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During World War I, Germany laid more than 43,000 mines, which claimed at least 497 Allied merchant vessels. The mines inflicted equally severe losses on Allied naval vessels, with the Royal Navy alone losing 44 warships and 225 naval auxiliaries.
One of the most spectacular losses occurred in the first months of the war. In August/September 1914, the former Norddeutscher Lloyd liner Berlin had been converted into auxiliary minelayer and repainted to resemble a British liner. She sailed from Bremerhaven on 16 October 1914 and mined the shipping lane between Tory Island and Lough Swilly on the northern coast of Ireland. The Germans had no idea that a number of heavy units of the Grand Fleet’s battleships were temporarily based at Lough Swilly at the time, due to an earlier U-boat scare at the Scapa Flow fleet anchorage.
On 27 October, the King George V class ‘super-dreadnought’ HMS Audacious, which had only been commissioned in October the previous year, left Lough Swilly in company with the rest of the 2nd Battle Squadron for gunnery practice off Tory Island. Despite the U-boat scare, no orders were given to close watertight doors and hatches on sailing.
At 08.45am, Audacious struck one of Berlin’s mines, which detonated under the port engine-room. Her captain, Cecil Dampier, at first believed that his ship had been torpedoed and signalled a U-boat warning to the squadron. In accordance with standing orders, the other battleships cleared the area, leaving their escorting cruisers and destroyers to render assistance.
Design flaws
Although it was claimed that all watertight doors were closed before flooding reached them, the court of inquiry established that at least two had not been properly sealed. While these failures contributed to the ship’s loss, the real problem lay in flawed design and testing. Audacious was a product of the pre-war Anglo-German naval race, when pressure to produce battleships in large numbers tended to override thorough analysis of new designs. Nonetheless, even in the fevered atmosphere of the time, concerns had been raised about the King George V class, especially their poor underwater protection and internal subdivision.
Weaknesses: rushed design process, poor underwater protection
Initially, it seemed that the damage was not too serious. Although the port engine-room and surrounding compartments flooded immediately, causing a list of up to 15°, counter-flooding reduced this to no more than 9°. The ship could still make nine knots, and so Captain Dampier set course for Lough Swilly. After all, it was only around 25 miles away.
However, it seems likely that the explosion damaged at least one bulkhead, as the flooding soon spread to the centre engine-room, causing increasingly serious instability. All power was lost soon after 10am, and repeated attempts to tow Audacious by the White Star liner Olympic and the cruiser Liverpool failed. Fortunately, there was ample time to evacuate crew of Audacious, and she was finally abandoned at 6.15pm, before capsizing and exploding three hours later, when fused shells onboard fell from their stowage racks.
The loss of what was virtually a new battleship to a single mine containing no more than 82kg of explosive was a profound shock to the Admiralty, and it ensured that future capital vessels incorporated better underwater protection.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
