Worst Warship From Every Era Explained

Sketchy Warfare

Sketchy Warfare

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The worst warship from every era, explained: in 1628 Sweden's mightiest warship, the Vasa, sank about twenty minutes into its first voyage, less than a mile from the dock, with 64 bronze cannons it never fired at an enemy.

This animated naval history ranks the warships that failed in every era and why they failed: Ptolemy IV's giant galley with more than 4,000 rowers that was built only for show; Henry V's Grace Dieu, which sailed once, suffered a mutiny and burned after a lightning strike; the top-heavy Vasa; Spain's four-decked Santísima Trinidad, nicknamed the Ponderous; HMS Captain, which capsized in 1870 with its own designer aboard; Russia's perfectly round ironclad Novgorod; the British battlecruisers that blew up at Jutland; Japan's carrier Shinano, sunk on its first trip by USS Archerfish; Russia's smoking carrier Admiral Kuznetsov; and the USS Zumwalt, whose big guns never got ammunition. Plus dishonorable mentions: the Mary Rose, the K-class steam submarines and the Royal George.

Chapters:
0:00 The warship that sank in twenty minutes
0:32 ~200 BC: the galley too big to use
1:36 1418: the Grace Dieu and its one voyage
2:28 1628: the Vasa
3:37 1769: the Santísima Trinidad
4:31 1870: HMS Captain
5:32 1873: the round Novgorod
6:37 1916: the battlecruisers at Jutland
7:53 1944: Shinano, the carrier that never launched a plane
9:10 1991: Admiral Kuznetsov
10:28 2016: USS Zumwalt
11:37 Dishonorable mentions
12:23 What makes a warship the worst

Almost every ship on this list was built to impress a king, a tsar, an admiral or a parliament before it was built to fight, and the sea always won that argument.

Sources: Vasa Museum, Stockholm; Historic England (Grace Dieu protected wreck); Plutarch and Athenaeus on the tessarakonteres; Royal Museums Greenwich (HMS Captain); records of the Battle of Jutland (1916) and the Admiralty's investigation into cordite handling; U.S. Navy history of USS Archerfish and the Shinano; reporting on the Admiral Kuznetsov (2016–2025); U.S. Navy and Congressional Research Service reporting on the Zumwalt-class Advanced Gun System and the 2016 LRLAP cancellation. Ancient figures and some casualty numbers are approximate and presented as such.

Next in the series: the worst warplane from every era.

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