Russian ship of the line Lefort

[Thanas]

Context: The Lefort was a Russian ship of the line of 94 guns built on the lines of a 80+ two decker ship of the line. Built in 1833 she sank in the gulf of Finland in 1857. The water conditions in the baltic preserved her hull and the remains of her crew. The wreck was found in 2013 and now after the wrecksite has been adequately protected the Russians have opened a virtual museum. It will expand more in the following weeks but for now it already shows a gorgeous model of the wreck together with videos of the wreck.

Her condition is amazing and if analyzed properly will help us a great deal with learning about the Russian shipbuilding and general warship construction in the early 19th century.

http://lefortship.ru/panorams/

[LaCroix]

I'm speechless. The condition is incredible - it looks almost as if it could be refloated! (Which of course would probalby utterly destroy it, so please don't take me serious here.) I'm so looking forward to publications I actually can read...

[Sea Skimmer]

Cold Brackish water is pretty amazing for preserving wood. I'm impressed the armament remained on deck. I'm also going to go out on a limb and suggest a large deck cargo of masts or pilings is not a good idea on a ship of the line. Even assuming it started out stacked on the centerline. Wonder that she capsized in a gale.

[Thanas]

I'm speechless. The condition is incredible - it looks almost as if it could be refloated! (Which of course would probalby utterly destroy it, so please don't take me serious here.) I'm so looking forward to publications I actually can read...

Actually, she probably could be refloated and if taken proper care of could be turned into a museum, like most wrecks in the baltic who are not destroyed by fishing, mines or were too broken to leave many remains to begin with. The water in the baltic is very cold and has comparatively low oxygen, which means the main danger to wood, namely worms and wood-eating bacteria do not happen there very much. Which is why the baltic and black sea are so important to nautical archeology.

But restoring her will not happen, most simply because it is now understood it is better to leave them there until the next century at least when our preservation techniques have been refined due to our understanding with the vasa and the bremen cog. (Also, restoring a ship of that size would be very, very costly).

Cold Brackish water is pretty amazing for preserving wood. I'm impressed the armament remained on deck. I'm also going to go out on a limb and suggest a large deck cargo of masts or pilings is not a good idea on a ship of the line. Even assuming it started out stacked on the centerline. Wonder that she capsized in a gale.

Yeah, in addition they also had the upper gundeck gunports open, as seen in the wreck, to provide air for the passengers. That, plus bad fuel load (which also was incorrectly arranged) and a violent storm that destroyed a lot of other vessels in the baltic...wonder why they did not close the ports when the weather worsened.

EDIT: One likely scenario is that due to her hull not being properly caulked and improper ballast the gale simply turned her over to one side and then she sank on her own due to improper ballast.

The squadron was caught in a sudden squall and the Lefort heeled over once, righted herself, then heeled over again and sank

Once under water she would have stabilized naturally. If the Russians had not be negligient a lot of people would not have died...

[Thanas]

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26545418

I am thinking it might be a good idea to turn this into a general nautical archeology thread, but in the meantime have a nice overview over some of the more famous scottish wrecks. I myself have done a bit of study into El Gran Grifón and she truly is a fascinating wreck. (even if some of the explanations into the video are a bit curious, for example we have no reason to suppose the English cannons were on average better manufactured iirc).

[Sea Skimmer]

They weren't really better manufactured, but the British had a much better overall armament concept, those issues can get jumbled. The Spanish had too many light guns, and too many heavy pieces were breachloaders that only made sense on the compact bows of galleys, where you wanted as many guns side by side as possible. Also where you expected very heavy small arms fire to be directed at the bow by enemy marines, making loading from the rear a fair bit more survivable.

This was not well suited to broadside combat where volume of fire counted. They also mounted all heavy guns on sliding carriages which were completely unsuited to rapid firing. The British mountings were more technologically advance on the wheeled pattern that would be world standard until the 19th century when guns got too heavy.

Most of the Spanish fleet after all was still oared warships, and most of the Armada merchantmen converted and armed from existing stock. That's what they get for trying to ass pull an ocean going fleet on short notice when they'd been heavily committed to Mediterranean fighting for so long.

[Thanas]

I've read a bit about it and it seems the main problem for them was that they were too loaded with supplies to fight effectively, such as being unable to fire broadsides on a steady pace. Still, had it not been for the elements they would have succeeded.

[Sea Skimmer]

Low rate of fire was directly related to the armament, broadside firing was not even a well established doctrine in that era anyway, it was something of a new idea even for the British since it meant considerable wastage of powder when done at long range. Powder was about one step away from gold, or maybe lithium batteries or flash memory today today. Even if you had vast amounts of money your ability to actually get it in vast amounts was limited.

Too many supplies, too many men on deck, they were just additional problems for the Spanish. They also had other ones like some of the ships being poorly rigged for the conditions they encountered, the Mediterranean having its own entire world of specialist rigs, and some where lightly built. This was once more linked to basic ship design choices, not that the British were inherently better. Many were stout merchantmen on par with British ships in base terms, but the British weren't sending out many marginal ships, if only because they couldn't arm everything that could float anyway.

The entire operation was poorly conceived and executed without enough preparation, as a number of other Christian defeats had been in the galley era in the century preceding. You can say that about a lot of wars of course. In fact the entire operation was always doomed because IIRC poor communications meant the army in the Spanish Netherlands was not actually ready to invade England, and had dispersed to fight rebels inland. This was after all not that long after the Untied Provinces had broken away from the Spanish Netherlands in the ongoing 80 years war.

I've never seen bad weather considered a factor until September during the Spanish voyage home, well after the Spanish had abandon the operation and concluded they could not or at least should risk another fight with the British. They did not know the British were largely out of ammunition, though some stocks had been replenished since the main fighting which was in late July and early August. This destroyed the Spanish fleet, but that only prevented a second armada from possibly being launched a year or two later. It had no direct bearing on the original campaign. The Spanish Netherlands was incapable of supporting such a large fleet full time, nor providing it with a safe enough anchorage. That's not untypical of naval warfare anyway, even in the far more developed era of iron and steel era really large fleets still had to disperse to a considerable number of bases if they were to operate for any real length of time.

[Thanas]

The entire operation was poorly conceived and executed without enough preparation, as a number of other Christian defeats had been in the galley era in the century preceding. You can say that about a lot of wars of course. In fact the entire operation was always doomed because IIRC poor communications meant the army in the Spanish Netherlands was not actually ready to invade England, and had dispersed to fight rebels inland. This was after all not that long after the Untied Provinces had broken away from the Spanish Netherlands in the ongoing 80 years war.

Well, sure, but given the state of English troops at the time it might very well have been that the men aboard the ships were enough to secure a foothold, while the other ships were to be ferried over. As for Parma's army, they had remained concentrated until Gravellines, but were never being able to be ferried onboard as the dutch enjoyed an unbeatable local naval superiority and most Spanish ships could not enter the dutch riverways.

I've never seen bad weather considered a factor until September during the Spanish voyage home, well after the Spanish had abandon the operation and concluded they could not or at least should risk another fight with the British.

Yeah, I confused that with the Spanish Armadas sent against England in the 90s which were scattered by storms.