Skuldelev ships (around 1070) The
Skuldelev ships, five
Viking ships, were sunk to prevent attacks from the sea on the Danish city of
Roskilde. The scuttling
blocked a major waterway, redirecting ships to a smaller one that required considerable local knowledge.
Cog near Kampen (early 15th century) In 2012, a
cog preserved from the keel up to the decks in the silt was discovered alongside two smaller vessels in the river
IJssel in the city of
Kampen, in the
Netherlands. The ship, dating from the early 15th century, was suspected to have been deliberately sunk into the river to influence its current.
Hernán Cortés (1519) The
Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, who led the first expedition that resulted in the fall of the
Aztec Empire, ordered his men to strip and scuttle his fleet to prevent the secretly planned return to
Cuba by those loyal to Cuban Governor
Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar. Their success would have halted his inland march and
conquest of the Aztec Empire.
HMS Sapphire (1696) HMS Sapphire was a 32-gun,
fifth-rate sailing
frigate of the Royal Navy in
Newfoundland Colony to protect the English migratory fishery. The vessel was trapped in
Bay Bulls harbour by four French naval vessels led by Jacques-François de Brouillan. To avoid its capture, the English scuttled the vessel on 11 September 1696.
HMS Endeavour (1778) HMS Endeavour was Captain
James Cook's ship upon which he travelled to
Australia. After being sold into private hands, she was finally scuttled in a blockade of
Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island in 1778.
Siege of Yorktown (1781) The British sank one ship on 10 October 1781 to prevent it from being captured by the French fleet. Furthermore, the York River, while protected by the French Navy, also contained a few scuttled ships, which were meant to serve as a blockade should any British ships enter the river.
HMS Bounty (1790) HMS Bounty, after her crew mutinied, was scuttled by the mutineers in Bounty Bay off
Pitcairn Island on 23 January 1790.
Chesapeake Bay Flotilla (1814) During the
War of 1812, Commodore
Joshua Barney, of the U.S. Navy,
Chesapeake Bay Flotilla, sank all nineteen of his fighting vessels, to prevent them from being captured by the British, as he and his men marched, inland, in the
unsuccessful defense of Washington D.C. Jan van Speyk (1831) During the
Belgian Revolution, Dutch gunboat commander
Jan van Speyk had his ship boarded by a mob of Antwerp labourers. When they tried to force him and his crew to surrender, he ignited a barrel of gunpowder, thereby blowing up his ship and killing himself along with most of the ship's crew and the mob. Van Speyk went on to become a national hero in the Netherlands.
Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol (1854) During the
Crimean War, in anticipation of the
siege of Sevastopol, the Russians scuttled ships of the
Black Sea Fleet to protect the harbour, to use their naval cannon as additional artillery, and to free up the ships' crews as marines. Those ships that were deliberately sunk included
Grand Duke Constantine,
City of Paris (both with
120 guns),
Brave,
Empress Maria, and
Chesme. The Clotilda The
Clotilda (slave ship) (often misspelled Clotilde) was the last known U.S.
slave ship to bring captives from Africa to the United States, arriving at
Mobile Bay, in autumn 1859 or on July 9, 1860, with 110 African men, women, and children. The ship was a two-masted
schooner, 86 feet (26 m) long with a beam of 23 ft (7.0 m). U.S. involvement in the
Atlantic slave trade had been banned by Congress through the
Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves enacted on March 2, 1807 (effective January 1, 1808), but the practice continued illegally, especially through slave traders based in New York in the 1850s and early 1860. In the case of the Clotilda, the voyage's sponsors were based in the South and planned to buy Africans in
Kingdom of Whydah,
Dahomey. After the voyage, the ship was burned and scuttled in Mobile Bay in an attempt to destroy the evidence.
USS Merrimack/CSS Virginia (1861) In April 1861, the
United States Navy steam frigate was among several ships
Union forces set afire or scuttled at the Gosport Navy Yard (now
Norfolk Naval Shipyard) in
Portsmouth, Virginia, to keep them from falling into
Confederate hands at the outbreak of the
American Civil War. The unsuccessful attempt at scuttling
Merrimack enabled the
Confederate States Navy to raise and rebuild her as the
broadside ironclad CSS Virginia. Shortly after her famous engagement with the U.S Navy
monitor in the
Battle of Hampton Roads in March 1862, the Confederates scuttled
Virginia to keep her from being captured by Union forces.
Stone Fleet (1861–1862) In December 1861 and January 1862,
Union forces scuttled a number of former
whalers and other
merchant ships in an attempt to block access to Confederate ports during the
American Civil War. Loaded with stone before being scuttled, the scuttled ships were known as the "
Stone Fleet". Those scuttled in December 1861 sometimes are called the "First Stone Fleet", while those sunk in January 1862 sometimes are termed the "Second Stone Fleet".
