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' , , , Audacious, , and , left Lough Swilly to conduct gunnery exercises.
At around 08:45 on 27 October, 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 two 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, leaving a crew of 250. At 13.30 the nearby White Star Liner RMS Olympic arrived in answer to distress calls and volunteered to assist. Throughout the afternoon Olympic and the cruiser attempted to take Audacious into tow, but the lines snapped time and again in heavy seas.
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.
The following short announcement appeared in The Times of November 14 1918. * 
: "HMS Audacious: A Delayed Announcement: The Secretary of the Admiralty makes the following announcement:- HMS Audacious sank after striking a mine off the North Irish coast on October 27 1914. This was kept secret at the urgent request of the Commander in Chief, Grand Fleet, and the Press loyally refrained from giving it any publicty"
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 , of the subsequent (and fairly similar) Iron Duke class, was torpedoed at Jutland and for a time continued to steam at 17 knots.
Image gallery
See also
- List of battleships
- List of battleships of the Royal Navy
- List of ship launches in 1912
- List of ship commissionings in 1913
References
- Robert Massie (2004). Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea. London: Johnathan Cape.
- Dan van der Vat (2000). Standard of Power: The Royal Navy in the Twentieth Century. London: Pimlico.
- Loss of HMS Audacious
- The Times report of November 14 1918 at Timesonline Archive
External links
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Last updated on Wednesday October 08, 2008 at 16:33:24 PDT (GMT -0700)
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