Death of Kitchener

On the evening of 5 June 1916, during a gale off the west coast of Orkney, the British armoured cruiser Hampshire struck a mine and sank within a quarter of an hour or so. On board, on his way to Russia with his staff, was the Secretary of State for War, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener. He died together with almost the entire crew of the ship. Twelve sailors were saved. The most famous soldier of the empire, the creator of the mass volunteer army, was 65.

Mission to Russia

In the spring of 1916 Russia was demanding ever larger deliveries of arms and ammunition from Britain, as well as credits to buy them. London could not meet all these demands without breaking its financial commitments to other allies, but neither did it want to offend an ally that had been suffering enormous losses for two years. It was decided to send to Russia an envoy of the highest rank, who would explain British policy to the Russian ministers and discuss plans for joint action that year. The choice fell on Kitchener, whose authority abroad was almost as great as at home. Tsar Nicholas II welcomed the choice with delight and personally invited the field marshal. On 26 May Kitchener agreed to head the military and financial mission. Its destination was Archangel, a port on the White Sea, from where the delegation was to travel on by rail.

For Kitchener the journey was also a respite from his troubles at home. His position in the government had been weakening for months. Since December 1915 the government’s adviser on strategy had no longer been he but the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General William Robertson, and politicians and the press blamed the minister for the shell shortage and the failure at the Dardanelles.

The last voyage of the Hampshire

Kitchener and his suite arrived at Scapa Flow on 5 June. They lunched with Admiral John Jellicoe aboard his flagship. The conversation was mainly about the Battle of Jutland, fought a few days earlier. The Hampshire, a cruiser of the Grand Fleet, which was now entrusted with carrying the mission, had also taken part in it. In the afternoon the guests went aboard her.

A strong gale was blowing from the north-east. Jellicoe had three routes to choose from. He judged that the route along the eastern shores of Orkney was too exposed to the wind and that submarines had been sighted there in the preceding days, while on the route through the Pentland Firth the minesweepers had not managed to clear the channel in the storm. He therefore chose the route close to the west coast of the island of Mainland, normally used by the fleet’s auxiliary vessels and sheltered from the seas in that wind. The Germans were not known ever to have laid mines so far north. Jellicoe was later criticised for this choice.

The Hampshire put to sea at about 4.45 p.m., and an hour later two escorting destroyers joined her. Soon the wind backed to the north and north-west, and the ships came under the full force of the waves. The destroyers could not keep up, so Captain Herbert Savill sent them back to base and carried on alone. According to the British official history, at about 7.40 p.m. (some sources give later times), between Marwick Head and the Brough of Birsay, about a mile and a half from the shore, a massive explosion occurred under the forward part of the ship. She heeled over to starboard and after a quarter of an hour or so went down bow first. The boats, lowered into the rough sea, were smashed against the ship’s side. Some survivors saw Kitchener on deck, but his body was never found.

Fourteen men reached the shore on rafts. Two died before help reached them. According to research done for the centenary of the disaster, 737 people died, including Kitchener and all the members of his mission, among them Brigadier-General Wilfred Ellershaw, his military secretary Lieutenant-Colonel Oswald FitzGerald and the diplomat Hugh O’Beirne. Lower figures, usually around 650, had been given earlier. The ship ran into a minefield laid on the night of 28–29 May by the German minelaying submarine U-75 of Captain Kurt Beitzen (PL). According to the German official history it consisted of 22 mines; other sources give more. The mines were meant to hit the Grand Fleet if it put to sea against Scheer’s fleet, and they played no part in the Battle of Jutland.

Reactions and rumours

News of the disaster reached the public on 6 June and shook the whole empire. For many Britons Kitchener was the symbol of the war and the guarantee of victory, and everyone knew his face from the recruiting posters. King George V wrote in his diary that it was a heavy blow to him, to the country and to the allies, and ordered officers to wear black armbands for a week. The commander of the British forces in France, General Douglas Haig, is said to have asked how they would manage without him. There was no shortage, however, of politicians who privately greeted his death with relief, because they regarded the old field marshal as an obstacle to the conduct of the war. On 13 June a memorial service was held in St Paul’s Cathedral in London. The War Office was temporarily taken over by the Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, and at the beginning of July Kitchener was succeeded by David Lloyd George.

The sudden death of so famous a figure quickly gave rise to legends. Many people did not believe that Kitchener was dead and waited for his return. Others looked for traitors. There was talk of German spies and of a bomb planted by Irish republicans, and after the war the Boer adventurer and German agent Fritz Duquesne claimed that he himself had brought about the sinking of the cruiser. Erich Ludendorff attributed the death to Russian opponents of tsarism. In the 1920s the poet Alfred Douglas accused Winston Churchill of taking part in a plot and for this libel spent six months in prison. None of these theories was ever confirmed. Everything indicates that the Hampshire sank on a German mine and that Kitchener died through a combination of unfortunate decisions and bad weather.