HMS Bulwark (1899)

Coordinates: 51°25.39'N 0°39.20'E


Bulwark at anchor

Name: Bulwark
Ordered: 27 June 1898
Builder: HM Dockyard, Devonport
Cost: £997,846
Laid down: 20 March 1899
Launched: 18 October 1899
Christened: By Lady Harriet Fairfax
Completed: March 1902
Commissioned: 18 March 1902
Fate: Destroyed by internal explosion, 26 November 1914

HMS Bulwark was one of five London-class pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy at the end of the 19th century. The Londons were a sub-class of the Formidable-class pre-dreadnoughts. Completed in 1902 she was initially assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet as its flagship. The ship then served with the Channel and Home Fleets from 1907 to 1910, usually as a flagship. From 1910 to 1914, she was in reserve in the Home Fleet.

Following the start of the First World War in August 1914, Bulwark, along with the rest of the squadron, was attached to the reformed Channel Fleet to protect the British Expeditionary Force as it moved across the English Channel to France. On 26 November 1914 she was destroyed by a large internal explosion with the loss of 741 men near Sheerness; only a dozen men survived the detonation. It was probably caused by the overheating of cordite charges that had been placed adjacent to a boiler-room bulkhead. Little of the ship survived to be salvaged and her remains were designated a controlled site under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986. Diving on the wreck is generally forbidden.

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Construction and career

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Explosion


Bulwark explodes at Sheerness,
26 November 1914

A powerful internal explosion ripped Bulwark apart at about 07:53 on 26 November 1914 while she was moored at Number 17 buoy in Kethole Reach, 4 nautical miles (7.4 km; 4.6 mi) west of Sheerness in the estuary of the River Medway. All the ship's officers were killed in the explosion and only a dozen ratings survived. A total of 741 men were lost, including members of the band of the gunnery school, HMS Excellent, which was playing aboard. Only about 30 bodies were recovered after the explosion. In terms of loss of life, the incident remains the second most catastrophic accidental explosion in the history of the United Kingdom, exceeded only by the explosion of the dreadnought battleship Vanguard, caused by a stokehold fire detonating a magazine, at Scapa Flow in 1917.

A naval court of enquiry into the causes of the explosion that was held on 28 November ruled out external explosions such as a torpedo or a mine because eyewitnesses spoke of a flash of flame near the aft turret and then one or two explosions quickly following, not the towering column of water associated with explosions against the outer hull. The gunnery logbook, recovered partially intact, and the testimony of the chief gunner's clerk, as well as several other survivors, said the six-inch ammunition magazines were being restowed to keep the cordite propellant charges together in lots that morning. This meant at least 30 exposed charges had been left in the cross-passages between the ship's magazines with the magazine doors left open when the ship's company was called to breakfast at 07:45. These passages were also used to stow hundreds of six-inch and twelve-pounder shells, and the court concluded that the cordite charges had been stowed against one of the boiler-room bulkheads which was increasing in temperature as the boilers were fired up. This ignited the cordite charges which detonated the nearby shells and spread to the aft twelve-inch magazine, which exploded.

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