Lifeboats in the Great War—The HMHS Rohilla Disaster

James Patton 

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) is the principal lifeboat service operating in Britain, Ireland, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man. Its volunteers fulfill a 24-hour coastal search and rescue mission.

Founded in 1824, it gained royal patronage under George IV that continues to the present day, and the current name was adopted in1854. Since inception, the RNLI  lifeboats and lifeguards have been credited with saving over 146,000 lives.

SS Rohilla at Port Said, 1914

The 460-ft long S.S. Rohilla was built in Belfast by Harland & Wolff for the British India Steam Navigation Co., completed in 1906 for the line’s London-Calcutta service. Since Calcutta is a river port, it must be accessed by shallow draught vessels, which tend to roll a lot in heavy seas, and Rohilla was no exception.  

She was often chartered by the Admiralty for use as a troopship in the Calcutta service from 1908 to 1910. In 1911 she took part in George V’s Coronation Fleet Review at Spithead, carrying members of the House of Commons. At the onset of war in 1914, she was requisitioned by the Admiralty, converted into a hospital ship,  and re-commissioned as HMHS Rohilla. 

A Section of the Wrecked Rohilla

On 30 October 1914, she embarked on her first voyage, from South Queensferry bound for Dunkirk to evacuate wounded soldiers. In the evening of that day, during a full-blown North Sea gale,  HMHS Rohilla ran aground on Saltwick Nab, a reef about a mile SSE of  Whitby harbor. The Nab is more or less perpendicular to the shore, lying about 400 yards offshore and, due to Admiralty orders, the warning buoy had been removed.  

Around Hartlepool, in Yorkshire, the coast line starts to move steadily eastward. With the lighthouses also ordered unlit, the Rohilla’s captain (who was unfamiliar with the North Sea) lost his bearing and was more than a mile west of his plotted course. This was seen from the shore, but attempts to warn the badly rolling Rohilla by signal lights went unnoticed, possibly because there was nobody aboard who was well enough to be a lookout.

After striking the Nab, the ship broke into three pieces, with the stern piece quickly slipping into deeper water. Although the ship had been close to shore, the high seas and strong winds made rescue attempts challenging, but six RNLI lifeboats answered the call. Of the oared craft, two were from Whitby Harbor, one was from Upgang (now part of Whitby) and one from Scarborough (which was towed to Whitby by a steam tug). 

A Line Thrower Rocket Fired to Rohilla

There were also two motorized  lifeboats, one from Teesmouth and a large, powerful one that came  all the way from Tynemouth (44 miles away). The steam trawler Mayfly out of Hartlepool also responded but was too big to be useful. After repeated attempts, the Scarborough boat crew was unable to launch in the surf and the Teesmouth boat was side-lined with a leak, so it was down to the Whitby-area boats until the Tynemouth boat arrived and, with skillful manuevering, was able to rescue the last 50 persons from the wreck.

Over the three days, some persons who attempted to swim to shore in the pounding waves made it, but many who tried were lost. The lifeboat crews and volunteers from Whitby worked over 50 hours straight, including carrying the Whitby No. 2 boat overland in order to successfully launch it, transporting overland and lowering the Upgang boat from the cliffs above Saltwick Bay to launch it, and even trying to form human chains from the shore to the wreck. Due to all of these heroic efforts, 144 persons were saved, including all of the nurses, one of whom was an RMS Titanic survivor,  Mary Kezia Roberts. Sadly, 83 lives were lost. 

On 16 December, raiding German battlecruisers shelled Whitby, causing damage to its famous abbey, already a ruin.

During the First World War, RNLI lifeboats were launched 1,808 times, rescuing 5,332 people. With most of the younger men on active service, the average age of a lifeboat crewman was over 50. 

Prudential, Veteran of the Dunkirk Evacuation

During the Second World War, between 27 May and 4 June 1940, 19 motorized RNLI lifeboats assisted in the the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. Between them, two large diesel lifeboats, Ramsgate’s Prudential (ON 697), and Margate’s Lord Southborough (ON 688), collected over 2,800 troops from the beach. Not counting Dunkirk, during the war the RNLI saved 6,376 lives, including downed air crew. 

A royally chartered charity since 1860, the RNLI is principally funded by legacies (65 percent) and donations (30 percent). Most of its lifeboat crews are unpaid volunteers, who operate over 400 lifeboats from 238 stations. The RNLI receives no direct government funding. 

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[Asst. Editor's note: for you tea drinkers, try Lifeboat Tea.  

It's quite good, and your purchase supports RNLI's wonderful work.]

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Today, the stern section of the Rohilla is a popular scuba diving site. Most of the remainder of the wreckage was salvaged for scrap after the war, but bits still remain on the reef and can sometimes be seen at low tide. 

Sources include: The Western Front Association, the BBC and the RNLI’s  Lifeboat Magazine archive.