LOSS OF THE HAMPSHIRE

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 5046, 1 November 1926, Page 4

LOSS OF THE HAMPSHIRE

OFFICIAL NARRATIVE. STATEMENT BY ADMIRALTY. The official narrative of the loss of the Hampshire, which has now been issued by the Admiralty, should silence at once and for eyer all the unwholesome legends which have been invented and propagated about a very tragic but a very simple incident of the naval war.

On June 5, 1916, approximately at ejght o’clock in the evening, the cruiser sank, blown up by a fixed German mine. She had struck the mine between ten and twenty minutes earlier at a point about a mile and a half from the shore, between the Brough of Birsay and Marwick Head, on the west coast of the island known as “the mainland” in the Orkneys. All on board, except twelve of the crew, were lost, and among the drowned were Lord Kitchener and the members of his staff, then upon their way to St. Petersburg. Clear and compelling 'reasons of policy forbade the publication of particulars as to the loss of His Majesty’s ships at the. hands of the enemy, but within a W®ek the Admiralty had issued statements sufficient to satisfy persons of ordinary nerve and judgment of the nature of the catastrophe. Large sections of the public, however, have a keen appetite for the marvellous, and particularly for the marvellous tainted by the criminal, even in ordinary times. By the summer of 1916 this appetite had been sharpened by the vicissitudes of the first two years of the war and by the inevitable effects which flow from any censorship, however right and necessary. There are always men ready to feed the unhealthy craving. Some themselves share the eagerness of their dupes for the mythical; others trade upon it with much knowledge of mass infirmity. The result is the same. They produce and circulate a load of fictions, ranging from those with’ some a,ir of plausibility, until tested, to those which, on the. face of them, are gross and fantastic. The loss of the Hampshire and th© fate of Lord Kitchener were just such a theme as they love. It appealed to all sorts and conditions of men, including those who are most addicted to the marvellous and least able to weigh probabilities, and it afforded the widest field for wild and morbid speculation. The field has been most industriously ploughed. The Admiralty Report shows the value—to the public—of the, crop.

The report tells a plain tale plainly, as it should be told. It disposes absolutely, for anybody accustomed to judge evidence, of all the favourite suspicions and myths. The spy stories naturally proved particularly acceptable tb minds distempered by the war, and care was taken that the supply should not fall below the demand. They are stilled by a single fact — ‘pulveris exigui jactu.” All thes spies in the Hampshire fables were imprisoned or shot. But nobody can be imprisoned or shot for a naval offence without a Court-martiaJ and a sentence confirmed by the Admiralty. No such Court-martial was held in connection with the Hampshire at any time. There have been gloomy Suggestions that the secret of Lord Kitchener’s mission had leaked out, and that the enemy knew where to lurk for him. In fact, nobody, not even the Ccmmander-in-Chief himself, knew what course the Hampshire was to take until d few hours before she left Scapa Flow. Three courses were possible—the eastern and western usually employed by the warships, and the insore course actually take,n. The first two were “under suspicion,’’ as enemy submarines had been reported about them, but the fact which finally determined Lord Jellicoe in favour of the inshore course, was the state of the weather. - “According to pl ( a'n,” the Hampshire was to be escorted by two destroyers through the most dangerous part of her voyage, and on this route they would meet with leiss sea and be better able ,to keep up with her. In fact, less, than two hours after she had sailed they proved quite unable to keep up with her, and she signalled them to return to base. The enemy cannot have had fore-know-ledges that a storm would arise and cause Lord Jellicoe to order the Hampshire on a course seldom used except by colliers and store/ships. In fact, the mine which destroyed her, as appears from German official evidence, was one of a field laid, by Admiral von Scheer’s orders in the middle of May—and laid in this particu-

lar position upon inaccurate information ; so deep laid, moreover, that it was only the combination of slack water and of heavy sea which made them dangerous to the Hampshire. The established facts, explode another group of fictions —the group which suggests that the ship was destroyed by an internal explosion, the work, of course, of spies or of traitors on board.

The ship, met her doom in ten minutes. Discipline was maintained as it is maintained in the British Navy; but no boats could be got away, and the stories that Lord Kitchenner was seen in one are pure imagination. Three floats alojie left tire ship, two intended each for forty-five men and one for eighteen. The intense cold of the water and the buffeting of the heavy seas killed all upon them except a handful—six from one float, four from another, and two. from a third. Soime tried to swim in order to> leave room for others on the float, but no swimmer could live in such a sea.

A number of absurd stories —some cruel, some grotesque, and all utterly unfounded —were invented a : bout the fortunes of the men in the floats, and about the men whose bodies were found on the rocks of that iron The Admiralty states that some of them contained wilful interpolations and were wilfully garbled. The report shows that no shred of evidence exists in support; of them, and that the Navy, the volunteers ashore, and the coastal population a.cted with the zeal, the humanity, and the sympathy to be. expected of them in .the presence of so cruel a tragedy. It is to be hoped that, after this terrible recital of the facts, made with an obvious desire to lay the tvhole truth before the nation and before thq world, the sensationmongers will seek sotae other field. Further prowling about the Hampshire incident and the death of Lord Kitchener can only degrades them further in the public mind.