RMS Britannic (crop)

''Britannic'' (originally to be the RMS ''Britannic''; ) was the third and final vessel of the White Star Line's of steamships and the second White Star ship to bear the name ''Britannic''. She was the younger sister of the and the and was intended to enter service as a transatlantic passenger liner. She operated as a hospital ship from 1915 until her sinking near the Greek island of Kea, in the Aegean Sea, in November 1916. At the time she was the largest hospital ship in the world, and the largest vessel built in Britain.

''Britannic'' was launched just before the start of the First World War. She was designed to be the safest of the three ships with design changes made during construction due to lessons learned from the sinking of the ''Titanic''. She was laid up at her builders, Harland and Wolff, in Belfast for many months before being requisitioned as a hospital ship. In 1915 and 1916 she served between the United Kingdom and the Dardanelles.

On the morning of 21 November 1916, she hit a naval mine of the Imperial German Navy near the Greek island of Kea and sank 55 minutes later, killing 30 of 1,066 people on board; the 1,036 survivors were rescued from the water and from lifeboats. ''Britannic'' was the largest ship lost in the First World War. After the War, the White Star Line was compensated for the loss of ''Britannic'' by the award of SS ''Bismarck'' as part of postwar reparations; she entered service as . The wreck of the ''Britannic'' was located and explored by Jacques Cousteau in 1975. The vessel is the largest intact passenger ship on the seabed in the world.. It was bought in 1996 and is currently owned by Simon Mills, a maritime historian.

Characteristics

The original dimensions of ''Britannic'' were similar to those of her older sisters, but her dimensions were altered whilst still on the building stocks after the loss of ''Titanic''. With a gross tonnage of 48,158, she surpassed her older sisters in terms of internal volume, but this did not make her the largest passenger ship in service at that time; the German held this title with a significantly higher tonnage..

The ''Olympic''-class ships were propelled by a combined system of two triple-expansion steam engines which powered the three-bladed outboard wing propellers whilst a low-pressure steam turbine used steam exhausted from the two reciprocating engines to power the central four-bladed propeller giving a maximum speed of 23 knots..

Post-''Titanic'' design changes

''Britannic'' had a similar layout to her sister ships. Following the ''Titanic'' disaster and the subsequent inquiries, several design changes were made to the remaining ''Olympic''-class liners. With ''Britannic'', these changes made before launch included increasing the ship's beam to to allow for a double hull along the engine and boiler rooms and raising six out of the 15 watertight bulkheads up to B Deck. Additionally, a larger turbine was added instead of the units installed on the earlier vessels in response to the increased hull width. The central watertight compartments were enhanced, allowing the ship to stay afloat with six compartments flooded..

Externally the largest visual change was the fitting of large crane-like gantry davits, each powered by an electric motor and capable of launching six lifeboats which were stored on gantries; the ship was designed to have eight sets of gantry davits but only five were installed before ''Britannic'' entered war service, with the difference being made up with boats launched by manually operated Welin-type davits as on ''Titanic'' and ''Olympic''...

Additional lifeboats could be stored within reach of the davits on the deckhouse roof, and the gantry davits could reach lifeboats on the other side of the ship, providing that none of the funnels was obstructing the way. This design enabled all the lifeboats to be launched, even if the ship developed a list that would normally prevent lifeboats from being launched on the side opposite to the list. Several of these davits were placed abreast of funnels, defeating that purpose. The elevators, which previously stopped at A deck, could now reach the boat deck. The ship carried 48 lifeboats, capable of carrying at least 75 people each. Thus, at least 3,600 people could be carried by the lifeboats, which was well above the ship's maximum capacity of 3,309.

History

Conception

In 1907, J. Bruce Ismay, director general of the White Star Line, and Lord Pirrie, chairman of the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast had decided to build a trio of ocean liners of unmatched size to compete with the Cunard Line's and not in terms of speed but in terms of luxury and safety. The names of the three vessels were decided at a later date and they showed the intention of the designers regarding their size: ''Olympic'', ''Titanic'' and ''Britannic''.

Construction of the ''Olympic'' and the ''Titanic'' began in 1908 and 1909 respectively. Their sizes were so large that it was necessary to build the Arrol Gantry to shelter them, wide enough to span the two new building slips and allow two ships to be built at a time. The three ships were designed to be 270 metres long and to have a gross tonnage of over 45,000. Their designed speed was approximately 22 knots, well below that of the ''Lusitania'' and ''Mauretania'', but still allowing for a transatlantic crossing of less than one week.

