#firthofforth — Public Fediverse posts

Harvesting the wind
https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/55310992780/in/photostream/lightbox/

Large ship off the coast at #Portobello , carrying the massive, bright yellow structures of new, offshore wind farms

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#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #Engineering #FirthOfForth #sea #mer #WindFarm #OffshoreWindFarm #RenewableEnergy #ship #bateau

Harvesting the wind
https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/55310992780/in/photostream/lightbox/

Large ship off the coast at #Portobello , carrying the massive, bright yellow structures of new, offshore wind farms

.

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #Engineering #FirthOfForth #sea #mer #WindFarm #OffshoreWindFarm #RenewableEnergy #ship #bateau

The ignominious end of HMS Caledonia: the thread about how the Navy’s longest ship ended up as scrap metal on the Forth seabed

Q. What was the largest ship in the Royal Navy at the outbreak of WW2?

A. As any respectable naval anorak knows, it was the 47,000t, 860ft long battleship HMS Hood, the “Mighty Hood“, pride of the fleet and largest warship afloat. Right? Or… was it the Bismarck?

No, the largest ship in the Royal Navy at the outbreak of WW2 was the 56,500t, 956-ft long training ship HMS Caledonia; until 1936 the Cunard-White Star liner RMS Majestic, which until 1922 had been the Hamburg-Amerika liner SS Bismarck. Until 1935, the largest ship in the world

The Bismarck was the 3rd and largest of three Hamburg-Amerika liners built immediately prior to WW1; the others were the Vaterland and Imperator. They were ordered to reclaim dominance and German national pride in the Transatlantic liner stakes from the British Cunard and White Star liners. They were to do this by being both the largest and grandest liners afloat. Bismarck was the last of the trio but before she was laid down, the Hamburg-Amerika line found out that the new Cunard liner Aquitania was to be longer than her, so they hastily rejigged the design to add an extra 6 feet on. They needn’t had bothered, they had made been misinformed and Aquitania actually ended up being 50ft shorter than Bismarck.

It was too late to change the design however and it was too late for her sister Imperator, which had been given the most embarrassingly awful nose job to lengthen her by the vainglorious addition of a massive bronze eagle figurehead which was meant to make her 1ft longer than Aquitania. Fortunately for her appearance this partially fell off during Atlantic storms within a year, and was removed.

Bismarck was launched in June 1914 by a granddaughter of the Iron Chancellor, but this ceremony was jinxed when she fluffed the swinging of the champagne bottle and it only broke on the second attempt: none other than Kaiser Wilhelm II stepped in to give it his best swing. The outbreak of war found her without a purpose, and construction ground to a halt beyond maintenance work. During the war she was stripped of valuable components, wiring and piping and all her brass and copper. The incomplete hulk was ceded to Britain under the Treaty of Versailles as reparations for the loss of the White Star liner Britannic (sister of Titanic), which had struck a German mine and sunk in 1916 while serving as a hospital ship. This was the largest ship lost in the war, but although she sank in just 55 minutes, all but 30 souls on board were saved. Her sister Imperator went to Cunard as a replacement for the Lusitania, the ill-fated liner whose sinking had outraged America and helped drag that nation into the war against Germany.

White Star sent representatives and shipyard engineers from Harland & Wolff in Belfast to Hamburg to supervise completion of their new possession. The whole ship needed re-wiring, and a mysterious fire that damaged her during completion and which the British put down to sabotage by the German workers was probably an electrical fault: this would be a recurrent theme. She completed in March 1922 and White Star officers were sent to supervise her trials by officers and men of Hamburg-Amerika line. This was marred by briefly running aground, but after a week she was accepted and handed over. Her German name was painted out and replaced with Majestic.

A White Star crew arrived and sailed her to Southampton, during which time they repainted her funnels into company colours. She arrived exactly 10 years to the day that the Titanic had departed on her ill-fated maiden voyage. Not only the largest in the world, she was arguably the most opulent, designed by the French architect Charles Mewès. Her German builders had trunked the boiler uptakes around the ships sides (rather than through the centre), to allow for huge, uninterrupted interior spaces, and spared no expense on the specification

Despite being a foreigner in a time when ocean liners were a symbol of national prestige, she was made White Star flagship and was the pride of the fleet. Her first official duties were to be inspected by King George V and Queen Mary, before heading for New York. She settled down to a glamorous 1920s career on the Atlantic, but one that was always marred by the occasional spontaneous fire in her electrical system, and growing cracks in her decks (which grew to 100ft long) as a result of the lengthening job.

