Sinking of HMS Otranto

On the morning of 6 October 1918, during a violent storm off the west coast of Scotland, the British transport Kashmir rammed HMS Otranto, which was sailing beside her in the same convoy. Otranto, carrying several hundred American soldiers, lost power and drifted towards the rocky shore of the island of Islay. A British destroyer took some of the men off her, but a few hours later the waves threw the ship onto a reef and broke her up. About 470 people died, most of them American soldiers. It was one of the worst disasters in the transport of American troops to Europe, caused not by the enemy but by the sea and a navigational error.

Convoy HX 50

Otranto was a passenger liner of the Orient Line, built in 1909 for the service from London to Australia. In August 1914 the Admiralty requisitioned her and armed her as an armed merchant cruiser. In November that year she was in Admiral Christopher Cradock’s squadron and survived the Battle of Coronel, and then for several years she patrolled the coasts of South America. In the summer of 1918 she was converted to carry troops. On 25 September she left New York as the flagship of convoy (PL) HX 50, which was carrying American soldiers to Liverpool. She was commanded by Captain Ernest Davidson, who was also the convoy commodore. There were more than a thousand people on board, including several hundred soldiers, according to American accounts largely newly drafted conscripts from Georgia. During the voyage Spanish flu spread on the ships. On 1 October off Newfoundland Otranto rammed the French fishing schooner Croisine. The fishermen were taken on board, and their wreck was sunk by gunfire.

From 4 October the convoy sailed through an ever stronger storm. The British destroyers that were to come out to meet it turned back to port, and for several days the navigators had been unable to fix their position by observation and were reckoning it only from course and speed. On the morning of 6 October, with the wind estimated at force 11 on the Beaufort scale, a rocky coast emerged from the mist and rain a few kilometres ahead of the ships. Most of the ships rightly concluded that it was Scotland and turned south, towards the North Channel. The officer of the watch on Otranto, however, took the shore for the coast of Ireland and turned north. Kashmir, a P&O liner also serving as a transport, sailing less than a kilometre away, found herself on a collision course. The two ships’ manoeuvres to avoid each other cancelled each other out, and at about 8.45 Kashmir struck Otranto with her bow on the port side amidships.

Rescue by Mounsey

The impact tore a huge hole in Otranto’s side, from the waterline right up to the boat deck. Water flooded the boiler rooms, killing most of the stokers working there, and soon the engine room. The ship lost power and electricity, heeled over and began to drift towards Islay. Kashmir, her bow smashed, managed to get away. In the heavy sea it was impossible to lower the boats. After about half an hour the British destroyer Mounsey, which had been searching for the convoy through the night, came up. Her commander, Lieutenant Francis Craven, despite Davidson’s signal to keep clear, brought his ship alongside the transport’s lee side so that men could jump onto her deck. The waves threw the two hulls against each other several times. Mounsey had her bridge smashed and two of her three boiler rooms flooded, and many of those jumping fell into the sea or were crushed between the hulls. Craven came alongside Otranto four times and, according to British and American tallies, took off almost 600 people, including about 300 American soldiers, more than 260 crew members and the French fishermen from Croisine. The overloaded and damaged destroyer made it to Belfast. For this action Craven received the British Distinguished Service Order and the American Navy Cross.

The reef off Islay

About 490 people remained on Otranto. Roughly three hours after the collision a wave threw the ship onto a reef near Machir Bay on the west coast of Islay. The hull quickly broke in two and was smashed by the waves. Only 21 men reached the shore alive, most of them Americans, and two of them later died of their injuries. The islanders pulled the survivors from the rocks and hauled them up the cliffs. The next day the shore was strewn with wreckage and bodies.

The most frequently quoted toll is about 470 dead: nearly a hundred of the British crew, about 358 American soldiers and six French fishermen. Some studies give slightly lower figures. More than 300 Americans were buried on Islay, where only eight months earlier the victims of the sinking of the Tuscania had been laid to rest. After the war the bodies were moved to the American cemetery at Brookwood near London or to the United States, and a monument erected by the American Red Cross on the Mull of Oa headland commemorates the victims of both disasters.