A visit to the memorials of Washington DC

The capital city of the United States of America is filled with fascinating history, the museums lined up between the Capitol and the White House could take days to go around and the monuments dotted across the city would extend that trip into weeks. As a shipwreck and disaster researcher, I focused on those type of monuments when I went to visit in 2017. 

Two memorials side by side of the entrance to the Lincoln memorial were the ones dedicated to the US military losses in the wars in Vietnam and Korea, where over 100,000 names are on these panels. It makes for shocking reading when you see that each name is a real person, someone who had a family and career dreams yet ended their lives in a war so far from home. The Korean side had a mock up of the patrols, statues of soldiers trodding through vegetation, not knowing if this next step was going to be their last.

Close by, just behind Lincoln, is a monument to the Father of the American Navy, John Paul Jones. Born in Scotland, Jones fought the British at the Battle of Flamborough Head where his ship, the Bonhomme Richard, was sunk after an overnight battle on 23^rd September 1779. He went on to be a Russian Admiral and took part in many sorties before he died alone in a Paris apartment many years later. The monument to him has a scene of battle with many of his legendary quotes such as “I have not yet begun to fight” which he famously shouted from the deck of his blazing ship.

One of the major things my wife and I went to see was the Pentagon, the home of the US military and the scene of one of the terrorist attacks on 11^th September 2001. While New York was reeling from the attacks on their World Trade Centre, a third passenger plane was directed at one of the sides of the Pentagon and demolished a hefty part of the well built structure. 184 people were killed and today the site has a memorial garden which names all those who were tragically lost in this pointless terror attack. Despite the main roads being so close, the area was quiet and secluded. By coincidence the attack happened on the 60^th anniversary of the Pentagon being built as a stone around the other side gives the date 11^th September 1941.

Heading out in a taxi we then directed our taxi to an area next to the Potomac River where a large memorial to the sinking of the liner Titanic in 1912 stood. A huge statue of a man with his arms outstretched was dedicated “to the men of the Titanic” from the women of America. This was another memorial that was nice and quiet and in very good shape for its age. One of many memorials to this most famous of shipwrecks.

The Potomac River is also the scene of a major disaster on 13^th January 1982 when Air Florida flight 90 took off from the nearby airport and could not gain enough height due to ice on the wings. Losing altitude the Boeing 737 struck a bridge and smashed into several cars before plummeting into the icy river below. Despite a major rescue operation, there were just five survivors from the aircraft, but four others died on the bridge in their cars bringing a total death toll of 78. The bridge was later renamed the Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge after one of the heroic passengers of the flight as a monument to his bravery in helping others that cost him his life.

Marchioness – Disaster on the Thames

The 1980’s was a decade of major disasters that stunned the world and made household names of the incidents that occurred. Names like Lockerbie, Hillsborough, Challenger, Zeebrugge were constantly in the news, but one name still stands out today as being a tragedy that should not have happened and certainly shouldn’t have had the aftermath that it did – the Marchioness.

Built in 1923, the Marchioness was an old pleasure boat that was designed for inland cruising and had undergone many modifications over the years. At just over 85 feet long, she was just 46 gross tons and had made a name for herself during the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940, where thousands of stranded British troops were rescued from the beaches by the “little ships” that would then earn their place in history.

Owned by Tidal Cruises in the late 1970s, she was carrying over 100 passengers at a time by the time further modifications had made an upper and lower saloon internally, where parties could hire the vessel for celebrations and go on a cruise down the River Thames in London. The Marchioness, along with her sister ship Hurlingham, were popular vessels and it was in this role that she found herself in the early hours of 20th August 1989.

Setting off from Embankment pier at around 0125 hours, she was carrying around 133 people including her two crew members, for a celebration of the 26th birthday of city banker Antonio de Vasconcellos. The party was in full swing as the vessel slowly edged away and headed eastwards. At around the same time, further up the river was the dredger Bowbelle that had just departed from Nine Elms near Battersea Power Station. This much larger vessel was 25 years old and 262 feet long, at 1474 gross tons she was much bigger than the pleasure boat.

It wasn’t long before the Bowbelle was following the Marchioness close behind, but neither ship seemed to have seen each other. As the party boat passed under Southwark Bridge, the dredger crunched into the side of her twice and pulled her under the river, her upper decks being ripped off in the process and dozens of terrified passengers now finding themselves thrust into the Thames fighting for their lives.

