2nd Clarinet
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In Memory - HMS Britannia9th November 1918.
On the 9th November 1914, the following members of the Royal Marines Band Service gave their lives while serving onboard HMS Britannia.
Musician D.J. Skuse.
I have posted below, the circumstances of that day.
The sixth HMS Britannia of the British Royal Navy was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the King Edward VII class.
Like all ships of the class (apart from HMS King Edward VII) she was named after an important part of the British Empire, namely Britannia, the Roman name for Great Britain.
HMS Britannia was built at Portsmouth Dockyard.
She was laid down on 4 February 1902, launched on 10 December 1904, and completed in September 1906.
Although Britannia and her seven sister ships of the King Edward VII class were a direct descendant of the Majestic class, they were also the first class to make a significant departure from the Majestic design, displacing about 1,000 tons more and mounting for the first time an intermediate battery of four 9.2-inch (234-mm) guns in addition to the standard outfit of 6-inch (152-mm) guns.
She joined the fleet in September 1906, but was made obsolete three months later by the completion of the revolutionary battleship HMS Dreadnought in December 1906 and the large numbers of the new dreadnought battleships that commissioned in succeeding years.
History
HMS Britannia was commissioned into the reserve at Portsmouth Dockyard on 6 September 1906.
She went into full commission on 2 October 1906 for service in the Atlantic Fleet.
She transferred to the Channel Fleet on 4 March 1907.
Under a fleet reorganization on 24 March 1909, the Channel Fleet became the Second Division, Home Fleet, and Britannia became a Home Fleet unit in that division, becoming Flagship, Vice Admiral, Second Division, in April 1909.
She underwent a refit at Portsmouth from 1909 to 1910.
On 14 July 1910, she collided with the barque Loch Trool, suffering slight damage.
Under a fleet reorganization in May 1912, Britannia and all seven of her sisters of the King Edward VII class (Africa, Commonwealth, Dominion, Hibernia, Hindustan, King Edward VII, and New Zealand) were assigned to form the 3rd Battle Squadron, assigned to the First Fleet, Home Fleet.
The squadron was detached to the Mediterranean in November 1912 because of the First Balkan War (October 1912-May 1913); it arrived at Malta on 27 November 1912 and subsequently participated in a blockade by an international force of Montenegro and in an occupation of Scutari.
The squadron returned to the United Kingdom in 1913 and rejoined the Home Fleet on 27 June 1913, after which Britannia left the squadron to return to the Second Division, Home Fleet.
(Forecastle of Britannia October 1914.)
Upon the outbreak of World War I, Britannia transferred back to the 3rd Battle Squadron, which was assigned to the Grand Fleet and based at Rosyth.
The squadron was used to supplement the Grand Fleet's cruisers on the Northern Patrol.
On 2 November 1914, the squadron was detached to reinforce the Channel Fleet and was rebased at Portland. It returned to the Grand Fleet on 13 November 1914.
She ran aground in the Firth of Forth at Inchkeith on 26 January 1915, suffering considerable bottom damage, but was refloated after 36 hours and was repaired and refitted at Devonport Dockyard.
Britannia served in the Grand Fleet until April 1916.
During sweeps by the fleet, she and her sister ships often steamed at the heads of divisions of the far more valuable dreadnoughts, where they could protect the dreadnoughts by watching for mines or by being the first to strike them.
On 29 April 1916, the 3rd Battle Squadron was rebased at Sheerness, and on 3 May 1916 it was separated from the Grand Fleet, being transferred to the Nore Command. Britannia remained there with the squadron until August 1916, when she began a refit at Portsmouth Dockyard.
Upon completion of her refit in September 1916, Britannia transferred out of the 3rd Battle Squadron for service in the 2nd Detached Squadron, which had been organized in 1915 to reinforce the Italian Navy against the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Sea.
She underwent a refit at Gibraltar in February-March 1917, and upon its completion was attached to the 9th Cruiser Squadron to serve on the Atlantic Patrol and on convoy escort duty, based mainly at Sierra Leone. She relieved armored cruiser HMS King Alfred as flagship of the 9th Cruiser Squadron in March 1917 and underwent a refit at Bermuda in May 1917, during which her 6-inch (152-mm) guns were removed and replaced by four 6-inch (152-mm) guns mounted on her shelter deck.
On 9 November 1918, Britannia was on a voyage to Gibraltar when she was torpedoed off Cape Trafalgar by the German submarine UB-50.
After the first explosion, the ship listed ten degrees to port.
A few minutes later, a second explosion started a fire in a 9.2-inch (234-mm) magazine, which in turn caused a cordite explosion in the magazine.
Darkness below decks made it virtually impossible to find the flooding valves for the magazines, and those the crew did find were poorly located and therefore hard to turn, and the resulting failure to properly flood the burning magazine probably doomed the ship.
Britannia held her 10-degree list for 2½ hours before sinking, allowing most of the rest of the crew to be taken off.
Toxic smoke from the burning cordite killed most of the men who were lost in the sinking; 50 men died and 80 were injured.
Sunk only two days before the Armistice ending World War I was signed on 11 November 1918, Britannia the last Royal Navy vessel to be sunk during World War I.
To those named above and the ships crew who also died.....R.I.P.
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