Ticketed

Essential Information

Type Events and festivals
Location
Other
Date and Times Tuesday 23 September 2025 l 7.30-8.30pm (doors open from 7pm)
Prices Adult: £30 l Child: £15

Just £20 for Museum Members. Not a member? Join now

Explore the story of HMS Captain alongside naval historians, descendants of its designer and crew and other VIPs in this special lecture at the Royal Geographical Society.

The Captain (1869) was a revolutionary warship, embodying the technological innovation of Victorian Britain, with rotating armoured turrets, wrought iron armour and steam propulsion as well as sails. At first appearance the ship was formidable, intended to cross oceans with its powerful guns and present a stout defence of British interests, including protecting Canada against invasion from the south. 

Scale model of the battleship HMS Captain. There are what appear to be gaps in the hull to allow space for the ships innovative gun turrets
Ship model of HMS Captain in the collections of the National Maritime Museum (SLR1014)

Tragically, only five months after its commission, on 7 September 1870 HMS Captain capsized off Cape Finisterre in a severe gale. Nearly 500 officers and men, including Captain Hugh Burgoyne VC and the ship’s designer Captain Cowper Phipps Coles CB, drowned. Only 18 survivors managed to reach the rocky Spanish coast, relaying the horrifying news to Queen Victoria (whose late husband Prince Albert, had supported the design) and a shocked Britain. 

Since 2021, the University of Wolverhampton’s ‘Find the Captain’ project has led an international effort to find the wreck of this largely forgotten ironclad man-o-war. Exploration of the Captain's remains will support further investigation into what happened between design, execution and launch that resulted in the ship being so overweight and unstable, that a freak storm could turn a uniquely British triumph into tragedy.

The event at the Royal Geographical Society features historians Professor Andrew Lambert (Professor of Naval History at King’s College, London), Dr Howard Fuller (Reader in War Studies at the University of Wolverhampton) and Dan Snow (broadcaster and founder of the History Hit podcast). Explore a small exhibition of artifacts associated with the Captain and hear from the panel about this revolutionary warship, explore the part it played in changing the face of naval warfare, and follow the continuing extraordinary story of HMS Captain.

Event information

Location: This event will take place at the Royal Geographical Society in the Ondaatje Lecture Theatre. Address: 1 Kensington Gore, London, SW7 2AR.

Timings:

  • 7pm: doors open
  • 7.30-8.30pm: lecture

Tickets are £30 for adults and £15 for children: book online here

Royal Museums Greenwich Members enjoy discounted entry at just £20: book online here using your Membership card details.

Meet the panel

Image

Dan Snow

Dan Snow is a history broadcaster. He has spent 25 years making documentaries, initially for the BBC, where he covered the discovery of Ark Royal off Gibraltar and participated in many other wreck programmes. A decade ago he founded History Hit, a digital history platform. It is now a multi-award winning business making podcasts, tv shows, social videos with millions of subscribers and users. In 2022 he was on the expedition to find Shackleton’s Endurance under the ice of Antarctica.

Image

Dr Howard Fuller

A Reader in War Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, Dr. Howard Fuller was the Rear Admiral John D. Hayes Fellow in U.S. Naval History through the U.S. Naval Historical Center (now Naval History and Heritage Command) in Washington, D.C.; he has also been a West Point Fellow in Military History, Caird Research Fellow, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.  Dr. Fuller is a frequent contributor to conferences and journals on both sides of the Atlantic, Editor for the International Journal of Naval History, and was a Managing Editor for the British Journal of Military History.  His first book, Clad in Iron: The American Civil War and the Challenge of British Naval Power (2007, Greenwood Press, reprinted in 2010 by Naval Institute Press), was runner-up for the 2008 John Lyman Book Award in US Naval History; followed by the critically-acclaimed Empire, Technology and Seapower: Royal Navy Crisis in the Age of Palmerston (Routledge, 2013).  His latest research monograph, Turret versus Broadside: An Anatomy of British Naval Prestige, Revolution and Disaster 1860-1870 (Helion & Company, 2020), was the first comprehensive academic study of the Captain tragedy.  Since 2021 Dr. Fuller has also been the founder and project manager of the University's 'Find the Captain' Project (https://findthecaptain.co.uk).