The Depression hit the Transatlantic liners hard, already struggling from a downturn in migrating passengers, and in White Star’s case, poor corporate management. The Majestic frequently found herself on “booze cruises” from a very dry and thirsty Prohibition-era USA to help pay her huge running costs. But the cracks grew bigger, the electrical fires got more frequent and the finances grew ever worse. Cunard and White Star line merged in 1934 in a government-sponsored deal. The new company had too many liners and the older ones began to be disposed of; Majestic survived the initial chop, but her card was marked.

With the new company flagship Queen Mary under construction, Cunard-White Star made to dispose of the sister ship Berengaria, which was older and more prone to fires, but the larger Majestic had higher running costs so in 1936 was taken out of service instead.

She quietly sailed her last voyage in February that year and disappeared from the schedules without any announcement on her future. In May she was bought by Thomas Ward of Inverkeithing for £115k (c. £6.6m in 2023), the scrapyard where many a liner and battleship ended its days.

Majestic was taken into dock at Southampton to have her funnels and masts lowered to allow her to sneak beneath the Forth Bridge, but there was a snag – the minor matter of fine legal print of the Treaty of Versailles. Bismarck had been handed over as a prize of war as compensation to White Star, but the terms did not allow the new owner to sell her. Instead, the Royal Navy stepped in and took possession, and “gave” Wards 24 old destroyers of equivalent scrap value in return. Everyone was happy. The lawyers were happy. Cunard-White Star got paid by Wards, Wards got the scrap they had paid for and the Royal Navy got what had been – until 6 months previous – the largest ship in the world, for the price of only a few old rusty relics.

The great liner was now taken in for conversion to an enormous training ship, with capacity for 1500 trainee boys and 500 officer apprentices. Her luxurious fittings – apart from the swimming pool – were stripped out, and the vast interior converted to spartan classrooms. Where once her passengers slept in the most luxurious cabins afloat, the new occupants would sling hammocks from the roof beams in time-honoured Royal Navy tradition. In April 1937 she made her last sea voyage, to Rosyth on the Firth of Forth.

On arrival, she commissioned as HMS Caledonia, named after the Victorian training ship that had once served on the Forth under that name. Her job was to train the boys and young men who would fill the ranks of the expanding Royal Navy in the run up to the inevitable war. By the end of the year there were 1,000 trainees aboard.

The new Caledonia only had an expected lifespan of 4 years, she was to plug the gaps until permanent shore facilities could take over; but she didn’t even make this. On the outbreak of war there was a panic that the Luftwaffe would target her for a revenge sinking. This was not without reason and the first air raids over the United Kingdom during the war soon followed over the Forth with the Royal Navy and Rosyth being the target. And so the trainee boys onboard were packed off to safety in the Isle of Man, the officer apprentices were sent ashore at Rosyth, and the great ship was floated out into the Forth and pumped full of water so she would settle on the sea bed at low tide (therefore couldn’t be “sunk”), to await her fate, or another use.

However the proud old ship had other ideas. Just 26 days after war was declared and a full 17 days before the Luftwaffe arrived over the Forth, she set herself on fire and burnt out, settling on to the bed of the Firth. Her shonky electrical system had the last laugh. With the country now at war with Germany, the niceties of previous treaties could be overlooked, and she was sold to Wards of Inverkeithing – again, for mining as a strategic reserve of scrap iron. She was demolished in situ from 1940-43.

In July 1943, what remained of the hull was patched up and floated around the corner to Inverkeithing, for beaching and final break-up by Wards. This was completed in 1944, her name transferred to a shore station at Oban.

