April 5th...
1621: 'Mayflower' sails from Plymouth, Massachusetts, on a return trip to England. Her empty hold was ballasted with stones from the Plymouth Harbour shore. As with the Pilgrims, her crew had been decimated by disease, so the return would be made without her boatswain, his gunner, three quartermasters, the cook, and more than a dozen sailors.
"Mayflower in Plymouth Harbour," by William Halsall, 1882.
Painting at the Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Mass., USA.
1722: Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen discovers Easter Island whilst heading an expedition of three ships (the 'Arend', the 'Thienhoven', and 'Afrikaansche Galey'), to find Terra Australis. The expedition set out in August 1721. Roggeveen first sailed down to the Falkland Islands (which he renamed "Belgia Australis"), passed through the Strait of Le Maire and continued south to beyond 60 degrees south to enter the Pacific Ocean. He made landfall near Valdivia, Chile, and he visited the Juan Fernández Islands, where he spent 24th February to 17th March.
The expedition found Easter Island (Rapa Nui) on Easter Sunday, 5th April 1722 (whereupon he reported seeing 2,000-3,000 inhabitants). He then sailed to Batavia by way of the Tuamotu Archipelago, encountering Bora Bora and Maupiti of the Society Islands and Samoa.
Moai at Rano Raraku, Easter Island. Almost one-thousand monolithic human statues carved from a single piece of stone are scattered over the island.
1769: (Sir) Thomas Hardy (1st Baronet) was born, the second son of Joseph Hardy and Nanny Hardy (née Masterman) at Kingston Russell House in Long Bredy (or according to some sources in Winterborne St Martin).
He would join the navy with his entry aboard the brig H.M.S. 'Helena' on 30th November 1781 as a captain's servant, but would leave her in April 1782 to attend Crewkerne Grammar School, during which time his name would be carried on the books of the sixth-rate H.M.S. 'Seaford' and the third-rate H.M.S. 'Carnatic'.
He would eventually become an English Royal Navy Vice-Admiral and First Lord of the Admiralty, and long remembered as being with Nelson when he was shot and lay dying on the deck of 'Victory' at the Battle of Trafalgar.
1834: Admiral Sir Richard Goodwin Keats (16th January 1757 – 5th April 1834) was a British naval officer who fought throughout the American Revolution, French Revolutionary War and Napoleonic War. He retired in 1812 due to ill health and was made Commodore-Governor of Newfoundland from 1813 to 1816. In 1821 he was made Governor of Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, London. Keats held the post until his death at Greenwich in 1834. Keats is remembered as a capable and well respected officer. His actions at the Battle of Algeciras Bay became legendary.
Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Goodwin Keats (1757-1834).
1877: Hermann Blohm and Ernst Voss form the German shipbuilding and engineering works named 'Blohm & Voss' as a general partnership. A shipyard was built on the island of Kuhwerder, near the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, covering 15,000m˛ with 250m of water frontage and three building berths, two suitable for ships of up to 100 metres length.
During the latter part of WW2, Blohm & Voss used inmates of its own concentration subcamp at its shipyard in Hamburg-Steinwerder. A memorial stands in the former site of the camp and the company continues to pay an undisclosed amount to the Fund for Compensation of Forced Labourers.
The company has continued to build ships and other large machines for more than 125 years, producing warships for both the Deutsche Marine and for export, as well as oil drilling equipment and ships for numerous commercial customers.
The Blohm & Voss Shipbuilding and Engineering Works, 1877.
1942: The Imperial Japanese Navy launches a carrier-based air attack on Colombo, Ceylon, damaging Port and civilian facilities, although the attackers are frustrated to discover the harbour is virtually empty.
However, Royal Navy cruisers H.M.S, 'Cornwall' and H.M.S. 'Dorsetshire' are discovered 200 miles southwest of Ceylon and sunk by Aichi D3A Val dive bombers. 'Dorsetshire' was hit by 10 bombs and sank stern first at about 13:50hrs. 'Cornwall' was hit eight times and sank bow first about 10 minutes later. British losses were 424 men killed, with 1,120 survivors being picked up by the cruiser 'Enterprise' and the destroyers 'Paladin' and 'Panther' the next day.
H.M.S. 'Dorsetshire' and H.M.S. 'Cornwall' under heavy air attack from Japanese carrier aircraft, 5th April 1942.
1943: Chinese sailor Poon Lim, the sole survivor of the British merchant hip 'Ben Lomond', sunk by two torpedoes from the German U-boat U-172 on 23rd November 1942, was rescued by three Brazilian fishermen on 5th April, 1943, having been adrift for 133 days in the South Atlantic. Following a four-week recovery period in a Brazilian hospital, King George VI bestowed a British Empire Medal (BEM) on him, and the Royal Navy incorporated his tale into manuals of survival techniques.
1958: Ripple Rock, an underwater, twin-peaked mountain and a notorious marine hazard in the Seymour Narrows in Canada, described by the explorer George Vancouver as "one of vilest stretches of water in the world," is destroyed on 5th April by one of the largest non-nuclear controlled explosions of the time.
The blast displaced 635,000 metric tons of rock and water, significantly increasing low tide clearance from around 9 feet to at least 45 feet.
The Ripple Rock explosion was shown live on Canadian TV, and was one of the first live coast to coast television coverages of an event in Canada.
CBC Television footage on YouTube.2063: Earth receives it's first contact by extra-terrestrials (Vulcan), according to Star Trek.