Rumoured name-change

Although the White Star Line and the Harland and Wolff shipyard always denied it, some sources claim that ''Britannic'' was to be named ''Gigantic'', but her name was changed so as not to compete with ''Titanic'' or create comparisons. One source is a poster of the ship with the name ''Gigantic'' at the top. Other sources are November 1911 American newspapers stating the White Star order for ''Gigantic'' being placed, as well as other newspapers from around the world both during construction and immediately after the sinking of the ''Titanic''.

Tom McCluskie stated that in his capacity as archive manager and historian at Harland and Wolff, he "never saw any official reference to the name ''Gigantic'' being used or proposed for the third of the ''Olympic''-class vessels".Joshua Milford: ''What happened to Gigantic?''
Website viewed 9 June 2014
Website viewed 1 May 2012 Some hand-written changes were added to the order book and dated January 1912. These only dealt with the ship's moulded width, not her name.

Construction

''Britannic''s keel was laid on 30 November 1911 at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, on the gantry slip previously occupied by , 13 months after the launch of that ship, and , launched seven days before. The acquisition of the ship was planned to be at the beginning of 1914. Due to improvements introduced as a consequence of the ''Titanic''s disaster, ''Britannic'' was not launched until 26 February 1914,. which was filmed along with the fitting of a funnel. Several speeches were given in front of the press, and a dinner was organised by White Star in honour of the launching. Fitting out began subsequently. The ship entered dry dock in September and her propellers were installed.

Reusing ''Olympic''s space saved the shipyard time and money by not clearing out a third slip similar in size to those used for the two previous vessels. In August 1914, before ''Britannic'' could commence transatlantic service between New York and Southampton, the First World War began. Immediately, all shipyards with Admiralty contracts were given priority to use available raw materials. All civil contracts including ''Britannic'' were slowed..

The naval authorities requisitioned a large number of ships as armed merchant cruisers or for troop transport. The Admiralty paid the companies for the use of their ships but the risk of losing a ship in naval operations was high. The larger ocean liners were not initially taken for naval use, because smaller ships were easier to operate. ''Olympic'' returned to Belfast on 3 November 1914, while work on ''Britannic'' continued slowly.

Requisition

The need for increased tonnage grew critical as naval operations extended to the Eastern Mediterranean. In May 1915, ''Britannic'' completed mooring trials of her engines and was prepared for emergency entrance into service with as little as four weeks' notice. The same month also saw the first major loss of a civilian ocean liner when Cunard's was torpedoed near the Irish coast by .

The following month, the Admiralty decided to use recently requisitioned passenger liners as troop transports in the Gallipoli Campaign (also called the Dardanelles service). The first to sail were Cunard's and . As the Gallipoli landings proved to be disastrous and the casualties mounted, the need for large hospital ships for treatment and evacuation of wounded became evident. ''Aquitania'' was diverted to hospital ship duties in August (her place as a troop transport would be taken by ''Olympic'' in September). Then on 13 November 1915, ''Britannic'' was requisitioned as a hospital ship from her storage location at Belfast.

Repainted white with large red crosses and a horizontal green stripe, she was renamed HMHS (His Majesty's Hospital Ship) ''Britannic'' and placed under the command of Captain Charles Alfred Bartlett.. In the interior, 3,309 beds and several operating rooms were installed. The common areas of the upper decks were transformed into rooms for the wounded. The cabins of B Deck were used to house doctors. The first-class dining room and the first-class reception room on D Deck were transformed into operating rooms. The lower bridge was used to accommodate the lightly wounded. The medical equipment was installed on 12 December 1915.

First service

When declared fit for service on 12 December 1915 at Liverpool, ''Britannic'' was assigned a medical team consisting of 101 nurses, 336 non-commissioned officers and 52 commissioned officers as well as a crew of 675. On 23 December, she left Liverpool to join the port of Mudros on the island of Lemnos on the Aegean Sea to bring back sick and wounded soldiers.. She joined with several ships on the same route, including ''Mauretania'', ''Aquitania'', and her sister ship ''Olympic''. The four ships were joined a little later by . She made a stopover at Naples before continuing to Mudros, in order for her stock of coal to be replenished. After she returned, she spent four weeks as a floating hospital off the Isle of Wight.

The third voyage was from 20 March 1916 to 4 April. The Dardanelles was evacuated in January. At the end of her military service on 6 June 1916, ''Britannic'' returned to Belfast to undergo the necessary modifications for transforming her into a transatlantic passenger liner. The British government paid the White Star Line £75,000 to compensate for the conversion. The transformation took place for several months before being interrupted by a recall of the ship back into military service.

