Unlucky ships

[Colt Ward]

We all know the ships that are famous, their names written in history- Enterprise, Victory, Bismarck, Nina/Pinta/Santa Maria, Challenger, and a few others . . .

But aside from Titanic, what ships were historically unlucky that had their names put on the infamy list?

[Tymers Realm]

How could you not include the SS Edmund Fitzgerald?
Considering Gordon Lightfoot wrote a song to memorialize it.

[Weirdo]

USS William D. Porter

[glitterboy2098]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Intrepid_(CV-11)
a history plagued with bad luck.
at one point a single torpedo hit it, disabled the steering, and when the patched steering system failed on the way back to dock, they had to jury rig a sail to get themselves the rest of the way..
https://www.intrepidmuseum.org/LatestNews/March-2014/This-Month-in--em-Intrepid--em-%E2%80%99s-History

[JadeHellbringer]

It's pretty hard for me to top HMS Trinidad, a light cruiser from WWII- after all, how many ships can claim to torpedo themselves?

[Weirdo]

USS Vesuvius, among others.

... had to jury rig a sail to get themselves the rest of the way..

PLEASE tell me there are pictures of this...

[Colt Ward]

Trinidad, Intrepid and Santa Maria I have heard were unlucky names . . . going beyond single ships to all that carry the name.

[Feenix74]

Mary Rose
Mary Celeste

Probably any ship starting with Mary . . .

[Daryk]

For wrong place, wrong time:
USS Indianapolis...
USS Liberty...
USS Pueblo...

[Ruger]

Well, there's the Vasa (or Wasa), which sank after sailing a mere 1300 meters from her launch point...

HMAS Melbourne, an aircraft carrier which got a reputation as a jinxed ship, especially after colliding with two destroyers (one Australian one, which sank because of the collision, and an American one) and killing nearly 160 of their men between the two, as well as several other minor collisions, shipboard mishaps, etc....

The USS Forrestal was nicknamed the USS Zippo, Forest Fire and Firestal due to many public fires happening aboard her...

There are others...

Ruger

[glitterboy2098]

USS Vesuvius, among others.

PLEASE tell me there are pictures of this...

in the article i linked. apparently it was not a very big sail, meant mainly to help offset the jammed rudder by helping the ship pull a bit to one side.

[Weirdo]

I still want to see a carrier under sail. Ship of the Line, eat your heart of oak out!

[CrossfirePilot]

SS Andrea Doria

[Force of Nature]

USS Mound City - City Class Ironclad. A single confederate cannon shot penetrated the armor and hit the boiler, sending hot scalding steam inside the entire ship, killing over 100 men. The single most killing cannon shot fired in the civil war.

[Colt Ward]

One that was always interesting to me was the SS Great Eastern (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern) though one of the things I read was that they found a pair of skeletons were found inside when she was broken up for scrap.  Supposedly they were the cause of all her bad luck.

Wonder if BT could have a dropship like that . . .

[Kidd]

One that was always interesting to me was the SS Great Eastern (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern) though one of the things I read was that they found a pair of skeletons were found inside when she was broken up for scrap.  Supposedly they were the cause of all her bad luck.

Wonder if BT could have a dropship like that . . .

If I had a bitcoin for every time I heard that old saw ::)

The very first submarine with a combat record, Hunley, killed 3 out of 3 crews including its inventor so you might call it pretty darn unlucky. Also I remember as a kid reading about UB-65, a haunted WW1 U-boat that affected me so much I tore out the pages of that story from the magazine ;D kinda funny to think about it now... In short, an explosion killed UB-65's first lieutenant during fitting out, plus various mishaps involving toxic gases which killed a few crew and so on, eventually the boat was lost. Supposedly the dead first lieutenant haunted the boat, but according to wiki the story is made out of 100% cotton...

Battletech has a ghost Warship right? Or am I remembering the wrong scifi series...?

[CrossfirePilot]

I think it was Leviathans that had the ghost warship.

[Liam's Ghost]

How about the entire Proteus class of Colliers?

Three lost under unknown circumstances... out of four. The fourth (USS Jupiter) was the only one to defy the streak, which may have something to do with the rebuilding she went to when she was converted to the USS Langley, the first American aircraft carrier.

