HMHS Britannic

1916

Titanic's sister, the hospital ship, the Aegean Location: Kea Channel, Aegean Sea, Greece · Coordinates: 37.70°N 24.28°E · Casualties: 30 · Survivors: 1,035 · Depth: 122 m · Cause: mine — Struck a German naval mine laid by U-73 off the Greek island of Kea on 21 November 1916. The initial damage was survivable, but watertight doors had been left open due to morning shift change, and open portholes below the waterline accelerated flooding. · Fate: continental shelf · located 1975 · Type: hospital ship · Olympic-class liner · Tonnage: 48,158 tons · Crew: 675 · Flag: United Kingdom · Royal Navy · Launched: 1914 The third Olympic-class liner, converted to a hospital ship. Struck a German mine off the Greek island of Kea. Sank in 55 minutes (Titanic took 160) because she was built with the lessons learned. The largest passenger ship lost in WWI. Survived by Violet Jessop, who had also survived the Titanic and an earlier Olympic collision. The Vessel HMHS Britannic was the third and largest of the White Star Line's three Olympic-class ocean liners, laid down at Harland and Wolff in Belfast in November 1911 as the sister of the Olympic and the Titanic. The loss of her sister Titanic in April 1912 halted her construction for most of a year while the design was reviewed. She was completed with substantial modifications: an additional double hull along her engine room, five additional watertight bulkheads extended a full deck higher, and a set of giant new gantry davits capable of serving all her lifeboats from the same side at heel angles up to 45 degrees. She was the largest of the three sisters, 48,158 gross tons and 269 metres long, intended to enter transatlantic service in the summer of 1914 as the replacement for Titanic on the Southampton-New York run. The First World War changed this. She was requisitioned by the Admiralty in November 1915 before she had carried a single fare-paying passenger; her first class saloons were stripped, her public rooms were converted to operating theatres and ward spaces, and she was repainted white with three large red crosses on her hull. She was commissioned into Royal Navy service as His Majesty's Hospital Ship (HMHS) Britannic on 23 December 1915. She carried 3,309 beds, a complement of 675 medical personnel (more than her civilian crew complement), and could transport 3,000 walking-wounded cases in addition to stretcher cases. She was flagged as a protected vessel under the Hague C The Disaster What had not been built into her design was the behaviour of her crew at the moment of the strike. Her watertight doors, open as they normally were in peacetime hospital operation for stretcher traffic, were only partially closed through a chain of command that took seven minutes to propagate. Her lower portholes, opened by nurses for ventilation in the warm Aegean morning, admitted water on her starboard side as her list developed. Within ten minutes the flooding had reached her watertight bulkheads above the waterline limit, the same failure mode her sister had suffered in 1912, and she began to settle by the bow. Captain Bartlett ordered the ship run aground on Kea and continued at 10 knots toward the island. The forward motion into the bow-down list accelerated the flooding. At 08:35 he ordered the engines stopped and the boats away; two port lifeboats were launched against orders as she was still under way and were caught by the turning propellers, killing 30 people. This was her entire death toll. She sank in 55 minutes, stern last, rolling onto her starboard side as she went. Her total casualty count was 30, against her sister Titanic's 1,517; the difference was time, weather, latitude, and 1,066 lifeboat seats. 1,035 of her 1,066 aboard survived. Among the survivors was Violet Jessop, a stewardess who had also survived the Titanic in 1912 and the Olympic's collision with HMS Hawke in 1911, and who would die in her bed in 1971 at age 83.