Recalled

The Admiralty recalled ''Britannic'' back into service as a hospital ship on 26 August 1916, and the ship returned to the Mediterranean Sea for a fourth voyage on 24 September of that year. On 29 September on her way to Naples, she encountered a violent storm from which she emerged unscathed. She left on 9 October for Southampton. Then, she made a fifth trip, which was marked by a quarantining of the crew when the ship arrived at Mudros (now Moudros) because of food-borne illness.

Life aboard the ship followed a routine. At six o'clock, the patients were awakened and the premises were cleaned up. Breakfast was served at 6:30 AM, then the captain toured the ship for an inspection. Lunch was served at 12:30 PM and tea at 4:30 PM. Patients were treated between meals and those who wished to go for a walk could do so. At 8:30 PM, the patients went to bed and the captain made another inspection tour. There were medical classes available for training the nurses..

Last voyage and sinking

After completing five successful voyages to the Middle Eastern theatre and back to the United Kingdom transporting the sick and wounded, ''Britannic'' departed Southampton for Lemnos at 14:23 on 12 November 1916, her sixth voyage to the Mediterranean Sea. The ship passed Gibraltar around midnight on 15 November and arrived at Naples on the morning of 17 November, for her usual coaling and water-refuelling stop, completing the first stage of her mission..

A storm kept the ship at Naples until Sunday afternoon when Captain Bartlett decided to take advantage of a brief break in the weather and continue. The seas rose once again as ''Britannic'' left the port. By the next morning, the storms died, and the ship passed the Strait of Messina without problems. Cape Matapan was rounded in the first hours of 21 November. By morning, ''Britannic'' was steaming at full speed into the Kea Channel, between Cape Sounion (the southernmost point of Attica, the prefecture that includes Athens) and the island of Kea.

There were 1,066 people on board: 673 crew, 315 Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), 77 nurses, and the captain.

Explosion

At 08:12 am European Eastern Time ''Britannic'' was rocked by an explosion after hitting a mine. The mines had been planted in the Kea Channel on 21 October 1916 by under the command of .

The reaction in the dining room was immediate; doctors and nurses left instantly for their posts but not everybody reacted the same way, as further aft, the power of the explosion was less felt, and many thought the ship had hit a smaller boat. Captain Bartlett and Chief Officer Hume were on the bridge at the time and the gravity of the situation was soon evident. The explosion was on the starboard side, between holds two and three. The force of the explosion damaged the watertight bulkhead between hold one and the forepeak. The first four watertight compartments were filling rapidly with water, the boiler-man's tunnel connecting the firemen's quarters in the bow with boiler room six was seriously damaged, and water was flowing into that boiler room.

Bartlett ordered the watertight doors closed, sent a distress signal, and ordered the crew to prepare the lifeboats. An SOS signal was immediately sent out and was received by several other ships in the area, among them and , but ''Britannic'' heard nothing in reply. Unknown to either Bartlett or the ship's wireless operator, the force of the first explosion had caused the antenna wires slung between the ship's masts to snap. This meant that although the ship could still send out transmissions by radio, she could no longer receive them..

Along with the damaged watertight door of the firemen's tunnel, the watertight door between boiler rooms six and five failed to close properly. Water was flowing further aft into boiler room five. ''Britannic'' had reached her flooding limit. She could stay afloat (motionless) with her first six watertight compartments flooded. There were five watertight bulkheads rising all the way up to B Deck. Those measures had been taken after the ''Titanic'' disaster (''Titanic'' could float with only her first four compartments flooded)..

The next crucial bulkhead between boiler rooms five and four and its door were undamaged and should have guaranteed the ship's survival. However, there were open portholes along the front lower decks, which tilted underwater within minutes of the explosion. The nurses had opened most of those portholes to ventilate the wards, against standing orders. As the ship's angle of list increased, water reached this level and began entering aft from the bulkhead between boiler rooms five and four. With more than six compartments flooded, ''Britannic'' could not stay afloat.

Evacuation

On the bridge, Captain Bartlett was already considering efforts to save the ship. Only two minutes after the blast, boiler rooms five and six had to be evacuated. In about ten minutes, ''Britannic'' was roughly in the same condition ''Titanic'' had been in one hour after the collision with the iceberg. Fifteen minutes after the ship was struck, the open portholes on E Deck were underwater. With water also entering her aft section from the bulkhead between boiler rooms four and five, ''Britannic'' quickly developed a serious list to starboard..

Bartlett gave the order to turn starboard towards the island of Kea in an attempt to beach her. The effect of ''Britannic's'' starboard list and the weight of the rudder made attempts to navigate the ship under her own power difficult, and the steering gear had been knocked out by the explosion, which eliminated steering by the rudder. The captain ordered the port shaft driven at a higher speed than the starboard side, which helped the ship move towards Kea.

