HMHS Britannic
Brittanic was launched from the ways on February 26th, 1914. She was to begin service in the spring of 1915. Outbreak of WW1 changed this. During her sailing year, she was requisitioned by the admiralty and officially completed as a hospital ship. Her nearly completed, lavish interiors were stored in warehouses, and her rooms transformed into dormitories and operating rooms. On December 12th 1915 she was ready for war service. She arrived in Liverpool on December 12th, 1915. She was outfitted for her duties as a hospital ship with 2034 berths and 1035 cots for casualties. A medical staff of 52 officers, 101 nurses, 336 orderlies, and a crew of 675 men and women comprised the ship's complement. Brittanic was under the command of Captain Charles A. Bartlett.
The Britannic was commissioned "His Majesty's Hospital Ship" or HMHS Brittanic on December 12, 1915 and departed Liverpool for her maiden voyage on December 23. She was bound for Mudros on the Isle of Lemnos. She was joining the Mauritania, Aquitania, and her sister, Olympic, in the Dardanelles Service. Joined later by the Statendam the five ships together were capable of carrying 17,000 sick and wounded or 33,000 troops.
Because of their size, the five ships including Britannic would have to anchor in very deep water and rely on as many as eight smaller ships to ferry the wounded and ill from the battlefront docks to the ships.
Christmas was celebrated on the Britannic as she sailed for her coaling port of Naples, arriving on 28th December, 1915. Once coaled, she departed on 29th December bound for Mudros in the Aegean Sea. At Mudros she took on 3,300 wounded and sick military personnel. The Britannic returned to Southampton on January 9th, 1916 where her patients were transferred to waiting trains for transportation to hospitals in London.
(The suppose original name for the Britannic)
All voyages, including this fifth one, were uneventful. This trip was the Southampton, Naples, Mudros trip. On the last day of the fifth voyage she encountered heavy seas and storms. She finally made it to Southampton and over 3000 wounded were transferred to waiting trains. The Aquitania had suffered damage in the same storms and was laid up for repairs. Because of this Britannic was ordered to start her sixth voyage after only four days in port.
The Britannic departed Southampton on November 12, 1916. On November 17 she arrived at Naples for coaling and was to depart on Saturday but a fierce storm delayed the departure. The next day, quite a perfect one, she was steaming through the Kea Channel in the Aegean. Shortly after eight in the morning, Brittanic struck a floating mine.
She began sinking at the bow, much so, in fact that it seemed like the same manner her sister Titanic had gone down. Captain Bartlett tried unsuccessfully to beach her on Kea Island, but that resulted in water coming in much quicker. In only fifty five minutes, one of the largest liners had sunk. The explosion apparently occurred at the watertight bulkhead between holds 2 and 3, and the bulkhead separating holds 2 and 1 were also damaged. At the same time, boiler rooms 5 and 6 began taking water. This was roughly the same damage as that sustained by her sister Titanic. Her death toll was much more tolerable, however. Only 30 of the thousands aboard died, and most of them becuase two lifeboats were pulled into the still-turning props.
She lies on her side now in only 350 feet of water. With the ocean floor only less than half her length below her, she smacked into it before sinking and cracked the entire forward part of the ship. She was discovered in 1976 on an Underwater Exploration by Jacques Cousteau. She is the largest ocean liner, intact, on the bottom of the ocean.