Peruvian fleet at El Callao (1881) During the
War of the Pacific, as Chilean troops entered
Lima and
El Callao, the Peruvian naval officer
Germán Astete ordered the whole Peruvian fleet to be scuttled to prevent capture by Chile.
USS Merrimac (1898) During the
Spanish–American War, a volunteer crew of
United States Navy personnel attempted to scuttle the
collier in the entrance to the harbor at
Santiago de Cuba in
Cuba on the night of 2–3 June 1898 in an attempt to trap the
Spanish Navy squadron of
Vice Admiral Manuel de la Cámara y Libermoore in port there. The attempt failed when she came under fire by Spanish ships and fortifications and sank without blocking the entrance.
Port Arthur (1904–1905) In 1904, during the
Russo-Japanese War, the
Imperial Japanese Navy made three attempts to block the entrance to the
Imperial Russian Navy base at
Port Arthur,
Manchuria,
China, by scuttling
transports. Although the Japanese scuttled five transports on 23 February, four on 27 March, and eight on 3 May, none of the attacks succeeded in blocking the entrance. The Russians also scuttled four
steamers at the entrance in March 1904 in an attempt to defend the harbor from Japanese intrusion. During the
siege of Port Arthur, the Russians scuttled the surviving ships of their
Pacific Squadron that were trapped in port at Port Arthur in late 1904 and early January 1905 to prevent their capture intact by the Japanese.
SMS Dresden (1915) In December 1914, was the only German warship to escape destruction in the
Battle of the Falkland Islands. She eluded her British pursuers for several more months, until she put into
Más a Tierra in March 1915. Her engines were worn out and she had almost no coal left for her boilers. There, she was trapped by British cruisers, which violated Chilean neutrality and opened fire on the ship.
Dresdens Executive Officer – the future Admiral
Wilhelm Canaris – negotiated with the British and bought time for his crew to scuttle the
Dresden.
Zeebrugge Raid (1918) The
Zeebrugge Raid involved three outdated British cruisers chosen to serve as
blockships in the German-held Belgian
port of Bruges-Zeebrugge from which German
U-boat operations threatened British shipping.
Thetis,
Intrepid and
Iphigenia were filled with concrete then sent to block a critical canal. Heavy defensive fire caused the
Thetis to scuttle prematurely; the other two cruisers sank themselves successfully in the narrowest part of the canal. Within three days, however, the Germans had broken through the western bank of the canal to create a shallow detour for their submarines to move past the blockships at high tide.
German fleet at Scapa Flow (1919) at Scapa Flow In 1919, over 50 warships of the
German High Seas Fleet were scuttled by their crews at
Scapa Flow in the north of
Scotland, following the deliverance of the fleet as part of the terms of the German surrender. Rear Admiral
Ludwig von Reuter ordered the sinkings, denying the majority of the ships to the
Allies. Von Reuter was made a prisoner-of-war in Britain but his act of defiance was celebrated in Germany. Though most of the fleet was subsequently salvaged by engineer
Ernest Cox, a number of warships (including three battleships) remain, making the area very popular amongst undersea diving enthusiasts.
Washington Naval Treaty (1922) Under the terms of the
Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, the great naval powers were required to limit the size of their battlefleets, resulting in the disposal of some older or incomplete
capital ships. During 1924 and 1925, the treaty resulted in the scuttling of the
Royal Australian Navy battlecruiser and the incomplete
Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Tosa, while four old Japanese battleships, the
Royal Navy battleship , and the incomplete
United States Navy battleship all were disposed of as
targets.
Admiral Graf Spee (1939) Following the
Battle of the River Plate the damaged German
pocket battleship sought refuge in the port of
Montevideo. On 17 December 1939, with the
British and
Commonwealth cruisers , , and waiting in international waters outside the mouth of the
Río de la Plata, Captain
Hans Langsdorff sailed
Graf Spee just outside the harbour and scuttled the vessel to avoid risking the lives of his crew in what he expected would be a losing battle. Langsdorff shot himself three days later.
San Giorgio at Tobruk (1941) When British and Commonwealth land forces attacked
Tobruk on 21 January 1941, the Italian cruiser
San Giorgio turned its guns against the attacking force, repelling an attack by tanks. As British forces were entering Tobruk,
San Giorgio was scuttled at 4:15 AM on 22 January.
San Giorgio was awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valor for her actions in the defence of Tobruk. The ship was salvaged in 1952, but while being towed to Italy, her tow rope failed and she sank in heavy seas.
