Worthy of Your Breeding?

Always Worth Saying, Going Postal
Your breeding.
King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt,
Harry Payne
Licence CC BY-SA 2.0

Just as Nelson flew coloured flags above the Victory instructing the fleet afore Trafalgar that England expected every man to do his duty, so the Ministry of Defence two centuries later is festooned with white emblems on white backgrounds spelling out ‘we are woke.’

Although it needed a blown-off arm, poked-out eye and a musket ball from a mizzen-top sniper to stop Lord Nelson, these days the slightest chance of offending a foreigner will stop the Senior Service in its tracks. For this week it was announced that the seventh and final Astute Class nuclear submarine, HMS Agincourt, now building in Barrow in Furness in Cumbria, will be renamed in case it offends.

While the Mandarins whimpered, the Daily Mail thundered. Quoting an ex-NATO commander the DM fumed at ‘craven and contemptible surrender’ as the boat is to be renamed ‘to avoid annoying the French’. Presumably, the next press release from a landlubber sailing a desk in Whitehall will trigger the Mail by reporting the new Type 26 Frigate HMS Cardiff renamed to avoid offence to Swansea. Likewise, HMS Glasgow regarding sensitivities along the M8 corridor in Edinburgh.

Even if it did matter what the French think (and it doesn’t) they could take heart that Royal Navy vessels are often christened after earlier ships of the same name, not an original place or event. Rather than commemorating a battle or heaving metropolis in the west of Scotland, the Navy is recalling the service – and particularly the derring-do – of previous vessels and their crews.

If we look at the other six Astute class boats, the names Astute, Ambush and Artful were last given to Amphion-class submarines that entered service towards the end of World War II. Audacious, Anson and Agamemnon were all battleships serving in the First or Second World Wars.

Always Worth Saying, Going Postal
Anson, sister boat to Agincourt/Achilles.
HMS ANSON,
Ministry of Defence
Licence CC BY-SA 2.0

Agincourt would have been the seventh of that name but is to be renamed Achilles after a long line of HMS Achilles’s, the most recent of which was a Leander Class frigate that saw service in the Cod Wars with Iceland.

Incidentally, won’t Trojans and anyone called Hector be put out by the change? And after what the Greek hero did to a young prince called Troilas (who a friend tells me was ‘a paragon of youthful male beauty’), lobbing thousands of arrows at the Frenchies seems like harmless fun.

As for the actual conflagration on the morning of St Crispins Day (October 25) 1415 during the Hundred Years’ War, this was a decisive English victory. Led by King Henry V, the English army, though outnumbered and weakened by disease, used all its tact and guile – and the devastating power of the longbow – to overwhelm the French.

A muddy battlefield made heavily armoured French knights vulnerable. The French suffered catastrophic losses, with thousands killed or captured, while English casualties were minimal. Agincourt cemented Henry V’s reputation as a brilliant military leader, boosted English morale, shaped the history of medieval warfare, and was immortalised in Shakespeare’s ‘Henry Vth’.

Three hundred and eighty-one years later, in 1796, wiki informs us the first HMS Agincourt was a 64-gun third-rate ship of the line bought from the East India Company, where she had been named Earl Talbot. She became a prison ship in 1812 and was renamed HMS Bristol. She was sold in 1814.

Three years later, the second HMS Agincourt, a 74-gun third rate, was launched. She was used for harbour service from 1848, was renamed HMS Vigo in 1865 and was sold in 1884.

What is a ‘third-rate ship’? A type rather than a value judgement, third rate was a ship of the line which, following the 1720s RN classifications, mounted between 64 and 80 guns. Typically built with two gun decks, they were also called ‘two-deckers’.

The next Agincourt marked a leap forward in naval technology as a Minotaur-class ironclad frigate launched in 1865 after being laid down in 1861 as HMS Captain.

I am indebted to Mr Eddy W of shipsnostalgia.com who wishes to inform Puffins that Agincourt was a broadside ironclad. Her two funnels were telescopic and could be lowered into the hull when on passage under sail. “Similarly, the single screw was detachable and was hoisted up into the hull to prevent drag. Steam power [was] used only for manoeuvring. When going from sail to steam power, [the] order was apparently ‘Up funnels, down screw’.”

