Page 19 - QARANC Vol 15 No 2 2017

THE GAZETTE QARANC 17
What links the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine’s Combined Ranks’ Mess and His Majesty’s Hospital Ship Glenart Castle?
In 2017 Royal Centre for Defence Medicine (RCDM) personnel will move into Single Living Accommodation (SLA). The Combined Ranks Mess will “create a central base that promotes a sense of belonging and teamwork”. The 5-story building is located at the heart of the Longbridge redevelopment area of Birmingham. It includes 180 ‘junior officer grade’ en suite rooms and facilities such as dining room, bar, gym, and JPA suite.
The Mess will be named after His Majesty’s Hospital Ship (HMHS) Glenart Castle, which was sunk in 1918 with the loss of 151 lives, including the majority
passenger ship, she had a large number of women and children on-board, and her crew were ordered to stop sending an SOS on threat of being fired upon. She was later released after the “timely arrival of two British warships”.
In September 1914, the Galician was requisitioned by the British Admiralty, re-fitted as a hospital ship with 453 beds, and drafted into service as HMHS Glenart Castle. In the years that followed she saw extensive service and was badly damaged when she struck a mine in the English Channel. There were no casualties, and all patients, crew and medical staff were rescued. Following repairs she re-entered service and returned to cross channel ‘missions of mercy’.
On her final sailing HMHS Glenart Castle was bound for France to take on casualties with 182 crew, chaplaincy and Medical personnel on- board. Her medical Staff consisted of Nurses of the QAIMNS and Territorial Force Nursing Service (TFNS), medical Officers and orderlies of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). Eyewitness reports state she was clearly lit up as a hospital ship and, under Hague Conventions; Cruiser Rules (1907), should have been immune from attack. However, in February 1917 Germany claimed that Allied hospital ships were in contravention of these conventions by carrying troops and military material, and had announced that they would deliberately target any vessel felt as ‘legitimate’.
This was to be HMHS Glenart Castle’s fate. At approximately 0400 hours on 26 February 1918 she was torpedoed by a German U-boat. She was hit starboard midships, just abaft the engine room. Immediately the steamer began to sink by the stern. The impact disabled the generators, plunging the ship into darkness, restricting escape efforts and preventing a distress signal from being sent. The subsequent chaos and steep pitch of the vessel hindered attempts to launch the few lifeboats not damaged by the explosion. Only
seven boats were launched; those who made the lifeboats would have been inexperienced rowers and were faced by a hostile environment of biting winds, and a heavy winter sea with 6 metre high rolling waves. Only one boat (22 personnel) was rescued, by a French vessel. Survivors described being clad only in trousers and shirts, having their feet and legs in the raising cold water and bailing in relays. 11 hours later an American Destroyer rescued the last 9 survivors from the sea.
In just eight minutes HMHS Glenart Castle had sunk completely with only 31 survivors. Their reports tell that the U-boat surfaced close to the sinking vessel but failed to heed the cries of those in the water. The Admiralty Court of Enquiry asked if there were orders for the nurses to be put in the lifeboats first; it concluded that she sank too quickly. Her Captain, Lt Comd Burt, was last seen on the bridge and is reported to have stayed at his post to the last.
The British Admiralty sought to charge the U-boat commander responsible with war crimes. Having been arrested, he denied sinking a hospital ship and had logged HMHS Glenart Castle as a merchant vessel. He was released, uncharged, under the Treaty of Versailles agreement that no detainees would be held during the Armistice.
Recent dives on the wreck of HMHS Rewa uncovered shell casings, and a diary held by the Army Medical Services Museum states that HMHS Tagus was used to carry troops. Were HMHS used to carry ‘illegal’ cargo invalidating their protection? There is a significant amount of disinformation and propaganda around the sinking of hospital ships and the truth may never be known.
In memorial – “For those in peril on the sea”
A granite memorial stone, commissioned by Matron Beaufoy’s descendants, stands on donated land
of her medical team
born Matron Katy
Alexandra’s Imperial
Service (QAIMNS).
name, the Mess will
remembrance of those killed in service.
HMHS Glenart Castle
Thirty-one fathoms (65 metres) below the surface of the Bristol Channel, 20 miles WSW off Hartland Point, North Devon, HMHS Glenart Castle “sleeps the long and silent slumber of lost ships” after she was torpedoed and sunk during WW1 in the worst ever maritime disaster in the Bristol Channel. The well-preserved wreck faces a westerly direction and lies on an even keel, her bow and stern almost intact, her midships long since collapsed. Divers of the wreck have commented on the feeling of awe engendered by her huge steel hull which “seems to go on to infinity”.
Originally named the ‘Galician’, the coal steamer was built in Belfast as a passenger liner. She was 134 meters long, weighed 6500 tonne, and made 12.5 knots (14.4 mph). Early in WW1 the Galician was captured by an Imperial German Navy ‘commerce raider’ whilst en-route from Cape Town to England. A commerce raider’s mission was to disrupt Allied logistics by attacking merchant shipping. It was not uncommon for vessels to be sunk without warning, and sometimes after boarding and looting. As an unarmed
and Birmingham Beaufoy, Queen Military Nursing By adopting the contribute to the