Series 03: John Brady Nash letters, January 1914-December 1915 - Page 476
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[Page 476]
net was making her way to Constantinople to refit with torpedoes, she became tangled up and was lost. The English ship Goliath was torpedoed by a Turkish destroyer. The Bouveric & others were sunk after contact with mines About 6.45 a.m. on the 27th of May some of the people on the Majestic noticed the frothy water which denotes the wake of a torpedo, the air escaping from her driving mechanism comes rapidly to the surface, and a shout was raised because it was evident that the destructive mechanism was coming direct for the ship, the aim was true and passing between two transports the deadly missile cut through the torpedo netting, which was down around the ship, struck her in the near the engines and tore a great hole in her side and split her in all directions. When the shout went up every man made for the deck, jumping from places where many men were engaged taking in the netting, that the Admiral's cutter might be launched, and climbing the stairs from other parts.
The trail of the torpedo can be noted a long way off, several hundreds of yards. The torpedo travels at from 30 to 40 knots per hour, but if smart a man can get away from the neighbourhood where it is seen that the ship may be stuck. With the explosion of the gun cotton contents of the weapon, great havoc is played within the ship, chains and gear of all kinds are thrown about, and fall in all directions. If the ship turns over, during the process guns chains boxes and other heavy gear of all descriptions fall from their places and in doing so must strike men and kill them.
Many deaths must be due to accident of this nature. The boat that hit the Majestic was probably Austrian, coming from Trieste, but was commanded by Germans. She probably arrived during the night took her bearings, sank to the bottom, rose with the morning light, took steady aim and disappeared, dropping to the sea floor again and waiting for the darkness to get away again.
The Majestic was badly torn, and broken. She turned rapidly over and sank within four minutes. I jumped overboard and swam to a French yacht that was anchored close by. Some 51 men were lost, some no doubt were killed at the moment of impact, others were killed by chains and other heavy stuff striking them, while a few were perhaps drowned. The big guns from the turretts fell into the sea before the vessel was completely over. We were surrounded by a ring of transports, but these were not the objective of the attacking boat. Had they been she could have sunk many of them. We were at a loss to understand why the transports were not attacked, and we came to the conclusion that torpedoes were scarce and that the Germans feared wasting them upon anything less than a warship. The Triumph was sunk in the middle of the day