 

Image

Professor Andrew Lambert

Andrew Lambert is Laughton Professor of Naval History in the Department of War Studies at King's College, London, and Director of the Laughton Naval History Unit. His work focuses on the naval, strategic and cultural history of the British Empire between the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War the evolution of naval historical writing and the history of technology. He has lectured on aspects of his work around the world, including the rediscovery of HMS Erebus in Canada. He has also made several television documentaries. His books include a biography of HMS Warrior, the first ironclad battleship, The Crimean War: British Grand Strategy against Russia 1853-1856. Manchester 1990, Aldershot 2011, 'The Foundations of Naval History': Sir John Laughton, the Royal Navy and the Historical Profession. London 1997, Nelson: Britannia’s God of War. London 2004, Admirals. London 2008, Franklin: Tragic Hero of Polar Navigation. London 2009 and The Challenge: Britain versus America in the Naval War of 1812, London 2012, winner of Anderson Medal of the Society for Nautical Research for the best maritime history book. He published Crusoe’s Island: A rich and curious history of pirates, castaways and madness in 2016 – a study of English insularity and the South Pacific. His latest book, Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the conflict that has shaped the modern world. Yale University Press 2018 examines the cultural construction of maritime identity won the 2018 Gilder Lehrman Book Prize in Military History and has been translated into several languages. The British Way of War: Julian Corbett and the Battle for a National Strategy, Yale UP 2021 won the 2024 Hattendorf Prize for Distinguished Original Research in Maritime History his latest book is No More Napoleons” How Britain managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One, Yale UP 2025. 

 

What’s On

Find more maritime history events you may be interested in.

Talks and tours | Maritime history

Shipkeeping in action

This is your chance to meet the team who care for and conserve Cutty Sark
Every Wednesday | 11am-3pm | Drop-in
Free for Cutty Sark ticket holders
Cutty Sark
Exhibitions | Maritime history

Pirates

Explore the myth, discover the truth: Pirates at the National Maritime Museum is now open
Open daily until 4 January 2026 | 10am-5pm
Adult: £15 | Student: £11.25 | Child: £7.50
National Maritime Museum
Talks and tours | Museum Lates

Delve Deeper: Specialist tours

Delve deeper into Royal Museums Greenwich's collection on our specialist tours of the Prince Philip Maritime Collections Centre for over 18s.
Thursday 7 August 2025 | 7-8.30pm
£20 Adults
Prince Philip Maritime Collections Centre
Conferences | Maritime history

Britain, Conflict, and the Sea conference

This conference seeks to explore the ways in which modern Britain has been shaped by ideas and practices of maritime war
Friday 12 September 2025 9am-5.45pm | Saturday 13 September 9am-3.30pm
Adult £50 | Postgraduate Researcher/Student £25 | Members £45
National Maritime Museum
Talks and tours | Maritime History and Culture Seminars

1714 and all that: The Board of Longitude reconsidered

Join us for a free online talk by Dr Richard Dunn
Tuesday 23 September 2025 | 5.15-6.30pm
Free Entry
Online
Events and festivals | Museum Lates

HMS Captain: Technological Triumph to Tragedy

Discover the fate of the Victorian Navy’s most revolutionary warship in a special lecture held at the Royal Geographical Society
Tuesday 23 September 2025 l 7.30-8.30pm (doors open from 7pm)
Adult: £30 l Child: £15
Other
Talks and tours | Maritime History and Culture Seminars

George Charles 'Boatswain' Smith and the Wreck of Floating Chapels

Join us for a free online talk by Professor Hilary Carey
Tuesday 28 October 2025 | 5.15-6.30pm
Free
Online
Talks and tours | Maritime History and Culture Seminars

A matter of 'good usage': towards a new interpretation of the 1797 Fleet mutinies at Spithead and the Nore

Join us for a free online talk about the largest mutinies in the history of the Royal Navy
Tuesday 27 January 2026 | 5.15-6.30pm
Free
Online

Main image: The foundering of HMS Captain © Geoff Hunt PRSMA, used with permission