defects required attention from November 1942 until March 1943, though a subsequent collision with a defensive boom delayed her return to action until May that year. She was in harbour in Algiers in early August, and on the 4th of that month she went alongside ammunition transport ship Fort La Montee, which was heavily loaded and had caught fire. Arrow’s firefighting efforts were in vain, and when the merchant ship blew up the destroyer was badly damaged in the blast and also caught fire. Arrow sustained numerous casualties – 36 of her crew eventually died from the blast or injuries sustained – requiring the Admiralty to arrange a tow back to Gibraltar for the destroyer. After temporary repairs, in late November 1943 she was towed to Taranto for permanent repairs, which were scheduled to take place in November 1943 after an in-depth survey. This marked the beginning of the end for Arrow; although a programme of repairs was agreed and took place from January to September, it became increasingly clear that she was not a worthwhile asset in her current role. In October all further work was suspended, all usable kit was removed and she remained a hulk at Taranto until she was broken up in May 1949. As for Fort La Montee, six died of their wounds when that ship blew up. Her for’ard section burned for several days before being sunk, the remainder of the was sunk by gunfire to prevent further explosions. The freighter had been built in North Vancouver in 1942 and quickly pressed into service for Allied military activities in the Mediterranean.

5 August 1917

Special Service Ship (Q-ship) HMS Chagford was struck by a torpedo in the North Atlantic on 5 August 1917 and sank two days later. Chagford started life as the 2,100-ton Admiralty collier HMS Bracondale in 1903, but during World War 1 was converted to a decoy vessel – Q-ships were designed to appear to be innocent merchant ships which would lure U-boats into an attack, upon which screens were dropped to reveal their guns, the White Ensign was flown and the British ship would turn the tables on the submarine. It didn’t always turn out that way, of course, as was the case on 5 August 1917, when the Q-ship was around 120 miles north-west of Donegal in Ireland. U-44 spotted the ship, but by now solitary merchantmen aroused some suspicion, so the submarine fired a single torpedo as it slowly approached. Chagford launched her ‘panic party’ (a group of sailors who take to a boat or boats to appear as if they are rapidly abandoning ship), but the impact of the torpedo caused her screens to fall, revealing her guns and forcing the ship to go on the offensive before the U-boat was close enough on the surface. U-44 dived and fired two more torpedoes which badly damaged Chagford, and the ship sank two days later while under tow, though all but one of her crew survived. Chagford turned out to be U-44’s final victim. The 930-ton boat, commissioned in May 1915, had made her name by sinking 20 merchant ships (70,226 tons) and two auxiliaries, as well as damaging several other vessels. But on 12 August 1917 she was spotted by destroyer HMS Oracle in the North Sea, which attacked with gunfire then rammed the submarine, which had tried to disguise herself with a sail. The U-boat sank with all 44 of her crew.

6 August 1940

A German mine exploded while being examined in the mining shed at HMS Vernon, Portsmouth, on 6 August 1940, killing five people. The mine, thought to have been a one-tonne parachute device, had apparently been dropped on Portland, where it was defused then transported to Portsmouth for further examination. The mine was taken to HMS Vernon, close to Portsmouth Dockyard, to be studied, but the Germans had begun to attach various booby-traps to some of these mines – and this appears to have been one of the doctored devices. While it was being worked on the booby trap was triggered and an explosion occurred – probably only the booby trap, as the mine itself would have caused much greater damage. The explosion killed one officer and four ratings and seriously injured a number of other personnel. As a result of the incident, a new investigation facility was set up in disused chalk pits at Buriton, near Petersfield, some 15 miles north of Portsmouth, where any further incidents could be more easily contained and explosives could be steamed out of these huge devices. The new facility was dubbed HMS Mirtle, from the acronym Mine Investigation Range.

7 August 1853

91-gun second-rate screw ship-of-the-line HMS Caesar was finally launched at Pembroke Dockyard after a 17-day effort to get her onto the sea. The 3,250-ton ship was actually christened on 21 July but ground to a halt on the slip after travelling around half of her length, and did not shift for more than two weeks. It would appear that the dockyard had used timber from fir trees rather than oaks for the slipway, and as fir was much softer the ship had embedded herself into the wood and gouged a hollow from which she could not simply slide – added to which poor-quality tallow was used to grease the slipway. Local legend has a more interesting reason for the mishap – witchcraft. Local woman Betty Foggy was known to be a witch and caster of spells, and she, along with much of the population of the town, had made their way to the dockyard for the grand launch, which was a popular form of free entertainment in the mid-Victorian era. Unfortunately, the scruffy looking Betty and her daughter were refused entry (possibly because the local populace, in their finery, felt she would bring the tone down, or because of her reputation as a witch, citing the possibility of bad luck). That approach was something of a risk, as thwarting a ‘wise woman’ would be unlikely to end well, and so it proved – Betty went home muttering under her breath, and Caesar was not launched that day nor for many days afterwards. When the warship did finally move, locals suspected it was a combination of the efforts of dockyard workers who built ‘camels’, huge wooden structures, under her hull to lift her above the damaged wooden slipway – and Betty lifting her curse. When the warship finally began to move again, the commotion caused chapels and churches to empty as the people of Pembroke Dock again flocked to the yard to see the ceremony that started 17 days before come to fruition. In early October Caesar was towed to Portsmouth by the steam paddle frigate HMS Magicienne, where final fitting-out work was carried out. Caesar saw service in the Crimean War and also served with the Channel Squadron, which included spells in the Mediterranean and in the Americas. She paid off in Portsmouth in February 1862 and was sold for breaking up at Blackwall on the Thames on 19 April 1870.