She hit a reef and the headlines in 1871 off the coast of Gibraltar during a naval exercise. One of the largest and most advanced warships of her time, on July 1st of that year she ran aground while attempting to navigate through treacherous waters close to the Rock. Misjudgments in navigation, compounded by challenging tides and currents, led to the ship striking the Pearl Rock, a small rocky patch lying about half a mile from the shore, at a speed of three or four knots per hour.

At a thumping 10,690 tons, not least on account of 5 1/2 inches of armour, and an impressive 410 ft long, she took a bit of shifting. By comparison, the new HMS Cardiff, ‘a multi-mission warship designed for anti-submarine warfare, air defence and general purpose operations’, is 491ft long and displaces 6,900t.

Putting the engines to the full made no difference. Agincourt’s boats and those of nearby vessels were put to work running tow lines to nearby ships and hoisting anything of weight off the stricken ironclad.

Agincourt’s biggest cable was an impressive 18 inches in circumference and was taken by a chain of small boats towards the nearby HMS Hercules. However, too much was paid out from the deck, with the sagging cable sinking and upending one of the small boats.

Although severely damaged, Agincourt’s strong iron construction prevented her from breaking apart. Efforts to refloat the ship continued. Eventually the Hercules and a Spanish steamer were able to haul her free. With the Hercules having to be at anchor to keep her pointing in the right direction against a current, when the Agincourt did shift, she struck the Hercules. However, with blunt end being to blunt end, not much damage was caused to either.

Always Worth Saying, Going Postal
Aground at Pearl Rock near Gibraltar.
HMS Hercules (left) towing HMS Agincourt (right),
Charles Cooper Penrose Fitzgerald
Public domain

In August 1894, she made the newspapers again when Admiral Superintendent Morant and other officials at Chatham dockyard received the congratulations of the Lords of the Admiralty for the ‘satisfactory and admirable manner’ in which they had converted HMS Agincourt from a battleship to a first-class cruiser. The work had been in hand for 17 months and, importantly, had saved the Admiralty £6,000!

Later renamed HMS Boscawen she was used for harbour service from 1904 and was renamed HMS Ganges II in 1906. Refitted as a training ship she served at Chatham, Portland and finally at Harwich with those name changes taking place as she moved from place to place.

Converted to a coal hulk as C109, four vast holds could contain up to 10,000 tons of coal. Six rail-bourne steam cranes were fitted for loading and unloading. It was in this formation that she remained at Sheerness for 51 years, remarkably not being broken up until 1960, following a useful life spanning 99 years. HMS’s Cardiff, Glasgow and Achilles, take note!

She is pictured here towards the end.

The next HMS Agincourt was to have been a Queen Elizabeth Class battleship. She was ordered in 1914 but cancelled in the same year with the name being used when another already completed vessel became available.

Originally a 28,000-ton battleship built for Brazil by the Armstrong Whitworth company in Newcastle, the Rio de Janeiro was launched in 1913. Because of the South American country’s economic problems, she was sold to Turkey and renamed Sultan Osman. Upon the outbreak of the First World War, she was taken by the Royal Navy and was to take part in the Battle of Jutland.

A victim of the post-war Washington Naval Treaty, this Agincourt was sold for breaking up in 1923.

Always Worth Saying, Going Postal
HMS Agincourt (1915).
HMS Agincourt (ex-Sultan Osman I),
Unknown photographer
Public domain

Towards the end of the Second World War, a Battle Class of destroyers was built including D86 HMS Agincourt. Launched in 1945, she was converted to a radar picket in 1959 and scrapped in 1974.

One wonders if there could be a Battle Class these days? Might the good people of Germany or, come to think of it, Northern Denmark, be offended by an HMS Jutland? And the French be put out by a new HMS Dunkirk?

Other Battle Class names are still part of history: Trafalgar, Corunna, Matapan – memorable as Prince Phillip was mentioned in dispatches there – but others have a lower profile or are even forgotten: St Kitts, Sluys? No doubt what the globalists in London have in mind for Agincourt.

In Henry V’s legendary speech before the battle, Shakespeare encourages:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;

Later, there are telling lines,

And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;

Which begs a question. Are the clowns at the MoD – frightened at the thought of offending the French – yeoman worthy to be bred of these shores?
 

© Always Worth Saying 2025