HMS Audacious (1912)
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| Career (UK) |  |
|---|---|
| Name: | HMS Audacious |
| Ordered: | 1910 |
| Laid down: | March 1911 |
| Launched: | 14 September 1912 |
| Commissioned: | August 1913 |
| Fate: | Mined 27 October 1914 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | King George V-class battleship |
| Displacement: | 23,400 tons |
| Length: | 598 ft (182 m) |
| Beam: | 89 ft (27 m) |
| Draught: | 28 ft (8.5 m) |
| Propulsion: | Parsons steam turbines producing 31,000 shp, driving 4 screws |
| Speed: | 21 knots (39 km/h) |
| Complement: | 900 |
| Armament: | 10 × 13.5-inch (342.9 mm) Mk V guns (5×2) 16 × BL 4-inch (101.6 mm) Mk VII guns 3 × 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 naval mine off the northern coast of Donegal in Ireland in 1914.
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' HMS King George V, HMS Ajax, HMS Centurion, Audacious, HMS Monarch, HMS Thunderer and HMS Orion, left Lough Swilly 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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[edit] Image gallery
 HMS Liverpool, left, and HMS Fury, together with RMS Olympic, try to take HMS Audacious in tow. The view is from the passenger areas of RMS Olympic |
 The crew of HMS Audacious take to lifeboats to be taken aboard RMS Olympic. The Olympic passengers and amateur photographers, Edith and Mabel Smith of Derby, dated the event in their album as 26 October (sic) 1914. |
[edit] See also
- List of battleships
- List of battleships of the Royal Navy
- List of ship launches in 1912
- List of ship commissionings in 1913
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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