The Death of Horatio Kitchener

Kitchener, the Recruiting Poster

On 5 June 1916,  just off the Orkney Islands, armored cruiser HMS Hampshire hit a mine.  Nearly all the crew and passengers would perish that evening, including Field Marshal Earl Kitchener of Khartoum and his staff.  Kitchener was en route to Russia,  on a secret mission to bolster support from the tsar for the war.  

He was the most senior officer from either side in the First World War to die on active service and .his loss was viewed as a national disaster. When war broke out in 1914, Kitchener was immediately appointed war secretary. The Times reflected the popular mood, writing: “We need hardly say with what profound satisfaction and relief we hear of Lord Kitchener’s appointment.” The new war secretary was no bonehead and quickly delivered himself of the hugely significant judgment that, far from being over by Christmas, the fighting would last for years. He recognized at once that Britain’s small professional army—vastly outnumbered by the conscript forces of continental Europe—would need to be multiplied in size many times. The war would be won, he said, by “the last million men”.

The Doomed HMS Hampshire

 

By mid-1916, however, Kitchener, had lost his sway with the political leadership. They had come to despise him for his high-handedness and laid blame on  him for the Gallipoli fiasco and the 1915 shell crisis. With the tsar was begging for fresh supplies of guns and explosives and Britain was worried whether Russia, which had taken enormous casualties, would have the will to stay the course of the war. Kitchener jumped at the idea of leading a mission of reassurance. As the commander of the Grand Fleet, Admiral John Jellicoe, who lunched with him just before his departure, recalled later, the war secretary “expressed delight at getting away for a time from the responsibilities and cares attaching to his Office.” He seemed almost to think of his mission as something of a holiday.

Just before 8:00 p.m. on the first day out, there was a tremendous explosion, when a mine, recently laid by U-75, was struck. The Hampshire shuddered and took on water. “It was as though an express train crashed into us,” recalled a stoker who survived. The lights on the cruiser failed as the electrical system short-circuited, though the propellers continued to turn. Within minutes, the vessel was sinking by the bow, with most of the lifeboats not launchable in the storm. It was still daylight, and onshore in the Orkneys, observers from the Royal Garrison Artillery had seen the Hampshire explode. The postmistress in the remote settlement of Birsay sent an immediate SOS by telegraph to Kirkwall to alert the naval authorities. But the Hampshire went down in 15 minutes—time only to launch three small life rafts, which were soon hopelessly overcrowded with desperate sailors. 

Routes of Hampshire & U-75

 

Interviews in the local archives hold the recollections of some of the Orcadians who braved the howling winds and torrential rain to try to rescue those sailors who might make it to the few inlets between the cliffs. They found the life rafts dashed on the rocks, one thrust by the enormous waves into a crevice in the cliffs high above the sea. The British war secretary was last seen standing in his field marshal’s uniform on the starboard side of the quarterdeck, calmly talking to two staff officers as the ship went down. The official report lists 643 dead, though local historian Brian Budge believes the true figure to be 725. It is certain that there were a mere 12 survivors. Of Lord Kitchener there was no sign at all. Though corpses continued to wash up the shores of the Orkneys for weeks afterwards, his body was never found.

When news of the loss of HMS Hampshire reached London, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle reached for his purple ink pot. Lord Kitchener, he said, had left behind “the memory of something vast and elemental, coming suddenly and going strangely, a mighty spirit leaving great traces of its earthly passage.” How to register the loss of this powerful force?

Kitchener Memorial St. Paul's Cathedral

 

The death of Kitchener had a profound impact on the country. “Very like President Kennedy or Princess Diana’s deaths in later years, everyone who was alive then would remember the moment they heard about Kitchener’s death even though three weeks later 20,000 died at the Somme,” says  author James Irvine.  

Sources:  The Scotsman,  4 June 2016; Financial Times, 7 November 2014