[glitterboy2098]

Battletech has a ghost Warship right? Or am I remembering the wrong scifi series...?

sorta: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Disappearing_Battleship_of_Merope

How about the entire Proteus class of Colliers?

Three lost under unknown circumstances... out of four. The fourth (USS Jupiter) was the only one to defy the streak, which may have something to do with the rebuilding she went to when she was converted to the USS Langley, the first American aircraft carrier.

all three that went missing did so in the so called 'bermuda triangle', though i agree that more likely it was a design flaw somewhere that did them in.

[Colt Ward]

The collier bit reminded me . . . and yup, one was lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

Trying to find a story about the wave that turned a Royal Navy warship into a submarine off the coast of Africa.

[JadeHellbringer]

How about the entire Proteus class of Colliers?

Three lost under unknown circumstances... out of four. The fourth (USS Jupiter) was the only one to defy the streak, which may have something to do with the rebuilding she went to when she was converted to the USS Langley, the first American aircraft carrier.

You're actually right, in a roundabout way, about Jupiter. The conversion actually did save her most likely.

It's believed now that the loss of the other three was due to a weak point in the hull amidships that in bad weather could cause them to split in two and jackknife, which as you can imagine is a bad thing to have your ship do. Without finding any of the three wrecks it's impossible to say, but that's the theory on them anyway.

Jupiter though? Her hull didn't get any major changes that would have kept that weak point from splitting... other than that big rigid flight deck and its supports, of course. In effect, the flight deck may very well have acted as a splint to hold the hull together in situations that may have sunk her former sisters. (Conjecture, of course, no evidence exists that Langley ever had any hull fissure issues that I've ever found, but the fact that she was the only survivor of the class and that she had a setup that would have helped her survive the kind of damage they were vulnerable certainly is interesting)

[elf25s]

when i was about 10 or so i read about a wooden ship that sank upon launch , was raised patched up re launched again... to sink less than an hour later hour later. was recovered fixed and never put to use but left in port till it rotted ...for some reason no sailor would want to set foot on board.
for life of me i cannot recall where i read it..it had been 38 years...
any one know that ship and where it happened?

[Colt Ward]

I want to say it was one of the early English ships that departed from the carrack style.

[HobbesHurlbut]

USS William D. Porter

I would put my vote in for this being one of the most unluckiest warships in Military History.

[Colt Ward]

Interesting story I had not heard of . . . but I was not just looking for military ships.

[Weirdo]

If you're willing to allow fictional vessels, I'd say the starship Enterprise NCC-1701 is a pretty unlucky ship, from the perspective of the enlisted crew... :)

[Colt Ward]

Well, I was more interested in some of the weird/strange bad luck stories.

But I will grant, for fictional stories . . . yeah, the Enterprise had bad luck (especially if you wore a red shirt in TOS)- only slightly better than all those missing ships they kept finding.

[DaveMac]

Royal Navy K class submarines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_K-class_submarine

[JadeHellbringer]

Armored cruiser HMS Black Prince is another one that comes to mind... during Jutland she was badly damaged by the German main battle line at one point when her squadron passed down the British line foolishly. Flagship Defence was blown up, Warrior was crippled and sank later, and Black Prince was pummeled and left adrift. During the night, she managed to find the Grand Fleet's core and formed up on them to head back to Britain.

Just... you know, one little problem.



What Black Prince had stumbled across was the same High Seas Fleet that had done the damage a few hours earlier, trying to make their way back to Germany. Several ships (most noteably SMS Thuringen, seen here) snapped on searchlights and immediately ripped the poor cruiser stem to stern. No survivors were found from the ship, and what happened following this is unclear (it's believed a couple of other crippled ships may have made contact with a furiously burning, out of control ship at one point or other)

So, yeah. Bad luck? Forming up with the enemy fleet in the middle of the night and taking barrages of 11-inch shells at virtually point-blank range is about as bad of some luck as a ship is ever going to have.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

I think it's hard to beat the luck of the whaleship Essex: sunk by a sperm whale, the crew were forced to cannibalize first their dead mates, then drew lots to see which living crew members would be next.