HMS Aboukir, Hogue & Cressy

The Vessel

The Live Bait Squadron was the popular Royal Navy designation for the three Cressy-class armoured cruisers HMS Aboukir, HMS Hogue, and HMS Cressy, assigned in the autumn of 1914 to patrol the southern end of the North Sea between the Dutch coast and the English Channel. They were the fifth, seventh, and eighth ships of the Cressy-class, all three commissioned in 1902 and approaching obsolescence by 1914. They displaced 12,000 tons each, were 136 metres long, and carried two 9.2-inch guns, twelve 6-inch guns, and a complement of 760 men each.

Their operational assignment to the southern North Sea in September 1914 was deeply controversial within the Royal Navy. The three ships were manned predominantly by Royal Naval Reserve officers and recently-recalled Royal Naval Reserve ratings rather than by regular Royal Navy personnel; their operating area was known to be within the reach of German submarines deploying from Heligoland; and the Royal Navy's Director of Operations at the Admiralty, Commodore Sir Roger Keyes, had filed repeated written protests against the assignment. Keyes's specific warning, recorded in a memorandum of 21 August 1914, was that the three cruisers would "offer themselves as bait" to German submarines. His memorandum had given the squadron its informal name, which was used among officers before the disaster and was never used by the ships' own crews.

The First Sea Lord Prince Louis of Battenberg had reviewed Keyes's concern on 29 August 1914 and had directed that the three ships remain on the assignment because the Royal Navy did not yet have adequate alternative patrol forces. His decision was supported by the Commander of the Home Fleet, Admiral Sir George Callaghan, who considered the Cressy-class ships more valuable as picket forces than as anti-U-boat assets.

The Voyage

On the morning of 22 September 1914, the three cruisers were patrolling their assigned sector in the southern North Sea, approximately 60 kilometres west of the Dutch coast. They were running in a line-abreast formation at 10 knots, with approximately two miles between ships. Weather was clear; visibility approximately 15 kilometres; sea state moderate.

The German submarine U-9, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Otto Weddigen, 32 years old, was patrolling the same water on her fifth war patrol. U-9 was an early-war German submarine, launched in 1910, with a surface displacement of 493 tons and a single torpedo loaded in her single bow tube. Weddigen had made three successful attacks in the previous month, all against merchant traffic, and was an experienced U-boat commander.

At 06:20 on 22 September 1914, Weddigen sighted the three cruisers through U-9's periscope at a range of approximately 5,000 metres. The three British ships were zigzagging on a prescribed course but at an entirely predictable rate. Weddigen closed to 600 metres range and fired his single torpedo at HMS Aboukir at 06:25. The torpedo struck Aboukir on her port side below the forward funnel. She flooded rapidly and began to list.

The Disaster

Captain Drummond of Aboukir, believing his ship had struck a mine, signalled HMS Hogue and HMS Cressy to close and pick up survivors. The two surviving British cruisers accelerated to the scene and stopped at 06:45 to lower boats.

U-9 had reloaded her single torpedo tube during the interval. At 06:55 Weddigen fired his second torpedo at HMS Hogue from 300 metres range; it struck Hogue amidships and detonated her forward magazine. Hogue broke in half; she sank in 10 minutes.

Captain Nicholson of HMS Cressy, by now aware that he was facing a submarine and not a minefield, ordered full speed ahead and commenced evasive zigzag. U-9 had reloaded her torpedo again; Weddigen fired his third torpedo at HMS Cressy at 07:15. The torpedo missed. Cressy circled to her starboard. Weddigen fired his fourth torpedo at 07:20. This torpedo struck Cressy on her starboard side and opened her hull to the sea. Cressy capsized in 15 minutes.

The three Royal Navy cruisers, representing 36,000 tons of warship and approximately 2,280 men, had been sunk by a single German submarine with a single torpedo tube in approximately 75 minutes. Between 1,459 and 1,520 British sailors died. The surviving Dutch merchant ships Flora and Titan, and the British destroyers Lowestoft and Mysore arriving later, rescued 837 men from the debris field over the following four hours.

The Legacy

The Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy disaster was the single most important British naval lesson of the early war. The destruction of three capital ships by a single submarine confirmed, in public and in a way no theoretical exercise could have confirmed, the fundamental change that the submarine had introduced to naval warfare. The response across the Royal Navy and the Admiralty was immediate and lasting.

The first order issued by the Admiralty on 22 September 1914, within hours of the disaster being confirmed, was the doctrine of non-stop. Every Royal Navy warship subsequently sighting a torpedoed ship was instructed to maintain maximum speed and zigzag, and to render assistance only at a safe distance and only by launching boats rather than by stopping. The non-stop doctrine has been, with modifications, the standing practice of the Royal Navy and of every navy in the world since 1914.

The second reform was the acceleration of Royal Navy anti-submarine construction. The six-month period between the Live Bait Squadron disaster and the spring of 1915 saw the laying down of the first purpose-built British anti-submarine destroyers, the initial development of the hydrophone, and the acceleration of the ASDIC programme that would eventually produce sonar. The first Royal Navy Q-ship (an armed decoy merchant ship intended to attract U-boat attack and then to destroy the submarine) entered service in November 1914, two months after the Live Bait Squadron disaster, in direct response to it.

The third reform was the end of Prince Louis of Battenberg's First Sea Lord tenure. Battenberg was the primary political and institutional authority responsible for the decision to continue the Live Bait Squadron patrol after Keyes's warnings; the disaster made his position untenable. He resigned on 28 October 1914 under the specific criticism that had accumulated since the 22 September losses. The appointment of Admiral Lord Fisher as his successor was made on 30 October 1914 and brought to the senior direction of the Admiralty the officer whose earlier naval reforms had begun the modern period of Royal Navy development.

Otto Weddigen himself was promoted to Korvettenkapitän for the Live Bait Squadron sinking and was awarded the Iron Cross First Class and the Pour le Mérite (the Blue Max). He was killed on 18 March 1915 when his U-boat U-29 was rammed and sunk by HMS Dreadnought, the ironic destruction of the pioneer U-boat commander by the pioneer Royal Navy dreadnought.

The wrecks of Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy lie at depths between 20 and 35 metres in the southern North Sea, approximately 40 nautical miles west of Hoek van Holland. They have been extensively salvaged, in successive operations, by commercial scrap-metal operations and by private archaeological groups. The bodies of the dead are largely dispersed. The protection status of the three wrecks under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 applies to artefacts remaining on the sites; the hulls themselves are largely gone, stripped for their pre-war low-background steel. The 1,459 dead are commemorated on the Chatham Naval Memorial in Kent; the Royal Navy reads their names aloud on the anniversary of the sinking every 22 September.