HMSJuno was a 26-gun Spartan-classsixth-ratefrigate of the Royal Navy launched in 1844 at Pembroke. As HMS Juno, she carried out the historic role in 1857 of annexing the Cocos (Keeling) Islands to the British Empire. She was renamed HMS Mariner in January 1878 and then HMS Atalanta two weeks later.
Disappearance
Atalanta was serving as a training ship when in 1880 she disappeared with her entire crew after setting sail from the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda for Falmouth, England on 31 January 1880. It was presumed that she sank in a powerful storm which crossed her route a couple of weeks after she sailed. The search for evidence of her fate attracted worldwide attention, and the Admiralty received more than 150 telegrams and 200 personal calls from anxious friends and relatives after it was announced that the ship was missing, and possibly lost.[1]
Investigation of the ship's loss was rendered difficult by the lack of any survivors, but one former member of her crew, Able Seaman John Varling, testified that he had found her "exceedingly crank, as being overweight, She rolled 32 degrees and Captain Stirling is reported as having been heard to remark that had she rolled one degree more she must have gone over and foundered. The young sailors were either too timid to go aloft or were incapacitated by sea sickness... Varling states that they hid themselves away, and could not be found when wanted by the boatswain's mate."[2]
A Royal Navy service record from the last completed training mission before Atalanta's loss
The exact circumstances of the ship's loss remain uncertain, but the gunboat Avon – which arrived at Portsmouth on 19 April from the Chile station – reported "that at the Azores she noticed immense quantities of wreckage floating about... in fact the sea was strewn with spars etc."[3] Two days later, amid mounting concern that the loss of the ship might have been prevented had her crew not been so inexperienced, The Times editorialised: "There can be no question of the criminal folly of sending some 300 lads who have never been to sea before in a training ship without a sufficient number of trained an experienced seamen to take charge of her in exceptional circumstances. The ship's company of the Atalanta numbered only about 11 able seamen, and when we consider that young lads are often afraid to go aloft in a gale to take down sail... a special danger attaching to the Atalanta becomes apparent."[4] A sunken wreck, with just the bow above water, was sighted at 46°42′N7°45′W / 46.700°N 7.750°W / 46.700; -7.750 on 14 September by the GermanbrigW. von Freeden. It was thought that this could have been the wreck of Atalanta.[5]
A memorial in St Ann's Church, Portsmouth, names a total of 281 fatalities in the disaster. Among those lost was Philip Fisher, a lieutenant who had enlisted the indirect support of Queen Victoria to obtain an appointment to the ship.[6] He was the younger brother of the future Admiral of the Fleet Lord Jacky Fisher.[7]
Since the 1960s, the loss of HMS Atalanta has often been cited as evidence of the purported Bermuda Triangle (often in connection to the 1878 loss of the training ship HMS Eurydice,[8][9][10] which foundered after departing the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda for Portsmouth on 6 March), an allegation shown to be nonsense by the research of author David Francis Raine in 1997.[11][12]
^Quasar, Gian J. (16 April 2005). Into the Bermuda Triangle: Pursuing the Truth Behind the World's Greatest Mystery. Camden, Maine; New York City; Chicago; San Francisco; Lisbon; London; Madrid; Mexico City; Milan; New Delhi; San Juan; Seoul; Singapore; Sydney; Toronto: International Marine/McGraw Hill. pp. 55, 56. ISBN9780071467032.
^Raine, David Francis (1 January 1997). Solved!: The Greatest Sea Mystery of All. Bermuda: Pompano Publications. ISBN9780921962151.
^Hainey, Raymond (9 February 2011). "Solving a mystery of military blunder". The Royal Gazette, city of Hamilton, Pembroke, Bermuda. Bermuda. Retrieved 27 July 2021.
