Vice Admiral Sir George Tryon

[bobthebandit]

Just as Lord Nelson is the probably the Royal Navy's greatest hero, could Sir George Tryon be classified as the Navy's worst blunderer, after losing his ship, the HMS Victoria, in 1893 with the loss of over 300 men?

[jno]

they shot Admiral Byng because he wasn't doing well enough - 'to encourage the others' as Voltaire put it.

As for blunders, there was an Australian warship in the 1960s that shot itself; I can't remember the name

[SeaJayPea]

In Dava Sobell's book Longitude she cites the fact that in 1707 Sir Cloudesely Shovell's ship was returning to the UK and a seaman who was from the Scilly Isles questioned his navigator's version of where they were. Shovell had him hanged from the yardarm for inciting a mutiny.

The ship, HMS Association, promptly hit a rock off the Scilly Isles and all 800 on board were killed. He made it to shore, but a local woman stabbed him and stole his emerald ring. But he was dead posh and rich, so he's buried in Westminster Abbey.

If you see a pub called the Ship and Shovell, it's named after him.

[dundurn]

Shovell had a pretty successful career, all told. His detractors mostly seem to be of recent date - he was a Whig, not a Tory, of relatively humble birth and made his way up the ranks of the Navy by courage and application more than by influence or money.

Showell Styles wrote a (fictionalised) biography of him, 'Admiral of England'. The story of the hanging is not entirely certain to be true and in any case Shovell was an Admiral - he might direct the objectives of the fleet, but the day to day care and safety of the ship he was in would have been the responsibility of its Captain and Master, not Shovell.

[jake-the-peg]

I think you have to consider (but probably reject) William Bligh

Possibly one of the Navy's Greatest technicians and worst man managers.

We all know of the Mutiny on the Bounty, but his crew also mutinied as part of the wider Spithead mutiny in 1797. He became Governor of New South Wales and suffered a rebellion there.

However he was probably one of the best navigators the Navy ever had. Not only did he get the crew of the Resolution home after Captain Cook was killed in Hawaii but after the Bounty mutiny not only did he get the back to safety but fulfilled the Bounty's secondary task of mapping the dangerous Cook straits - which were still the basis of maps being used up to the second world war.

If there was ever a man who should never have been promoted to management it was William Bligh