The Bowbelle continued on and hit the Canon Street bridge as radio messages were transmitted for immediate assistance. Pandemonium broke out on the banks of the Thames as people were being dragged out of the freezing water and onto dry land, several clinging on to wreckage, the Marchioness completely underwater and trapping many within the confines of the boat.

As a huge rescue operation was mounted, it soon became apparent that 51 people on board would not be returning from this party. What happened next would shock the already grieving families as the inquest revealed that hands were removed from the bodies of the dead in order to identify them, the fact that the Bowbelle’s crew had been consuming alcohol before sailing led to it being highlighted at the inquest, but the main cause of the disaster was blamed on both vessels not keeping a proper lookout.

 The wreck of the Marchioness was raised the morning after the collision, she was eventually scrapped. Bowbelle was later sold on and renamedBom Rei, she went down off Madeira after breaking in two with the loss of one crew member. She is today a popular site for SCUBA diving expeditions.

Memorials to the victims of the disaster appear in several locations down the Thames bank at various rescue points; a large one is in Southwark Cathedral where memorial services are conducted on the anniversaries. But the greatest legacy of this tragic event is the building of the new RNLI lifeboat station just up the river from where it happened. Today if there is any water-borne emergency, including attempted suicide or falling off pleasure vessels, the fast boat and its professional crew are there to save the lives. Thanks to this being put in place, it is hoped that the likes of another disaster on this scale will never be seen again on the Thames. 

The Tay Bridge Disaster

The River Tay is the longest river in Scotland, starting at the slopes of Ben Lui and ending 117 miles away in the North Sea. As with any river, it is necessary to build structures in order to allow people to cross, whether it be a tunnel, bridge or ferry. At certain points in any river these structures become a necessity, so in the 1800s a design was underway for a railway bridge across the Tay between Dundee and Wormit.

The bridge was designed by Sir Thomas Bouch and opened on 1^st June 1878 for passenger carrying trains and was a success straight away. But just over 18 months later, on 28 December 1879 a violent storm erupted and hit the River Tay with a full fury. The bridge was restricted to one train at a time and as one train from Burntisland was allowed through, sparks were seen coming from the tracks. This was nothing to worry about as the previous train had had the same issue. In this weather it was not unusual for the train to be buffeted and the wheels make contact with the track.

On the Dundee side the train was expected but failed to appear. Other than a flash of light there was nothing but darkness in the storm. What nobody knew at this point was that the bridge had collapsed and the train had run straight off into the gap and plunged into the freezing River Tay below.

Nobody knows for sure just how many people died that night, 46 bodies were recovered, there were at least 59 people on the train but no accounting for those holding season tickets or additional people. The death toll has since been put at 75.

The subsequent inquiry into the disaster blamed the structure of the bridge and the design flaws that led to the storm destroying that part of the bridge. Designer Sir Thomas Bouch was held to blame and died less than a year after the disaster, his failing health worsened by the stress caused by the Tay Bridge collapse.

There have been many theories as to what exactly caused the collapse, controversies over whether Bouch should have been blamed and not forgetting the fluctuations in the number of people said to have died. The bridge itself was not used again, a new one being built next to it and opened for service just six years after the disaster.

A number of places remember the Tay Bridge train crash, for a start there is the bridge itself, the original stumps still visible next to the modern bridge jutting out of the water. On both the Dundee and Wormit waterfront are memorials which only went up a few years back after years of campaigning. A steel piece of the bridge is on display at the Dundee Museum of Transport, another in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh (below). 

Incredibly the train itself was salvaged and put back into service, nicknamed The Diver, it was in service until 1919 with may people refusing to cross the Tay on this locomotive, the superstition and fear being very real on this industrial service.

Liverpool - The City of Remembrance

When you look throughout history there are many tragic incidents, accidents and disasters that occur in every city in the world, but one that has many memorials to such periods is that of the western English city of Liverpool, home of the Beatles and two Premier League football clubs.

I have visited Liverpool on several occasions in the last 20 years, each time finding new things to see and it is my intention to head back at some point to see other historical pieces that have since been erected in memory of people from long ago. But we shall start with the maritime history of this great city and its connections to two of the most famous lost liners in the world.

