HMS Audacious (1912)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Career
Rescuing sailors from the sinking HMS Audacious
Ordered:	1910
Laid down:	March 1911
Launched:	14 September 1912
Commissioned:	August 1913
Fate:	Mined 27 October 1914
Struck:
General characteristics
Displacement:	23,400 tons
Length:	598 feet (182.3 m)
Beam:	89 feet (27.1 m)
Draught:	28 feet (8.5 m)
Propulsion:	Parsons steam turbines producing 31,000 shp, driving 4 screws
Speed:	21 knots
Range:
Complement:	900 men
Armament:	10 13.5 inch (343 mm) guns 12 6 inch (152 mm) guns Three 21 inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes

For other ships with the same name, see HMS Audacious.

HMS Audacious was a King George V class battleship of the Royal Navy. The vessel did not survive its first conflict, being sunk by a mine off northern Ireland.

At the beginning of World War I Audacious was part of the Second Battle Squadron of the British Grand Fleet. On 27 October 1914 the Second Battle Squadron, consisting of the 'super-dreadnoughts' King George V, Ajax, Centurion, Audacious, Monarch, Thunderer and Orion, left Lough Swilly to conduct gunnery exercises.

At around 08:45 Audacious ran upon a mine laid by the German auxiliary mine-layer Berlin, resulting in the flooding of several compartments. The ship tried to return to port, but an hour later water leaking through the bulkheads flooded the engine rooms, forcing them to be abandoned. This left Audacious without power and led to the evacuation of all non-essential crewmembers to the escorts and the nearby White Star Liner RMS Olympic. Throughout the afternoon Olympic and the cruiser HMS Liverpool attempted to take Audacious into tow, but the lines snapped time and again.

At 18:00 the ship was abandoned by the remaining crew and capsized at 20:45, becoming the first British battleship to be lost in World War I and the only one without loss of life (although when the Audacious exploded upon capsizing, a piece of debris flew 800 yards and killed a member of the crew of another ship, the Liverpool).

The Royal Navy tried to keep the loss a secret, officially listing the ship as in service during the entire war, but this proved to be a futile attempt, due to the fact that many American passengers on the Olympic had witnessed and photographed the sinking.

A Royal Navy review board judged that a contributory factor in the loss was that Audacious was not at battle stations, with water-tight doors locked and damage control teams ready. Note that HMS Marlborough, of the subsequent (and fairly similar) Iron Duke class, was torpedoed at Jutland and for a time continued to steam at 17 knots.