HMS Audacious (1912)
Rescuing sailors from the sinking Audacious | | Career | |
|---|
| 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: | Turbine (Parsons) 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 |
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 port 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.
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HMS Audacious for other ships by this name
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List of battleships*
List of Royal Navy ships, A*
List of battleships of the Royal Navy*
List of ship launches in 1912*
List of ship commissionings in 1913*
List of shipwrecks in 1914*
Maritimequest HMS Audacious Photo Gallery