Back in the early 1900s the two shipping rivals Cunard and White Star were in the process of designing and building their most inspiring ships, for Cunard it would be the Lusitania and Mauritania and for White Star it would be the three sisters Olympic, Titanic and Britannic. Lusitania was launched in 1907 and was a regular here at the docks, but the Titanic never came here despite the fact that the name Liverpool was emblazoned on her stern as her port of registry.

Both of these ships sank in tragic circumstances – Titanic was lost on 15^th April 1912 after striking an iceberg killing 1512, Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat off Ireland on 7^th May 1915 killing 1197. The Merseyside Maritime Museum features these ships heavily and tells the story of how so many local merchant mariners put to sea in these ships and how many lost their lives. Two monuments adorn this area by the docks, the first one is in the grounds of the museum and that is the propeller of the Lusitania, salvaged from her wreck, the second is a memorial to the Titanic unveiled a few years after the sinking.

Just over the main roads from here are the old White Star Line offices, the headquarters of a company that ended up merging with Cunard and eventually phased out after the Second World War. The building itself has a plaque but mentions nothing about the company’s most famous ships.

Over in Birkenhead is the U-boat Story, a museum dedicated to the wreck of the German submarine U-534 (featured in a previous blog story). Sunk in the last days of the war in 1945 she was salvaged in August 1993 in a hunt for lost gold. A few years later she was brought here where she went on display and this is where I first went around the wreck in 2000. Several years later she was sold once again, cut up and made into an incredible museum that she sits in today with all her artefacts, a fascinating piece of history and one that we can commend those that have put all their time and effort into the preservation of the wreck and the things that this submarine can teach us about the Second World War.

The final memorial to talk about is one that is much closer to home and one that actually didn’t happen anywhere near here. On 15^th April 1989 a football match at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield ended with thousands of Liverpool FC fans being crushed in a stand that was overcrowded and badly managed. By the end of the day there were dozens dead, the final toll being 96. While the city of Sheffield was in shock, it was Liverpool where all the victims came from and because of this a memorial at the Liverpool FC ground at Anfield pays tribute to the people who did not come home that day.

While there was controversy for many years over the blame for this terrible incident, the city did not forget their people and a second memorial was unveiled in the city in 2013. This memorial is one that I have not yet had the chance to visit but one day I will make the journey and seek it out for myself.

My trips here have shown me that the city of Liverpool, heavily bombed during the Second World War and the scene of several headline-hitting murders over the years, will continue to remember their people no matter where they are. It is a city that acts more like a family than a neighbourhood, one that will make sure that no one from Liverpool is ever forgotten.

A Massacre in Norway

Whenever you think of terrorism, very rarely does any part of Scandinavia come up in conversation. But all that changed ten years ago when the world knew the name of Anders Behring Breivik, a white supremacist hell bent on infecting vulnerable people with his poisonous ideology.

But he was a nobody, he needed to make the world stand up and take notice of him and the only way to do this was to light the fire that would cause the revolution that he dreamed of. He would have to cause absolute chaos, to do this he decided he would orchestrate a massacre.

Born in 1979, Breivik spent his life in his home in Norway living with his mother and playing vast amounts of video games online. His unhealthy interest in attacking the governmental system and migrant issues his only friend, but one that he would go over in his mind again and again.

On 22^nd July 2011 he drove a van to the government buildings in the capital Oslo which included the office of the Prime Minister, setting the fuse. With no warning the explosives stored in the back exploded with devastating consequences, the shockwave sending ripples across every building in the vicinity and leaving a trail of casualties. This bombing killed 8 and left over 200 injured.

Emergency services were on their way while Breivik was already outbound, heading to his next attack. This time it was a children's political summer camping trip on the island of Utoya. Dressed as a police officer he managed to trick the ferry operators to take him over to the island saying that he was protecting the people camped there following the terrorist attack that was already making the news.

But without any inkling of what was about to happen, Breivik pulled out his weapons and opened fire, shooting everybody he could see. He began a murderous rampage across Utoya, cutting down any human being that moved, round after round ripping across the trees and outbuildings. The terrified campers hid as best they could but he did not stop. Word got out that gunfire was heard on the island and the police sped to the scene.

