Although considerably smaller than the magnificent White Star trans-Atlantic liner Titanic, the British India Company steam ship Rohilla is also remembered for all the wrong reasons; infamy in shipping circles being directly linked to the mortality figures produced by a shipwreck. While under construction at the Belfast shipyard of Harland and Wolff, vessel number 381, gradually transformed from a series of frames and hull sections, to a vessel capable of carrying one hundred first-class passengers, and sixty-five second-class, entrusted to the care of a crew of 175. On the 6th September 1906, as the crowd’s cheers drowned out the sound of the brass band, Rohilla trundled down the slipway. In deference to her destination, they named her after the people of Rohilkand, who populated the area east of Delhi. On completion, she would serve on the London to Calcutta service, with the similarly designed ship Rewa [torpedoed in 1918 while serving as a hospital ship]; throughout the winter season she would carry troops to offset operating costs. In 1908, she joined Rewa in the role of permanent troopships. Both vessels represented British India during the 1910 Spithead Review, staged for King George V. During the ceremony, Rohilla hosted the House of Lords and Rewa carried the House of Commons.
Two days after hostilities with Germany commenced, Rohilla was requisitioned as a naval hospital ship. She rapidly underwent conversion, and took up her new career equipped with a pair of operating theatres and X-ray equipment: her cabins became hospital wards. Ten days later, HMHS Rohilla, commanded by Captain David Landles Neilson, steamed from Southampton to the naval base at Scapa Flow to undergo training. While there, a nineteen-year-old midshipman from the battleship HMS Collingwood arrived. The patient was none other than Prince Albert, suffering with acute pain from a developing appendicitis. The Rohilla with her royal patient onboard was hastily despatched to Aberdeen where, on arrival, they were to collect the Royal Surgeon, who had travelled from London by express train. Amongst the ship’s company were fifteen members of the Barnoldswick Ambulance Brigade, employed as Naval Sick Berth Reservists, who had been responsible for Albert’s medical care; they supervised his transfer to hospital where two days later he was operated on. The prince survived to become King George VI; unfortunately twelve of the Barnoldswick men would perish on the final voyage of Rohilla.
HMHS Rohilla departed the Firth of Forth on Thursday 29 October 1914; onboard she carried 229 persons on a mercy mission to Belgium to collect wounded. The following morning, the North Sea weather began to deteriorate, the heavy seas causing the vessel to roll considerably. As a preventative measure against hostile naval bombardments, the north-eastern coastline adhered to a night-time blackout. At sea, any illuminated buoys were extinguished, while those with warning bells were muffled. Deprived of these navigational aids master mariners then steered by dead reckoning, and sailor’s intuition. Captain Neilson had taken his bearings as he passed the Tyne estuary, for he knew the Whitby lighthouse was unlit. He not only faced navigational hazards but the likelihood of a submarine attack.
Rohilla suddenly juddered under an impact: Neilson shouted ‘Mine! my God’ as he felt certain she had struck a mine. The vessel reverberated with a tortured grating sound. A ship passed on his starboard side and ten minutes later, it was reported someone was signalling the ship.
At twenty minutes to four in the morning, coastguard Albert James Jefferies sighted the hospital ship, bearing north-north-west and heading towards the Whitby rock. He used a Morse lamp to signal the ship, and when he thought she could hear, sounded the foghorn, but he received no reply. Captain Neilson ordered the Morse signal to be read; before the information could be acted upon, the disaster unfolded. Neilson thought heading his damaged vessel away from the coast would lead to a high loss of life, he ordered full speed ahead, [now reduced to twelve knots] and a mile along the coast deliberately drove Rohilla aground upon rocks near Saltwick Nab, one mile south of Whitby. The terrific impact impaled the hospital ship upon the outcrop, where she lay marooned five hundred yards from the shoreline, and surrounded by a gale whipped sea. The ship’s lights went out almost immediately after she struck, owing to flooding in the engine room. Many of the engine room staff perished on impact, drowned by the inrush of water. Scores of life belts were washed away before they could be used, and only one of the ship’s boats remained intact. Rohilla then broke in two across the well deck, the after section swinging violently around, tethered to the forward section by the propeller shaft. Upon the cliff top, the vigilant coastguard fired signal rockets summoning the rescue lifeboats; to this day it remains one of their most difficult rescue missions.
Under the captain’s orders, they successfully launched the steamer’s only sound lifeboat, prior to the arrival of the Whitby lifeboat. The boat, manned by six able bodied seamen, the bosun’s mate and Mister Gwynne the second mate, attempted to take a line ashore. One survivor recounted:
We had spent a miserable night shivering on deck, for it was not until daylight we could do anything. Then the captain called for volunteers to take the only remaining boat and row ashore with a line. A lot of us volunteered and five of us were sent with the second mate. What a journey it was! We had hardly got afloat when one oar after another was smashed. It seems a miracle that we got ashore. We lost the line when a big wave came and nearly swamped us. It was a wonder that the boat righted herself, and when she did, she was half filled with water. Close in we were upset, and it was only with the assistance of the people on shore that we were able to scramble to safety through the water, which was breast high.
Throughout Friday night and Saturday, valiant efforts were made to reach the stranded ship. On Friday night, the Rocket Brigade fired rockets at the doomed ship but their efforts were defeated by the fierce wind, as the five rockets that landed on the ship were beyond the reach of the crew. The rocket rescue apparatus evolved specifically for maritime rescue: each rocket expelled a thin line, and once a connection between the vessel and shore existed, the original line acted as a feeder for a heavier rope. To the stronger line, they attached a bosun’s chair: by using this primitive method, one by one the marooned seamen could be brought ashore. The gale force winds whipped up huge seas, breaking the vessel into three parts, the bridge now being the only place of refuge. James Langdale, coxswain of the Whitby lifeboat, first heard of the wreck on Friday; the wind and seas were so tremendous it would have been impossible to use the heavier boat. Gallantly they launched the smaller lifeboat, and although the tons of water pouring over Rohilla nearly washed them out of the lifeboat, they rescued seventeen people. Reaching the vessel a second time through worsening conditions, they recovered eighteen more.
~~The War on Hospital Ships 1914-1918 -by- Stephen McGreal
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