Which military commanders burned their own ships?
score:5
(1) One account of the Danaan invasion of Ireland has it that upon landing, they burned their ships, causing a great mist to rise up and terrifying the inhabitants who thought the Danaans arrived in a cloud.
(2) In Book V of the Aeneid, the Trojan women attempt to burn the ships after they arrive on Sicily, but a rainstorm thwarts their plans.
(3) In 351 BC, Sidon rebelled against Ochus, the King of Persia. They burned all the ships in the harbor to prevent anyone from fleeing. When it became clear that the city had been betrayed and the Persians were entering, they set fire to their own homes and the entire city was obliterated.
(4) In 296, the Praetorian Prefect, Asclepiodotus, commanded an army belonging to the emperor Constantius Chlorus, and led it against the usurper Allectus. Having arrived in Britain to confront Allectus, Asclepiodotus burned his own ships to prevent his men from retreating.
(5) In 363, Julian the Apostate, Emperor of Rome invaded Persia. After his army crossed the Tigris he had all the pontoons and barges burned so there would be no thought of going back.
(6) In 711, Tariq ibn Ziyad, for whom Gibraltar is named, landed there, burned his ships and embarked on the conquest of Spain.
(7) Some accounts claim that William the Duke of Normandy burnt his ships on arriving in England in 1066.
(8) In 1169, a group of about 250 English freebooters under the bastards Robert Fitz-Stephen, Meiler Fitz-Henry, and Meiler Fitz-David, along with a vassal of king Henry, named Hervey Montmorency, raided Wexford, and having been repulsed they were so ashamed, they burnt their ships and determined to succeed or die trying.
(9) Hernando Cortez supposedly burned his ships in 1519 to prevent anyone returning to Cuba and reporting his mutiny to the Spanish governor there.
(10) According to a book published in 1689, which purported to be the journal of a pirate named Raveneau de Lussan, he at one point led his men across the isthmus of the Americas through Honduras after first burning their ship to prevent anyone from defecting.
(11) In 1779, during the celebrated battle between John Paul Jones and the English ship of the line, Serapis, rather than flee or surrender Jones desparately kamikazeed his sinking ship into the Serapis and captured it va banque.
(12) In 1789, sailors serving on the HMS Bounty under the notorious Captain Bly mutinied and sailed to Pitcairn Island where they burned the Bounty.
Upvote:1
Tyler has given a very interesting long list. There is no doubt that the motive of an admiral burning his own ships to pre-empt any thought of retreat is an ancient and wide-spread narrative topos. But I think it is difficult to find any examples where it is reliably documented that this actually happened. Maybe only the story about the “Bounty”.
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