Armed response teams found Breivik and ordered him to lay down his weapons, he did as he was told and surrendered without a fight. By now he had killed 69 people on the island and injured 110. He was taken away and locked up, charged with terrorism which he freely admitted….yet he pleaded not guilty as he “did not recognise the court” that he was to be tried in.

After a trial lasting several months, he was found sane by a court of law and sentenced to 21 years detention, the maximum time a court can give a killer in Norway. This does not mean he will be released when his time is up, this can be extended if he is considered a threat.

In 2018 I made a visit to Oslo and went to check out the place where the bombing took place. There is a small museum which unfortunately wasn’t open at the time and a damaged bus stop was relocated from its original position a street away to outside the PM’s old office, glass still damaged and with the newspaper from the day of the bombing behind the glass for the commuters to read while waiting.

What got me was that the building looked fine, although by now it had been over 7 years since the attack, but this thought was soon dashed when I realised that the front of the building seemed to move with the wind. It took a while to see but the entire front of this tall office block was a canvas photograph designed to look like the building is still standing, behind this would be a damaged façade and no doubt empty rooms. It seems that after so many years the damage is still there and the legacy of Anders Breivik is still there to see.

The Crash of TWA Flight 800

25 years ago a disaster hit the aviation industry that sent shockwaves around the world. The loss of Trans World Airlines flight 800 was one of those air crashes that baffled the investigators and led to a host of conspiracy theories before the eventual investigation report concluded that it was something much simpler.

On 17th July 1996 the TWA Boeing 747 sat on the runway at JFK Airport in New York waiting to take off, with 230 people on board heading for Paris. As the aircraft sped down the runway a chain reaction of events was already under way. 12 minutes after take off it exploded in flames, crashing into the Atlantic Ocean. When rescuers reached the site, they were greeting with burning wreckage floating on the sea in the dark. There were no survivors.

What happened next was unprecedented, for after the mourning period came the questions. What had caused the aircraft to explode in mid-air so suddenly? Rumours of a terrorist bombing were rife but no group had claimed responsibility. Then suddenly a photograph was released to the press that set tongues wagging and conspiracies booming.

On Long Island a party was in full swing as the aircraft was heading out to sea and photographs were being taken of the people enjoying drinks and chatter without realising what was going on in the background. In one photograph, high in the sky, is what looked like a missile streaking across the night. The US Navy ships were doing exercises in the area and immediately came under suspicion.

Accusations were thrown around as the wreckage of the aircraft was still being recovered, the investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board hard at work trying to sift through the clues as to what really went on. The missile strike was soon discredited due to the fact that any military exercises did not come close to the aircraft and there were no objects in the sky being tracked on RADAR before the crash.

The wreckage of TWA 800 was reovered piece by piece, a painstakingly slow process and a massive jigsaw puzzle now started to take shape in a hangar, but before long the investigators were getting more of an idea of what had happened. It turned out that the fuel tanks were not full to capacity and that the residual space within the fuel tanks were creating a space for vapours to congregate and therefore leaving potential dangers within the aircraft. 

With this confirmed, all it took was one spark from a short circuit to blow the aircraft up, which was the conclusion of the NTSB four years after the disaster. An animation was set up to show the world what went on and it was nothing short of horrific. The front of the aircraft had been blown completely off in the initial explosion, but the aircraft continued flying for another 34 seconds without a cockpit. The Boeing 747 then descended rapidly and crashed into the sea.

Although 25  years has passed the pain of this tragedy has not gone away. Having to wait four years for an answer as well as the conspiracies only heightened the pain and not-knowing. The wreckage of the aircraft was reconstructed in a hangar and used for training, recently this has been announced that after a quarter of a century, this huge piece of aviation history will now be decommissioned from use and put to scrap.

Memorials to the disaster were installed in New York by the families group, where the relatives will gather on 17th July like they have done every year for over two decades. With the cause of the crash now known, the only thing that could be done was to take away the lessons learned and prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again.