Blockade of Massawa (1941) As the Allies advanced toward
Eritrea during their
East African Campaign in
World War II,
Mario Bonetti—the Italian commander of the
Red Sea Flotilla based at
Massawa—realized that the British would overrun his harbor. In the first week of April 1941, he began to destroy the harbor's facilities and ruin its usefulness to the Allies. Bonetti ordered the sinking of two large
floating dry docks and supervised the calculated scuttling of eighteen large commercial ships in the mouths of the north Naval Harbor, the central Commercial Harbor and the main South Harbor. This blocked navigation in and out. He also had a large floating crane scuttled. These actions rendered the harbor useless by 8 April 1941, when Bonetti surrendered it to the British. Scuttled ships included the German steamers
Liebenfels,
Frauenfels, ,
Crefeld,
Gera and
Oliva. Also scuttled were the Italian steamers
Adua,
Brenta,
Arabia,
Romolo Gessi,
Vesuvio,
XXIII Marzo,
Antonia C.,
Riva Ligure,
Clelia Campenella,
Prometeo and the Italian tanker
Giove. The largest scuttled vessel was the 11,760-ton
Colombo, an Italian steamer. Thirteen coastal steamers and small naval vessels were also scuttled. The British seized the harbor and initiated
marine salvage operations under Commander
Joseph Stenhouse to restore navigation in and out. Stenhouse was slowed by
heat exhaustion but his team refloated the oil tanker
Giove; he died in September 1941 when the salvage tug
Tai Koo bearing him as a passenger was sunk by a naval mine in the Red Sea. His death left a civilian contractor to open a channel, but this crew made no progress. It was not until a year later that headway was made in the effort to return Massawa to military duties. U.S. Navy Commander
Edward Ellsberg arrived in April 1942 with a salvage crew and a small collection of specialized tools and began methodically correcting the damage. His salvage efforts yielded significant results in just 5½ weeks. American divers sealed the hulls underwater, and air was pumped in to float the hulls. The divers defused a
booby trap in
Brenta, which contained an armed
naval mine sitting on three torpedo warheads in the
hold. Another danger was
Regia Marina minelayer
Ostia, which had been sunk by the
Royal Air Force with several of its mines still racked. On 8 May 1942, SS
Koritza, an armed Greek steamer, had drydocked for cleaning and minor hull repairs. Massawa's first major surface fleet "customer" was , which needed repairs to a heavily damaged stern in mid-August 1942, the beginning of a repair and maintenance period for the war-weary
15th Cruiser Squadron. Many of the harbor's sunken ships were patched by Ellsberg's divers, refloated, repaired and taken into service.
Ostia and
Brenta were successfully salvaged, despite their armed mines. All of this occurred while the British civil contractor struggled and failed to refloat one ship.
Coral Sea and Midway (1942) After the Battles of the
Coral Sea and
Midway, the heavily damaged American
aircraft carrier Lexington and the Japanese carriers
Hiryū,
Sōryū,
Akagi, and
Kaga were all scuttled to prevent their preservation and use by their respective enemies.
French fleet at Toulon (1942) In November 1942, in an operation codenamed
Case Anton, Nazi German forces occupied the so-called "
Free Zone" in response to the Allied landing in North Africa. On 27 November they reached
Toulon, where the majority of the
French Navy was anchored. To avoid capture by the Nazis (Operation Lila), the French admirals-in-command (
Laborde and
Marquis) decided to
scuttle the 230,000 tonne fleet, most notably, the battleships
Dunkerque and
Strasbourg. Eighty percent of the fleet was utterly destroyed, all of the
capital ships proving impossible to repair. Legally, the scuttling of the fleet was allowed under the terms of the
1940 Armistice with Germany.
Danish fleet (1943) Anticipating a German seizure of all units of the Danish Navy as part of
Operation Safari, mostly in Copenhagen but also at other harbours and at sea in Danish waters, the Danish Admiralty had instructed its captains to resist, short of outright fighting, any German attempts to assume control over their vessels, by scuttling if escape to Sweden was not possible and suitable preparations were made. Of the fifty-two vessels in the Danish Navy on 29 August, two were in Greenland, thirty-two were scuttled, four reached Sweden and fourteen were taken undamaged by the Germans. Nine Danish sailors lost their lives and ten were wounded. Subsequently, major parts of the Naval personnel were interned for a period.
Allied landing in Normandy (1944) Old ships code-named "Corn cobs" were sunk to form a protective reef for the
Mulberry harbours at
Arromanches and
Omaha Beach for the
Normandy landings. The sheltered waters created by these scuttled ships were called "Gooseberries" and protected the harbours so transport ships could unload without being hampered by waves.
Operation Deadlight (1945–1946) on 12 June 1945 Of the 156 German
submarines ("
U-boats") surrendered to the
Allies at the end of
World War II, 116 were scuttled by the
Royal Navy in
Operation Deadlight. Plans called for them to be scuttled in three areas in the
North Atlantic Ocean west of
Ireland, but 56 of the submarines sank before reaching the designated areas due to their poor material condition. Most of the submarines were sunk by gunfire rather than with explosive charges. The first sinking took place on 17 November 1945 and the last on 11 February 1946.
Japanese submarines (1946) After Japan's surrender, the United States Navy seized 24 Imperial Japanese Navy submarines, bringing them to
Sasebo Bay to study them. To prevent a inspection by a Soviet team, the submarines were scuttled during
Operation Road's End. == Contemporary era ==