HMS Vixen

History

HMS Vixen was an experimental armoured gunboat, built at Deptford and launched in 1865 - the first Royal Navy ship with twin screws. Her hull was composite: iron frames clad in thick teak, with an iron armour belt, and she carried two 7-inch muzzle-loading rifles. She was also given a ram bow, its heavily braced underwater point projecting nearly 9 ft ahead of the stem. Like her near-sisters she proved slow at sea, managing under 9 knots on trials.

In 1868 Vixen and her sister Viper were towed across the Atlantic to Bermuda to act as floating batteries inside the reef line guarding the naval base. Her masts and rigging came off in 1873 and by the 1890s she was an accommodation hulk for dockyard workers.

The Admiralty invited tenders for her from December 1895, and in April 1896 the Royal Gazette reported her sold - engines and machinery included - to the Hon. S. S. Ingham for GBP 360, against an original cost of GBP 39,000. Any stripping of her engines was therefore done by her new owner. The Gazette has no account of what followed, but in about 1896 she was placed across the Chubb Cut off Daniel's Head and blown open with scuttling charges, breaking her keel. The aim was to block the channel so that any enemy torpedo boats would have to pass close under the shore guns. From 1986 archaeologist Richard Gould of Brown University ran a three-year survey of the wreck with Earthwatch and the Bermuda Maritime Museum, producing detailed underwater drawings, and she was later declared a protected wreck.

Diving the wreck today

One of Bermuda's most recognisable wrecks: the bow still pokes out of the water in a narrow gap in the reef about 0.2 nautical miles off Daniel's Head, and the hull lies in about 33 ft. The Vixen is a restricted wreck under the Historic Wrecks Act 2001, which means she is not open to recreational divers. She is best seen from the surface - the clear water shows much of the ship, and she is a classic glass-bottom-boat stop. Her hull is still largely intact. Remember that boat traffic uses the area.