Qualla: HMS Drake (1901)

HMS Drake (1901): Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Just after nine in the morning on 2 October 1917, the armoured cruiser HMS Drake had finished escort duties for an Atlantic convoy and was steaming home through Rathlin Sound. A torpedo from the German submarine U-79, commanded by Kapitanleutnant Otto Rohrbeck, struck her second boiler room. The explosion killed eighteen men outright: stokers and firemen working in the heat of the engine spaces, men whose families would later receive a brown envelope from the Admiralty. The ship was crippled but did not immediately sink. Her captain steered her toward the shelter of Church Bay on Rathlin Island, and there, after one further accidental collision with a merchant ship that had to be beached to avoid sinking, the Drake rolled over and went under. The remaining crew were taken off. The eighteen who died stayed with the ship.

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HMS Drake (1901): Built for an Empire

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

HMS Drake had been the lead ship of her class, laid down at Pembroke Dock in Wales on 24 April 1899 and launched on 5 March 1901. She was an armoured cruiser, a category of warship that has since disappeared but in her day was one of the dominant capital ships of the Royal Navy. ...

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HMS Drake (1901): A Flagship That Carried Future First Sea Lords

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Drake's career reads like the index of British naval history. Her first commanding officer was Captain Francis Bridgeman, who would later become First Sea Lord, the professional head of the Royal Navy. Her second was John Jellicoe, who would command the Grand Fleet at Jutland in ...

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HMS Drake (1901): Eight Million in Gold

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Drake's strangest mission came in October 1914, just weeks after the war began. Under the command of Captain Aubrey Smith, she sailed for Arkhangelsk on the White Sea coast of Russia and lay thirty miles off shore for several nights while small boats brought Russian gold bullion ...

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HMS Drake (1901): Convoy HH 24 and the Torpedo

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By 1917 Drake was older, slower, and increasingly out of place. The Battle of Jutland had shown that armoured cruisers could not stand up to dreadnought-era gunfire. She had been moved to convoy escort duties on the North America and West Indies Station, shepherding cargo ships a...

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HMS Drake (1901): Eighteen Men, and a Wreck

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Eighteen is a number small enough to feel. It is fewer than a single rugby squad. It is one classroom of children. The Drake lost 18 sailors that morning, and the eighty-two who survived would have spent the rest of their lives carrying the names of the eighteen who did not. Ther...

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HMS Drake (1901): A Protected Site for Divers

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What is left of HMS Drake has been a scheduled historic monument since June 2017, the centenary of her sinking. The wreck lies on her starboard side in shallow water, broken but still recognisable in places: the great twin shafts that drove her engines, the curved plates of her a...

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