Scuttling
Scuttling is the act of deliberately sinking a ship by allowing water to flow into the hull, typically by its crew opening holes in its hull.
Scuttling may be performed to dispose of an abandoned, old, or captured vessel; to prevent the vessel from becoming a navigation hazard; as an act of self-destruction to prevent the ship from being captured by an enemy force; as a blockship to restrict navigation through a channel or within a harbor; to provide an artificial reef for divers and marine life; or to alter the flow of rivers.
Notable historical examples
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)
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)
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)
, 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, Brave, Empress Maria, and ''Chesme.''The Clotilda
The Clotilda 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 long with a beam of 23 ft.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, 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 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.