At the same time, the hospital staff prepared to evacuate. Bartlett had given the order to prepare the lifeboats, but he did not allow them to be lowered into the water. Everyone took their most valuable belongings with them before they evacuated. The chaplain of the ship recovered his Bible. The few patients and nurses on board were assembled. Major Harold Priestley gathered his detachments from the Royal Army Medical Corps to the back of the A deck and inspected the cabins to ensure no one was left behind.

While Bartlett continued his desperate manoeuvre, ''Britannic's'' list steadily increased. Fearing that the list would become too large to launch, some crew decided to launch lifeboats without waiting for the order to do so. Two lifeboats were put onto the water on the port side without permission by Third Officer Francis Laws. These boats were drawn towards the still-turning, partly surfaced propellers. Bartlett ordered the engines to stop but before this could take effect, the two boats were drawn into the propellers, completely destroying both and killing 30 people. Bartlett was able to stop the engines before any more boats were lost..

Final moments

By 08:50, most of those on board had escaped in the 35 successfully launched lifeboats. At this point, Bartlett concluded that the rate at which ''Britannic'' was sinking had slowed so he called a halt to the evacuation and ordered the engines restarted in the hope that he might still be able to beach the ship.. At 09:00, Bartlett was informed that the rate of flooding had increased due to the ship's forward motion and that the flooding had reached D-deck. Realising that there was now no hope of reaching land in time, Bartlett gave the final order to stop the engines and sounded two final long blasts of the whistle, the signal to abandon ship.. As water reached the bridge, he and Assistant Commander Dyke walked off onto the deck and entered the water, swimming to a collapsible boat from which they continued to coordinate the rescue operations.

''Britannic'' gradually capsized to starboard, and the funnels collapsed one after the other as the ship rapidly sank. By the time the stern was out of the water, the bow had already slammed into the seabed. As ''Britannics length was greater than the depth of the water, the impact caused major structural damage to the bow before she slipped completely beneath the waves at 09:07, 55 minutes after the explosion. Violet Jessop (who was one of the survivors of the ''Titanic'', and had also been on board when the ''Olympic'' collided with ) described the last seconds:

She dipped her head a little, then a little lower and still lower. All the deck machinery fell into the sea like a child's toys. Then she took a fearful plunge, her stern rearing hundreds of feet into the air until with a final roar, she disappeared into the depths, the noise of her going resounding through the water with undreamt-of violence....

When the ''Britannic'' came to rest, she became the largest ship lost in the First World War.

Rescue

Compared to ''Titanic'', the rescue of ''Britannic'' was facilitated by three factors: The water temperature was higher ( compared to for ''Titanic''), more lifeboats were available (35 were successfully launched and stayed afloat compared to ''Titanic''s 20), and help was closer (it arrived less than two hours after first distress call compared to three and a half hours for ''Titanic'').

The first to arrive on the scene were fishermen from Kea on their caïque, who picked many survivors from the water. At 10:00, sighted the first lifeboats and 10 minutes later stopped and picked up 339 survivors. Armed boarding steamer HMS ''Heroic'' had arrived some minutes earlier and picked up 494.. Some 150 had made it to Korissia, Kea, where surviving doctors and nurses from ''Britannic'' were trying to save the injured, using aprons and pieces of lifebelts to make dressings. A little barren quayside served as their operating room.

''Scourge'' and ''Heroic'' had no deck space for more survivors, and they left for Piraeus signalling the presence of those remaining at Korissia. arrived at 11:45 and, after sweeping the area, anchored in the small port at 13:00 to offer medical assistance and take on board the remaining survivors. At 14:00 the light cruiser arrived. ''Foxhound'' departed for Piraeus at 14:15 while ''Foresight'' remained to arrange the burial on Kea of RAMC Sergeant William Sharpe, who had died of his injuries. Another two survivors died on the ''Heroic'' and one on the French tug ''Goliath''. The three were buried with military honours in the Piraeus Naval and Consular Cemetery. The last fatality was G. Honeycott, who died at the Russian Hospital at Piraeus shortly after the funerals.

In total, out of the 1,066 people on board, 1,036 people survived the sinking. Thirty people lost their lives in the disaster but only five were buried; others were not recovered and are honoured on memorials in Thessaloniki (the Mikra Memorial) and London. Another 38 were injured (18 crew, 20 RAMC). Survivors were accommodated in the warships that were anchored at the port of Piraeus while nurses and officers were hosted in separate hotels at Phaleron. Many Greek citizens and officials attended the funerals. Survivors were sent home, and few arrived in the United Kingdom before Christmas.

In November 2006, ''Britannic'' researcher Michail Michailakis discovered that one of the 45 unidentified graves in the New British Cemetery in the town of Hermoupolis

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