The loss of the cruiser HMS Hampshire , with Lord Kitchener and his staff on board 5th June 1916.

The loss of the cruiser HMS Hampshire , with Lord Kitchener and his staff on board, on June 5th, 1916, has been one of the great mysteries of the war. The following narrative was given to the London correspondent of the ‘Manchester Guardian’ by a warrant officer who was saved from the wreck:-
HMS  Hampshire , four days after the Jutland battle, in which my informant said, she sunk a light cruiser and a submarine, took Lord Kitchener aboard on June 5th, 1916, about five in the evening, and set out with 800 souls in the foulest weather known in that region. She had two escorting destroyers, which soon returned to port, as they were unable to face the storm. Everything aboard was lashed down, and only one hatchway was open. My informant was on watch below.
At about eight o’ clock a terrible explosion took place forward, and there was a scramble for the companion. A large number of the crew were young and new hands, and there was a good deal of hurry. How my informant got on deck he did not know. When he got there the officers were at their posts, but their orders could not be heard owing to the fury of the storm and the escape of steam. There was no attempt to launch boats, which could never have lived on the sea that was running. The rafts were launched.
There was no sign of Lord Kitchener, and he thought that he probably never got on deck. (This differs from a report at the time of Lord Kitchener having been seen on deck.) There was not five minutes between the explosions and the disappearance of the ship. He had tried and failed to open other hatchways, and he thinks that the crowd at the single one at which he emerged may have blocked many people from getting on deck.
The raft drifted before the gale for five hours, and of the 80 on the raft many had been washed off, and of the rest all but four had died and had fallen into the net in the middle of the raft. On reaching shore my informant scrambled out, and found himself among the rocks, and eventually with one other man for to the top about half-past four in the morning. There he found a shed, and he spied a moving light. His companion went after it, and found a farmer going about in search of cattle. With the aid of some farm folk, the four survivors, who had been taken to the farmhouse, were well looked after. In all there were twelve survivors, two on a second and six on a third raft, blown ashore two or three miles from his landing place. No officers were saved, a fact which incidentally, the warrant officer said, prevented their doings at the Jutland battle from being reported and rewarded.
My informant utterly scoffed at the idea of Lord Kitchener being alive. He was quite sure that the Hampshire was not torpedoed, but mined. [Hull Daily Mail, Friday, 27 December 1918]

2

About 7.35 pm on June 6, 1916, the British armoured cruiser Hampshire with Lord Kitchener on board, on his way home from Scapa to Russia, struck a mine off the Brough of Birsay, west of the main island in the Orkneys, and went down in fifteen minutes in a terrific sea. Only 12 men survived the disaster, in which Lord Kitchener, his staff, and all the officers on board perished. Wild tales of treachery were current at the time and afterwards, but the facts exclude any such possibility. The field of twenty-two mines in which the  Hampshire sank was laid by U75 (Lieut-Commander C Beitzen) in the swept channel to the west of the Orkneys, on May 29, as part of the operations planned by Scheer which issued in the battle of Jutland. On the say of Lord Kitchener’s departure a great gale was raging with mountainous seas breaking from the north-east. He himself insisted on the importance of leaving at once without any delay, and Jellicoe yielded to his wishes, though with reluctance.
The original intention had been that the Hampshire should take the easterly route from Scapa Flow; but as with the gale it was impossible to sweep the channel on that side, and escorting destroyers could not accompany the ship, the final decision was to send the HAPSIRE by the western route, where she would be better sheltered. Eben so there were two possible courses, by Sule Skerry, that lonely light thirty miles west of Orkney set in a raging sea, or close under the Orkney coast. The second route was chosen because it was the more sheltered, and, further, it had been under constant observation and was much used by auxiliaries.
At 5.30 pm the  Hampshire  steamed out of Scapa convoyed by two destroyers, UNITY and VICTOR. Shortly after she left, the wind shifted to a fifty-mile gale from the north-west, and they were quite unable to keep up with her in the sea that was running. Even if they had been there in that storm with the intense coldness of the water it is doubtful whether they could have effected much. When the ship was mined discipline was faithfully maintained to the end, though in the gale boats could not be lowered. Only twelve men reached the iron coast of the Orkneys alive, Kitchener was seen on deck, collected and calm; and thus this great servant of England passed from earth.
Two accidents brought about the loss of his life and the death of 700 officers and men; the storm which prevented the usual route from being followed and the shift of the wind which prevented destroyers from accompanying the Hampshire on her westward route. If Kitchener’s intended journey to Russia had ben betrayed, no one could have counted on these mischances. [Battleships in Action: Wilson]

The last photograph of Lord Kitchener before he drowned along with 655 crewmen and 7 passengers aboard HMS Hampshire.

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