#2. Trincomalee to Jawa isn’t a straight line.
Previous: #1. The Trincomalee Wormhole.
The fact that the HMS Java left Portsmouth on her ill-fated voyage, was not surprising. Portsmouth, situated on the South coast of England is one of the oldest bases of the Royal Navy. As far back as 1497, Henry VII had set up the first English Drydock at Portsmouth. Today, more than two-thirds of the British surface fleet including the two aircraft carriers call Portsmouth its home port.
In the 1800s, Portsmouth was already huge as a naval base. In 1800, there were 684 Royal naval vessels in port and the dockyard was the largest industrial complex in the world. It was from this port in 1805 that Lord Nelson left Britain for his last voyage on the HMS Victory for the Battle of Trafalgar. It then is no surprise that the plans for our as-envisaged HMS Trincomalee were to be found at Portsmouth.
The HMS Java sailed out on its ill-fated voyage under the command of Capt Henry Lambert. It was a tough proposition by all measures. The Jawa was not even a British vessel. It was a 1805 built French Frigate which was captured by the British in 1811. It was commissioned into service under Capt Lambert in August 1812, scarcely three months before it sailed out of Portsmouth. A month later it met the USS Constitution.
Capt Lambert though was an experienced hand, having spent 17 years at sea by this time and seen action many times including a few times in his 9 years in command. His last posting though had been a rough one. He was in command of the HMS Iphigenia, which due to poor charts was lost and all men captured by the French during a raid on Grand Port, Mauritius.
On paper, the HMS Java was well supplied and manned, but many of the crew were landsmen, still new to service at sea and the crew had only practised gunnery once without shot. The HMS Jawa sailed out of Portsmouth on the 12th of Nov 1812.
Which brings us to the question of what she was doing off Brazil during the fateful encounter with USS Constitution. This was easily solved. A quick look up at the sailing routes of past years shows that vessels departing Portsmouth would generally head towards Brazil, replenish stores and then make their way to the east before rounding the Cape of Good Hope.
Various models of airflow in the Atlantic also show quite clearly why that route would be the most suited for sailing vessels to follow. Even if the HMS Java was not looking for trouble ( which she was), she would have been where she was.
Apart from the plans of the HMS Trincomalee, there was another British warship’s fate that might have “weighed” on the HMS Java. In the manifest of the vessel, somewhat mysteriously (to me) was an entry for “Copper plates” for another under construction British warship in Bombay, the HMS Cornwallis. I puzzled over the need to mention copper plates in the manifest of naval frigates, until I realized that these copper plates could be upto 300 in number weighing upto 15 MT.
What was a frigate whose total carrying capacity was about 80MT, with canons themselves weighing about 32 MT, be dedicating 15 MT to copper plates? What were these copper plates for and why were they so important that they had to be carried halfway around the world to Bombay when the vessel was heading into action?
And when I thought that things could not get any more puzzling and abstruse about this whole affair, a new question popped up.
What was this chap doing on the HMS Java on the fateful day that she was destroyed and sunk?
