Sinking of HMS Hawke

Before noon on 15 October 1914 the German submarine U-9 torpedoed the British cruiser Hawke in the North Sea, off the coast of Scotland. The ship capsized and sank within a few minutes. More than 520 officers and men were killed. U-9 was commanded by Kapitänleutnant Otto Weddigen, who three weeks earlier had sunk the cruisers Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy.

An old cruiser on patrol

Hawke was an Edgar-class protected cruiser, launched in 1891 at Chatham Dockyard. By 1914 she was already obsolete. Together with several sister ships she formed the 10th Cruiser Squadron, which patrolled the northern part of the North Sea, between Peterhead in Scotland and the southern coast of Norway. Its task was to intercept ships bound for Germany and to watch for German warships.

The cruisers steamed in line abreast, about 10 nautical miles apart, in accordance with instructions meant to reduce the risk of submarine attack. On the morning of 15 October Hawke closed the neighbouring cruiser Endymion to collect mail from her. Both ships stopped, and Hawke sent a boat for the mailbags. She then got under way at 12–13 knots to return to her station in the line.

Eight minutes

At about 10.30 a.m. a torpedo struck Hawke’s side abreast the fore funnel. The ship heeled over quickly and capsized. According to the survivors, she sank in less than eight minutes. Only two boats could be lowered. One of them, with three officers and 46 men, was picked up by a Norwegian steamer and taken to Aberdeen. The other was probably crushed by the capsizing hull.

For a long time the other cruisers did not know of the disaster. Only after 1 p.m., when the cruiser Theseus reported a submarine attack, was the squadron ordered to withdraw at full speed, and Hawke did not answer signals. The destroyer Swift, sent to search, found after two hours a raft with one officer and 20 men. The ship’s captain, Captain Hugh Williams, was killed. According to the most commonly cited figures, 524 men died, although some counts give 527. About 70 survived.

The collision with Olympic

Hawke had been known in Britain even before the war. On 20 September 1911, in the Solent, on the way out of Southampton, she collided with the liner Olympic, sister ship of the Titanic. The cruiser’s bow drove into the after part of the liner’s side, and Hawke herself lost her bow. The Admiralty court found Olympic to blame, accepting that the great liner passing close by had drawn the cruiser in by suction. Olympic’s captain at the time was Edward Smith, who seven months later died on the Titanic.

Consequences

The sinking of Hawke was another blow to the Royal Navy. Admiral John Jellicoe, commander of the Grand Fleet, moved the cruiser patrol lines further north and west, away from the areas where U-boats were operating. Weddigen’s fame in Germany grew even greater. On 24 October the Kaiser awarded him Prussia’s highest military order, the Pour le Mérite. He was killed in March 1915, when his new boat, U-29, was rammed by the battleship Dreadnought.

The wreck of Hawke was found in August 2024 by British amateur divers of the Lost in Waters Deep team, about 110 kilometres east of Fraserburgh in north-east Scotland, at a depth of about 110 metres. In November 2024 the Royal Navy confirmed its identity. The wreck is a war grave.