When launches go wrong

Although exciting to watch, vessel launches are highly complex and challenging operations that can go dangerously wrong.  

The launch process requires the greasing of the ways that the ship rests on and the knocking out of the props supporting the hull. In the case of the 38,210 ton displacement aircraft carrier HMS Formidable, this process was well underway on launch day, 17 Aug 1939, at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, when it all went wrong. Just 30 minutes before the carrier’s sponsor, Lady Kingsley Wood, was about to initiate the launch, the carrier started to move of its own accord. She immediately smashed the bottle of Empire wine over the bow! The launch was completed safely but sadly there was one fatality and at least 20 others were injured. Ever after Formidable was known as ‘The ship that launched herself’. 

To go or not to go 

Similarly, a vessel may refuse to move. Victorian engineer IK Brunel experienced this at the launch of his giant ship the Great Eastern at Blackwell Point on the river Thames. The 12,000 tonne vessel had been arranged for a side launch into the river with two slipways into the Thames and steam winches to pull the vessel off the ways. When the ship did not move on 3 November 1857, investigations suggested the winches were not powerful enough. On the third attempt, on 31 January 1858, the Great Eastern finally entered the Thames, when both slipways were at exactly the same height and the ship was level. It’s believed the foundations for the slipway had previously been too slim to support the 12,000 tonne ship against subsidence and the concrete foundations supporting the ways weren’t thick enough, which had resulted in the end of bow slipway becoming steeper than the stern end. 

Brunel’s giant prior to the launch attempts, showing one of the winches used (Credit: Royal Museums Greenwich)

Hogging, sagging and stability 

Challenges remain when the vessel finally enters the water. Launches of large tankers (200,000 tonnes deadweight and above) often experienced internal structural damage due to excessive bending as the stern ‘fell’ of the end of the ways and was then forced back up by buoyancy (hogging and sagging). The length of such vessels meant they were unlikely to experience such severe stress in service, but only at launch, and cases have been reported of ships requiring as much as 1,000 tonnes of steel replaced. 

The experience of the Principessa Jolanda, an Italian ocean liner built by Cantiere Navale di Riva Trigoso for Navigazione Generale Italiana (NGI), demonstrates the importance of getting slipway calculations correct. At 9,210 tons and 141m in length, she was the largest passenger ship built in Italy at that time of her launch on 22 September 1907. After travelling down the slipway, the ship immediately started to list heavily to port. Efforts by tugs and shipyard workers to rescue the situation, including lowering the anchors to starboard to counteract the list, were unsuccessful. After 20 minutes the vessel began taking in water through openings in the upper decks. Capsize followed and within an hour only a few feet of the hull were visible. The captain, his guests and the workers onboard had just enough time to escape in lifeboats. There were no casualties but the vessel was later scrapped. 

The Principessa Jolanda capsizing after her disastrous launch (Credit: Stabilimento Rotocal Cografico Civicchioni-Chiavari)  

A muddied start to a long career  

Slightly less dramatic but perhaps more embarrassing was the launch of HMS Repulse on 11 November 1967. Repulse was the second Polaris missile submarines to be built by Vickers Shipbuilding at its Barrow-in-Furness shipyard. Lady Joan Zuckerman’s arrival at the yard was held up by an anti-nuclear weapons protest, causing the launch ceremony to be delayed and the submarine was sent into the water a mere 10 minutes before high tide. Swept along by a strong current, away from the tugs that were supposed to take her in tow, she ended up on a mudbank as the tidal waters receded, and there she remained until seven tugs were able to pull her off the bank. Fortunately no damage was done, she was commissioned in 1968 and served operationally until 1996. 

The ballistic nuclear submarine HMS Repulse aground off Walney Island following her delayed launch (Credit: Barrow Submariners Association)  

See the British Pathé recording of the ship that launched herself, a recorded collage of images of the Principessa Jolanda launch and four images of the HMS Repulse launch held up by protests.  

John Barnes is a journalist and author and former editor of Marine Engineers Review