In 17 days time,it will be the 97th anniversary of the HMHS Britannic (The cover photo) HMHS Britannic was the third and largest Olympic-class ocean liner of the White Star Line. She was the sister ship of RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic, and was intended to enter service as a transatlantic passenger liner. She was launched just before the start of the First World War and was laid up at her builders in Belfast for many months before being put to use as a hospital ship in 1915. In that role she was shaken by an explosion, caused by an underwater mine, in the Kea Channel off the Greek island of Kea on the morning of 21 November 1916, and sank with the loss of 30 lives. There were 1,066 people on board, with 1,036 survivors taken from the water and lifeboats; roughly an hour later, at 9:07 AM, the ship sank. In spite of Britannic being the biggest ship lost during the First World War, her sinking was not as costly in terms of loss of human life as were the sinking of RMS Titanic and Cunards RMS Lusitania, or many ships lost during the First World War. Post-Titanic design changes[edit] Following the loss of the Titanic and the subsequent inquiries, several design changes were made to the remaining Olympic-class liners. With Britannic, these changes were made before launching. (Olympic was refitted on her return to Harland and Wolff.) The main changes included the introduction of a double hull along the engine and boiler rooms and raising six out of the 15 watertight bulkheads up to B Deck. A more obvious external change was the fitting of large crane-like davits, each capable of holding six lifeboats. Additional lifeboats could be stored within reach of the davits on the deckhouse roof, and in an emergency the davits could even reach lifeboats on the other side of the vessel. The aim of this design was to enable all the lifeboats to be launched, even if the ship developed a list that would normally prevent lifeboats being launched on the side opposite to the list. However, several of these davits were placed abreast of funnels, defeating that purpose.[2] Similar davits were not fitted to Olympic. The ship carried 48 lifeboats, capable of carrying at least seventy-five people each; this means that 3,600 people could be carried by the lifeboats, that is more than the maximum number of people the ship could carry. In the ships sinking, only 37 of them were lowered (but two were lost in the propellers, along with their occupants), meaning that 11 of them were not used; this was not a problem at all because the ship carried only about a third of the people that could be carried, so that none of the used lifeboats were full. In fact, even if a full complement of 300 wounded soldiers were on board, there would still be about 450 seats left to spare. Britannics hull was also 2 feet (0.6 m) wider than her predecessors, following the redesign after the loss of Titanic. To keep to a 21-knot (39 km/h; 24 mph) service speed, the shipyard installed a larger turbine rated for 18,000 horsepower (13,000 kW)—versus Olympics and Titanics 16,000 horsepower (12,000 kW) turbine—to compensate for the vessels extra width. Rumoured name-change[edit] Although the White Star Line and the Harland & Wolff shipyard always denied it,[2][3] some sources say that the ship was supposed to be named Gigantic.[4] A copy of the Harland & Wolff order book dated October 1911—about six months before the Titanic disaster—already shows the name Britannic, according to Simon Mills (owner of the Britannic wreck). Tom McCluskie stated that in his capacity as Archive Manager and Historian at Harland & Wolff, he never saw any official reference to the name Gigantic being used or proposed for the third of the Olympic class vessels.[5][6] Some hand-written changes were added to the order book and dated January 1912. These only dealt with the ships moulded width, not her name.[6] While it is still possible that the name Gigantic was originally intended for the liner, the above does dispel the notion that a potential name change resulted from the Titanic disaster, as the shipyard already listed the name as Britannic before her sister ship sank. 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 Britannic 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 on. The seas rose once again just as Britannic left the port. However, by next morning, the storms died and the ship passed the Strait of Messina without problems. Cape Matapan was rounded during the first hours of Tuesday, 21 November. By the 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 a total of 1,066 people on board. The Captain officially ordered the crew to lower the boats and at 08:35, he gave the order to abandon ship. The forward set of port-side davits soon became useless. The unknown officer had already launched his two lifeboats and managed to launch rapidly one more boat from the aft set of portside davits. He then started to prepare the motor launch when First Officer Oliver came with orders from the Captain. Bartlett had ordered Oliver to get in the motor launch and use its speed to pick up survivors from the smashed lifeboats. Then he was to take charge of the small fleet of lifeboats formed around the sinking Britannic. After launching the motor launch with Oliver, the unknown officer filled another lifeboat with seventy-five men and launched it with great difficulty because the port side was now very high from the surface because of the list to starboard. By 08:45, the list to starboard was so great that no davits were operable. The unknown officer with six sailors decided to move to mid-ship on the boat deck to throw overboard collapsible rafts and deck chairs from the starboard side. About thirty RAMC personnel who were still left on the ship followed them. As he was about to order these men to jump then give his final report to the Captain, the unknown officer spotted Sixth Officer Welch and a few sailors near one of the smaller lifeboats on the starboard side. They were trying to lift the boat, but they had not enough men. Quickly, the unknown officer ordered his group of forty men to assist the Sixth officer. Together they managed to lift it, load it with men, then launch it safely. At 09:00, Bartlett sounded one last blast on the whistle then was washed overboard, as water which had already reached the bridge. He swam to a collapsible boat and began to co-ordinate the rescue operations. The whistle blow was the final signal for the ships engineers (commanded by Chief Engineer Robert Fleming) who, like their heroic colleagues on the Titanic, had remained at their posts until the last possible moment. They escaped via the staircase into funnel #4, which ventilated the engine room. The Britannic rolled over onto her starboard side, and the funnels began collapsing. Violet Jessop (who was also one of the survivors of Britannics sister-ship Titanic, as well as the third sister, Olympic, when she collided with HMS Hawke) 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 childs 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.... It was 09:07, only fifty-five minutes after the explosion. The Britannic was the largest ship lost during the First World War.[11]
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 10:57:55 +0000
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