HMS Goliath (1898): Sunk in Minutes by a Torpedo Boat a Third Her Size

Built for the China Station

HMS Goliath was laid down on 4 January 1897 and launched on 23 March 1898, a Canopus-class pre-dreadnought battleship measuring 421 feet 6 inches in length, displacing 13,150 long tons normally and up to 14,300 tons fully loaded. She carried four 12-inch guns in twin turrets and twelve 6-inch secondary guns, driven by triple expansion engines producing 13,500 indicated horsepower for a top speed of 18 knots, with a crew of 682 officers and ratings. She commissioned on 27 March 1900 under Captain Lewis Edmund Wintz for service on the China Station, part of the Canopus class's deliberate design as a lighter, longer ranged battleship suited to distant imperial deployments rather than home waters.

HMS Goliath underwent a refit at Hong Kong between September 1901 and April 1902 before leaving the China Station in July 1903 and paying off at Chatham that October. She subsequently served with the Channel Fleet from January 1906, the Home Fleet from March 1907 and the Mediterranean Fleet from February 1908, before being placed in reserve in 1913 as newer dreadnought battleships rendered her increasingly obsolete.

From the Rufiji Delta to the Dardanelles

HMS Goliath was assigned to the 8th Battle Squadron of the Channel Fleet on the outbreak of war in August 1914, escorting troops to Belgium before transferring to the East Indies Station, where she took part in the blockade of the German cruiser SMS Konigsberg in the Rufiji River delta off East Africa, unglamorous but genuinely important work bottling up a raider that had been causing considerable trouble for Allied shipping.

HMS Goliath joined the Gallipoli campaign in April 1915, providing gunfire support during the landings at Cape Helles on 25 April and sustaining light damage from Turkish shore batteries in the fighting that followed, one of a squadron of older pre-dreadnought battleships judged expendable enough to risk in the dangerous, mine and shore battery infested waters of the Dardanelles.

A Night in Morto Bay

HMS Goliath anchored in Morto Bay near Cape Helles on the evening of 12 May 1915 alongside HMS Cornwallis, with five destroyers providing escort against submarine and torpedo attack, though thick fog reduced visibility considerably. In one of the enduring small mysteries of the whole campaign, the ships' searchlights were switched off around 11:30pm that night, removing a layer of protection that might otherwise have given warning of what followed.

The Ottoman torpedo boat Muavenet-i Milliye, meaning National Support, commanded by Senior Lieutenant Ahmet Saffet Ohkay with the German officer Lieutenant Rudolf Firle advising, slipped into the anchorage undetected. At around 1:00am on 13 May, she launched three torpedoes at close range. Two struck almost simultaneously, one abreast the fore turret and the other abeam the fore funnel, triggering a huge explosion, and HMS Goliath began to capsize almost immediately, a third torpedo striking as she rolled over.

570 Lost

HMS Goliath sank so quickly, and the surrounding waters were so dark and fast running, that rescue efforts were severely hampered, and the human cost was devastating: 570 of her crew of 750 were killed, including her commanding officer, Captain Thomas Shelford. It remains one of the heaviest single losses of life suffered by any Royal Navy ship during the entire Gallipoli campaign, a genuinely shocking demonstration of how vulnerable even a heavily armoured battleship could be to a small, fast torpedo boat operating with courage and a measure of good fortune.

HMS Goliath's loss carried consequences well beyond the ship herself: the sinking, coming amid a string of setbacks in the Dardanelles campaign, contributed directly to the resignation of First Sea Lord Admiral Fisher and, soon after, of Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty, a political aftershock that reshaped the leadership of the Royal Navy at one of the most difficult moments of the entire war. Her wreck today lies upside down at a depth of around 63 metres, largely buried in sediment off the coast where she was lost.