HMS Minotaur wrecked at Texel and the Elizabeth lost off Dunkirk
- When
- 1810
- Where
- Haak Bank, or Razende Bol
- Episodes
- 1
In December 1810, HMS Minotaur, a 74-gun ship of the line, wrecked on the Texel sands in the West Frisian Islands, resulting in heavy loss of life. Separately, the chartered East Indiaman Elizabeth was lost off Dunkirk. The provided passages confirm Minotaur's details but lack specific evidence for Elizabeth's casualty figures or lascar crew composition.
Episodes
Background and detail
Background. HMS Minotaur was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line launched in 1793. She had fought at the Nile, Trafalgar, and Copenhagen before her loss. The Elizabeth was a chartered vessel belonging to the British East India Company, a type of ship commonly used for trade voyages. Both incidents occurred in the North Sea, with Minotaur wrecking on the dangerous shoals of the West Frisian Islands.
HMS Minotaur Wreck. Minotaur struck the Haak Bank off Texel in heavy weather on 22 December 1810. The ship was separated from her consorts, HMS Plantagenet and Loire. Reports indicate the Dutch attempted to examine the wreck site the following morning but were prevented by wind and seas. This event remains the largest loss of life on the Dutch coast, potentially surpassed only by the loss of HMS Hero in 1811.
People involved
- John Barrett · Commander of HMS Minotaur
Sources
- HMS Minotaur (1793) Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-01
- East Indiaman Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-12
- Texel Wikipedia, revision of 2026-07-24
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.