Disasters in Paris

It was the Easter period of 2018 that I ventured to the French capital for a hunt around the city looking for memorials to some of the major disasters that have struck Paris since the mid 1800s and incredibly they are more common than expected. I am going to start with a visit to a street near the River Seine called Rue Jean-Goujon. It is here that a church is around halfway up on the right hand side, the Notre-Dame-de-Consolation and this church itself is a memorial to what happened here. On 4^th May 1897 a large warehouse containing a mock up medieval street known as the Bazar de la Charite was constructed with hundreds of people attending the event lasting several days. But a huge fire left 126 dead and over 200 injured, the entire site becoming a raging inferno that sent France into mourning. The outside of the church today (above) has very little evidence of something this big happening, but knowing the history of this place makes this place of worship as haunting as it gets.

Just around the corner is the Pont de l’Alma, a bridge going across the river Seine within sight of the Eiffel Tower. But it is not the bridge itself that has the attention of the world, it is the road underpass that runs directly below this that made this site infamous. On 31^st August 1997 three people were killed when a Mercedes crashed into a pillar while being followed by paparazzi photographers, there was one survivor. The reason this crash became world headlines was the identity of its victims – Diana Princess of Wales, Dodi Fayed (son of Harrods owner Mohammed Al Fayed) and their driver Henri Paul. The sole survivor was bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones. Above this underpass is an unofficial memorial to Diana which was a replica of the flames coming out of the torch up the Statue of Liberty in New York. Now it is adorned with images of the Princess and has been since that day the worlds press descended on here. With conspiracies rife and talk of assassination, cover ups and murder there was one thing that was clear above all else – Diana and Dodi did not wear seat belts, their bodyguard did. The cause of the crash was later blamed on the driver being drunk and losing control in the car chase.

Moving on to the train station at Gare de Lyon, you have to go deep underground for this next memorial. It is between Platforms 1 and 2 that a yellow monument stretches the length of the platform almost, right in the centre surrounded by a chain barrier. On here are the 56 names of the people who were killed at this spot when an out of control inbound train slammed into another one that was waiting to depart. 60 others were injured, the blame being laid on the train crew for their operating of the brakes after an emergency cord was pulled earlier in the journey.

Back on a journey across Paris I head to another railway disaster site. This time it was at Couronnes station, where a fire here led to 84 deaths on a line that was not even a year old. On 10^th August 1903 smoke was seen coming out of the engine of the front car of a train but it was decided to evacuate, clear the smoke and carry on the service. The fire soon returned and the train soon became an inferno, consuming the station with smoke and killing dozens. All that remains now is a small information board near the entrance to the station.

But it is not just fires and crashes that have struck Paris railways, two terrorist bombs at Saint Michel station in 1995 and Port Royal in 1996 left a combined total of 12 dead, memorial plaques honouring those who died. Another terrorist attack at a small restaurant, the Chez Jo Goldenberg, by the Abu Nidal Organisation left six dead and 22 injured when the attackers threw grenades into the dining area and opened fire with guns. The restaurant was no longer there when I visited but the building was still the same. Again it is hard to imagine things like this happening in such quiet streets. Although these days France has become renown for suffering terrorist attacks in more recent years and for the next incident I had to visit several locations.

On the night of 13^th November 2015 a cell from the Islamic State terrorist group launched a wave of major attacks across the city in six different locations – The Stade de France, Bataclan theatre and four small café’s packed with people. Suicide bombings, gunfire and hostage taking left 130 dead and over 400 injured. Of the 9 terrorists involved, only two got away alive. It was a long trek across the city to visit all of the memorials, the only one I missed was the stadium as it was too far away to do in one day. The largest of the monuments is in a park opposite the Bataclan where 90 died, all the names appearing on a block of stone surrounded by tributes. A further memorial in the Place de la Republique pays tribute to all six sites. It really was a terrible night for Paris, and one that continued with further attacks later on in Nice, Lyon and Marseille.

Finishing my tour of Paris, I had to board a train at the very busy Montparnasse, a major station that is probably the city’s version of Kings Cross or Waterloo. The structure has changed a lot but I knew that there was a famous photograph of this station, taken in 1895 when a train over-ran the platform and smashed through the walls. Continuing through the wall the engine and several carriages (still connected up) ended up in the street below, killing a pedestrian. Despite the amount of comedy posters that this photograph has been seen in, it is still a railway disaster and perhaps the sellers of such trivia need to remember that. To this date there is no memorial to this.