After the war, the name was relocated back to Rosyth, where it was a shore training establishment until 1985. It was rehabilitated again at Rosyth in 1996, where it remains to this day, the Navy’s HQ in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The HMS Caledonia which was once the liner RMS Majestic remains the longest ship to have ever commissioned into the Royal Navy, a full 24ft longer than the modern Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers. With her loss in 1939, the battleship HMS Hood would regain her crown as the largest ship in the Navy. In a sardonic twist of fate, Hood would be sunk in May 1941 by a German ship named Bismarck – with great loss of life.

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The thread about John Paul Jones; the Scottish-American “pirate” who tried to capture Edinburgh and Leith but lived to tell the tale

This thread was originally written and published in December 2019.

It was on a day like this, 240 years ago, with a west wind howling up the Firth of Forth, rattling the window panes and lifting the roof tiles, that Edinburgh and Leith were saved from sacking by the fledgling United States Navy. The year was 1779 and it was the middle of the War of Independence when a squadron of American ships of war appeared in the Firth. Their objective; to disrupt shipping, spread panic and “raise a contribution” to the American war effort of two hundred thousand pounds from the wallets of the good folk of Edinburgh and Leith. These ships were the 36-gun Bon Homme Richard, the 32-gun Pallas and the 12-gun Vengeance and in command was one John Paul Jones. To the Americans a great hero, a father to their naval service:

To the British, a common pirate. Of course, they would say that, because he beat them at their own game, rattled the establishment to its core and made the mighty Royal Navy look rather impotent.

So who was John Paul Jones? For a start, he wasn’t born as John Paul Jones or an American, he was actually from Kirkcudbrightshire. He was born in 1747 as plain John Paul to John Paul (senior), a gardener and Jean Mcduff. In 1760, John junior was apprenticed to a sea captain in Whitehaven and took to the seven seas on the merchant ship Friendship. He sailed the Atlantic trade route, mainly between Britain and the colony of Virginia where his older brother was settled.

For quite a few years John kept this up, working his way up the ranks to First Mate by 1768. At this point fate begins to intervene and steer his life on a new course. In Jamaica, he decides to abandon his ship and work his passage back to Scotland. Once home, he finds a new ship – the appropriately named John – and is taken on as lower mate. When the master and leading mates unexpectedly die of fever, he takes command and brings the ship and her cargo safely home. In gratitude, the owners raise him to master. So at the tender age of 23, John finds himself a ship’s master with 10 years experience under his belt; life has worked out well for him. But then some things start to go wrong. On only his seconnd voyage as master he has someone flogged for insubordination. This was a very common and non-noteworthy act for the time, sailors were kept in check with fairly equal proportions of corporal punishment, alcohol and the promise of the occasional pay packet.

But the flogged man has connections back in Scotland and when he died (from Yellow Fever), the blame for his death is laid at the feet of John. As a young captain from a humble family he has little influence himself over matters once he’s off his ship and finds himself thrown in the Tolbooth of Kirkcudbright to await his fate. But clearly he is not without any friends as he is bailed and given some quiet advice to get far away from Kirkcudbright before the law has its way. This was sensible advice, which was followed.

As a result he quickly leaves Scotland for England and finds a new ship, the Betsy, and spends 18 successful months toing and froing in the Caribbean, before once again clashing with a subordinate crewmember. This time, he allegedly runs the man through with a sword in an argument over pay. He would claim this was self defence, but having fled from the law before he must have realised that he couldn’t go back and face any more music the music and so headed north to the Virginia colony in about 1772. He finds that his brother has died and so takes takes over his affairs there.

Perhaps it is to cover his tracks that in Virginia he changes his name to John Paul Jones, with American folk legend suggesting that it was in honour of statesman Willie Jones. JPJ takes to his new home and when war breaks out with Britian he signs up to fight for his adopted homeland against that of his birth. Whether this was opportunism or patriotism is not clear but in 1775 he is part of the newly formed Continental Navy. As an experienced sailor and officer, JPJ’s potential is recognised by founding father Richard Henry Lee and he is appointed First Lieutenant of the frigate Alfred. Like most US ships of this time it’s a converted merchantman, but the line between smaller naval and civilian ships at this time was rather blurry so it was not that uncommon.

It is apparently JPJ who had the honour of hoisting the Grand Union Flag – the first national flag of the United States, on a US ship, for the first time. He and the Alfred sail to the Caribbean and raid Nassau, but after this this point he takes a demotion to a smaller ship, the sloop Providence, as a step on the ladder to commanding a frigate of his own.

