Wreck of the hospital ship Rohilla

In the early hours of 30 October 1914 the British hospital ship Rohilla was driven in a storm onto the rocks of Saltwick Nab off the Yorkshire coast, near the town of Whitby. Before the eyes of the townspeople gathered on the shore, one of the most dramatic rescues in the history of British lifeboatmen went on for three days.

Voyage to Dunkirk

Rohilla was a passenger liner of the British India Steam Navigation Company. After the outbreak of war the Admiralty requisitioned the ship and fitted her out to carry wounded. On 29 October she sailed from Queensferry on the Firth of Forth, bound for Dunkirk to collect wounded from the front in Flanders. There were 229 people on board: crew, doctors, orderlies and nurses.

During the night a north-easterly storm raged over the North Sea. Because of the war the lighthouses on the coast were dark, and the ship was sailing with no way of fixing her exact position. At about four in the morning Rohilla struck the Saltwick Nab reef, a few hundred metres from the shore. The ship’s master, Captain David Neilson, at first thought she had hit a mine. The waves quickly broke the hull. The stern section was washed away, and many people died with it.

Three days on the wreck

The survivors took refuge in the bow and on the bridge. The sea was so rough that launching a boat from the harbour in the ordinary way was out of the question. The Whitby lifeboatmen therefore carried the lifeboat John Fielden over the breakwater and the rocks to the beach opposite the wreck. In two trips they saved 35 people before the boat was wrecked. The Upgang station’s lifeboat was hauled overland and lowered on ropes down a steep cliff, but it could not reach the ship. Attempts by the boats from Scarborough and Teesmouth also failed. A few castaways swam ashore. Some of them were pulled out of the surf by people standing on the beach.

About 50 people were still waiting on the wreck when the motor lifeboat Henry Vernon was summoned from Tynemouth. She covered some 70 kilometres along the coast in stormy weather. At dawn on 1 November her crew poured oil on the sea, which calmed the waves for a moment, and went alongside the wreck. She took off all the remaining survivors, including Captain Neilson, who was the last to leave the ship.

Victims and heroes

Of the 229 people on board, between 83 and 85 died, depending on the source, and about 145 were saved. Among the survivors was Mary Roberts, who in 1912 had also survived the sinking of the Titanic. All the nurses survived.

The British lifeboat society, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, awarded six medals for gallantry for the rescue. Gold medals went among others to Major Herbert Burton, who commanded the Henry Vernon, and her coxswain Robert Smith, and to the coxswain of the Whitby lifeboat, Thomas Langlands. The inquiry cleared Captain Neilson of blame. Among its recommendations was that ships should carry their own rocket apparatus with life-saving lines.