HMS Natal

1915

Cromarty, the children's film, the magazine Location: Cromarty Firth, Scotland · Coordinates: 57.68°N 4.05°W · Casualties: 421 · Survivors: ~300 · Depth: 20 m · Cause: magazine explosion — Detonated spontaneously while at anchor in Cromarty Firth at 15:30 on 30 December 1915. The crew had invited civilian guests, including wives and children, aboard for a film screening. The after magazine ignited; she capsized within minutes. Subsequent inquiry blamed deteriorated cordite stored too close to boiler room bulkheads. · Fate: war grave · partly salvaged · Type: armoured cruiser · Duke of Edinburgh class · Tonnage: 13,550 tons · Crew: 704 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1905 Royal Navy armoured cruiser, anchored at Cromarty Firth for the Christmas holiday in 1915. At 15:30 on 30 December, her after magazine detonated spontaneously during a film screening arranged for the crew's children. 421 dead, including the captain's wife and several civilian guests aboard for the afternoon. The cause was traced to deteriorated cordite propellant stored too close to the boiler room bulkheads, the same defect that had destroyed HMS Bulwark thirteen months earlier. The Vessel HMS Natal was a Warrior-class armoured cruiser of the Royal Navy, commissioned at the Vickers Barrow yard on 5 March 1907. She was 154 metres long, 13,550 tons standard displacement, armed with six 9.2-inch guns in single turrets, four 7.5-inch guns in twin turrets, and a secondary battery of twenty 3-inch guns. Her designed speed was 23 knots on four-shaft turbines. The Warrior class of four ships (HMS Warrior, HMS Cochrane, HMS Achilles, HMS Natal) represented a specific phase of Edwardian armoured-cruiser design that attempted to combine heavy firepower with the speed needed to operate with battleships in the fleet scouting role. By 1914, like the contemporary Drake and Duke of Edinburgh classes, the Warriors had been largely overtaken by the emergence of the British battlecruiser and were assigned to secondary fleet roles. Her service between 1907 and 1915 had included extensive Mediterranean and China Station deployments, participation in the 1911 Coronation Fleet Review, and the outbreak-of-war assignment to the 2nd Cruiser Squadron at Scapa Flow. By autumn 1915 she had been operating with the Grand Fleet for approximately a year on North Sea patrol and scouting duties. The Disaster HMS Natal's aft cordite magazine exploded at approximately 15:20 on 30 December 1915. The exact cause of the detonation was never conclusively determined; the subsequent Royal Navy Board of Inquiry identified two possible proximate causes (either unstable cordite propellant that had degraded into a self-igniting state, or a flash-fire from a carelessly-handled 4-inch shell being re-stowed in the ammunition passage). The Board's final finding attributed the cause to cordite degradation rather than to crew error. The magazine explosion vented upward through the superstructure of HMS Natal and produced a pillar of flame and debris that rose approximately 300 metres above the Cromarty Firth. The explosion was heard across Ross-shire and was photographed by a civilian photographer on the Cromarty Firth shoreline. The photograph is one of the most widely-reproduced images of First World War Royal Navy disasters. HMS Natal capsized and sank at 15:24 on 30 December 1915 at Cromarty Firth, in approximately 14 metres of water. 421 of her 704 aboard died in the explosion and the subsequent sinking. The dead included Captain Back, Lady Edith Back, the Back children, approximately 390 officers and ratings of the ship's complement, and approximately 10 civilian guests. The high percentage of civilian casualties among the dead (including seven women and three children) gave the Natal loss a particular public resonance.