Long story short, JPJ rapidly impresses his superiors with a combination of skill, aggression and good luck. By 1778 he is in charge of the new frigate Ranger. On February 14th, on the Ranger, he took a salute from a French naval squadron under La Motte Picquet in the Robuste at Quiberon Bay, the first official recognition of the young American state by a foreign government.

He is now sent to take the war to the British on the other side of the Atlantic but finds that his crew – and in particular his officers – are completely lacking, unwilling to take risks or to follow his orders. A raid on the sloop HMS Drake fails due to poor seamanship. A raid on Whitehaven, his old home port, fails due to a combination of poor weather and an uncooperative crew who decided to visit the pub instead of set fire to the shipping in the harbour.

JPJ next hatches a plot to kidnap the Earl of Selkirk for ransom from St. Mary’s Isle, but this scheme is foiled as the Earl is away; the Americans are instead cordially entertained by the Earl’s wife before leaving after helping themselves to some silverwear. (JPJ would later buy the loot back, at his own expense, and return it to the Selkirks).

The effect on British morale and general public alarm was much significant. Here were American rebels acting with impunity, not just in British waters but also on the land! It was a national scandal. But the reality was that his raiding around the Solway proved fruitless and resulted in a crew who were restless from the lack of prize money. And so JPJ sails the Ranger back across the Irish Sea and finally catches up with his previous quarry, the sloop HMS Drake, off of Carrickfergus. A roughly equal fight on paper, he deploys a ruse to get the initial jump on Drake before bettering her with skilful gunnery. Five of the British crew, including their captain and the first lieutenant, were killed in the fight and after an hour the Drake surrendered. This was another national scandal for the Royal Navy in home waters at the hands of the young man from Kirkcudbright.

JPJ has Drake sailed to Brest to be sold to the French as a prize. This was finally a great victory for him and the Continental Navy, but there was much acrimony between captain, second in command Lt. Simpson (who he tries and fails to have court-martialled) and the crew. In France, JPJ is given a bigger ship, the merchantman Duc de Duras, which has been gifted to the US Navy by a sympathiser. On conversion to a 40-gun warship he has her named Bonhomme Richard after Ben Franklin, who used the pseudonym “Poor Richard” to publish his almanac in Paris

JPJ assembles a little fleet and prepares for war in Lorient in June 1779 but is forced back from his initial cruise by bad weather and in need of repairs. A second attempt is made in August; Bonhomme Richard, Pallas and Vengeance are accompanied by the French naval cutter Le Cerf and two privateers, Monsieur and Granville. Monsieur falls out with JPJ only days out of port and leaves the fleet – falling out with his subordinates is quickly becoming something of a hallmark for JPJ’s expeditions. But this time the Royal Navy are better prepared and locate and attempt to chase the Americans. He is able to lead them on a merry dance around the north of Scotland before shaking the pursuers off. On his way, despite ongoing squabbles with other officers, he is able to take 16 merchant ships as prizes.

And so it was on the 16th September 1779 that there is great alarm on both banks of the Forth when John Paul Jones and his three remaining ships (the others had returned to France by this time with the prizes), appeared in the Forth intent on sailing up it and doing as they pleased.

A panic spreads through Edinburgh and Leith. The moneyed classes secure their goods and flee the city for their estates. The banks are locked up, the garrison barricade themselves in Edinburgh Castle, the church bells are rung and “neither a carriage nor a horse [was] to be seen“. Leith’s fortifications, the great Marian walls and the Cromwellian citadel are decrepit, having been partially slighted and then left to the elements and those intent on pilfering the masonry for building material. A more fundamental problem is that they were never designed to offer defence from seaward, but from landward. But the enterprising folk of Leith try to mount a defence of sorts as best they can. Three spare old cannon were retrieved from the Naval Victualling Yard on Constitution Street and manhandled along to the walls of the Citadel.

The remains of the citadel do at least provide something of a raised firing platform to cover the mouth of the harbour, but this battery was “extremely perilous to those who worked it“. Edinburgh sent down a couple more old cannon and gunners from the castle and these were posted near Newhaven with small arms were handed out to the Incorporated Trades of Leith. With this meagre defence, the town battened down the hatches and awaited its fate.

