Grounding
At 0200 hours on 30 May 1906 during radio communication trials carried out in thick fog, Montagu was steaming at high speed in the Bristol Channel when she ran into Shutter Rock on the southwest corner of Lundy Island. The force of impact was so great that her foremast was raked forward. The ship settled hard aground, with many holes in her hull, the worst of which was a 91-foot (28 m) long gash in her starboard side.
A pilot cutter cruising in the vicinity of the Island of Lundy had encountered Montagu a short time earlier. The battleship had stopped engines, come abreast and hailed from the bridge requesting a distance and bearing for Hartland Point. Though these were supplied accurately, the voice from the bridge replied that they must be wrong and that the pilot cutter must have lost her bearings. As Montagu restarted her engines and began to move ahead, the cutter shouted back that on her present course she would be on Shutter Rocks within ten minutes, and a short time later the sound of the battleship running aground carried through the fog.
The ship's captain, believing Montagu was stuck at Hartland Point on the mainland of England, sent a party on a rowing boat to the north, instructing them to contact the Hartland Point Lighthouse. They instead got to the North light on Lundy Island, where officers asked the lighthouse keeper to inform the British Admiralty that they were aground south of Hartland Point. An argument ensued with the keeper until he pointed out he knew what lighthouse he kept.
The court martial convened for the affair blamed the thick fog and faulty navigation for the wreck, and her captain, Thomas B. S. Adair, and navigating officer, Lieutenant J. H. Dathan, were severely reprimanded and "dismissed the ship" (sic), Dathan losing two years' seniority.
Read more about this topic: HMS Montagu (1901)