But the folk of Kirkcaldy, on the opposite shore of the Forth, take an alternative approach to defence. They follow their minister, the Reverend Robert Shirra, down to the sea and begin to pray for almighty intervention.

Now deer Lord, dinna ye think it a shame for ye to send this vile piret to rob our folk o Kirkcaldy; for ye ken they’re puir enow already, and hae naething to spaire

Shirra’s sermon against John Paul Jones (translated, “Now dear Lord, don’t you think it a shame for you to send this vile pirate to rob our folk of Kirkcaldy; for you know they are poor enough already and have nothing to spare”)

And would you know the almighty happened to be listening? For no sooner had Kirkcaldy prayed for salvation than, in the words of John Paul Jones, “a very severe gale of wind came on, and being directly contrary obliged me to bear away after having in vain endeavoured for some time to withstand its violence“.

As the wind blew up, JPJ’s ships were not yet in the shelter of Leith Roads in the lee of Inchkeith island where they could ride out the storm, so despite being “in a cannon’s shot of the town” they were obliged to follow the wind back out to sea. In the process, the ship Friendship they had taken in prize was lost. The little fleet was blown straight out of the Firth and down the east coast. Edinburgh, Leith and Kirkcaldy have been saved!

A week later the Royal Navy finally encounters JPJ off Flamborough Head when he runs into a convoy of merchant ships under their protection and a somewhat scrappy and confused battle takes place. In the course of the action, the Bonhomme Richard is damaged so heavily that she will sink the next day, but JPJ in return manages to capture the British flagship HMS Serapis and takes her instead.

The outcome of the battle is still hotly debated; JPJ and the Americans can claim another embarrassing Royal Navy scalp, in sight of British soil and once again they have failed to stop JPJ. But the merchant convoy – the real prize – has slipped away unharmed. However that is a somewhat hollow strategic victory for the Royal Navy. Once Again, the Americans press have their hero and the British their villain.

After the battle, JPJ wants to head for France, but his subordinates insist they follow orders and head for the neutral Dutch island of Texel in the United Provinces. A tricky diplomatic incident ensues as they have lost the Continental Navy’s flags when Bonhomme Richard went down, and couldn’t fly the Royal Navy’s ensigns from the Serapis and so were technically operating under no flag. This allowes the British to claim that they were pirates. So, based on only a written description, (“colors should be white, red, and blue alternately to thirteen… [with a] blue field with thirteen stars… in the canton“) JPJ had his men run up a new – and rather unconventional – Continental Navy flag. The Dutch dutifully checked that the flag matched the description (they were very unlikely to know what the flag of an American warship should look like as they’d probably never seen one) and entered it with a sketch in their records to make it official.

With its 8-pointed stars and irregular groupings of red/white/blue tricolour stripes, the “Serapis flag” is unique, the true work of a sailor handy with needle and thread and not someone versed in the rigid conventions of vexilology. John Paul Jones’ wacky flag was enough to save him from international charges of piracy and now takes pride of place on the coat of arms of the US warships that have taken his name.

Back in Leith, plans were immediately drawn up for a new artillery fort to protect the port and the city of Edinburgh behind from the sea. These were drawn up by local celebrated architect James Craig – who laid out Edinburgh first New Town – despite him having no background in military engineering. The fort and the land on which it was built were provided “at the expense of the citizens of Edinburgh and Leith“. It was a fairly straightforward defensive structure, a half-moon battery of cannon facing out to sea, protected by a perimeter ditch, low masonry wall and a large earthen glacis heaped up infront of it to seeward. To the landward there is were a pair of blockhouse corner bastions to protect it from rear assaults. The Fort’s battery of guns covered the navigable channel of the approach to the Port of Leith.

So there you have it, the tale of the lad from Kirkcudbrightshire that the Royal Navy couldn’t sink, who tried to capture the Earl of Selkirk, who put the willies up the good folk of Edinburgh and Leith, who rocked the vexilogical world but who could not overcome a Kirk minister and the weather. Oh, and how this modern street on the site of Leith Fort got its name:

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.