HMS Pathfinder (1904)

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HMS Pathfinder
History
United Kingdom
Name	Pathfinder
Builder	Cammell Laird, Birkenhead
Laid down	15 August 1903
Launched	16 July 1904
Commissioned	18 July 1905
Fate	Sunk by U-21, 5 September 1914
General characteristics (as built)
Type	Scout cruiser
Displacement	2,940 long tons (2,987 t)
Length	370 ft (112.8 m) (p/p)
Beam	38 ft 9 in (11.8 m)
Draught	15 ft 2 in (4.6 m) ( deep load )
Installed power	16,500 ihp (12,300 kW) 12 Laird- Normand boilers
Propulsion	2 Shafts, 2 triple-expansion steam engines
Speed	25 knots (46 km/h; 29 mph)
Range	3,400 nmi (6,300 km; 3,900 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement	289
Armament	10 × QF 12-pdr 3 in (76 mm) guns 8 × QF 3-pdr (47 mm) guns 2 × 18 in (450 mm) torpedo tubes
Armour	Waterline belt: 2 in (51 mm) Deck: 0.75–1.125 in (19.1–28.6 mm) Conning tower: 3 in (76 mm)

HMS Pathfinder was the lead ship of her class of two British scout cruisers, and was the first ship ever to be sunk by a self-propelled torpedo fired by submarine (the American Civil War sloop-of-war USS Housatonic had been sunk by a spar torpedo). She was built by Cammell Laird, Birkenhead, launched on 16 July 1904, and commissioned on 18 July 1905. She was originally to have been named HMS Fastnet, but was renamed prior to construction. During the beginning of World War I, the Pathfinder was sunk on 5 September 1914 by a German U-boat, the SM U-21.

In May 1902, the

Pathfinder was laid down at Cammell Laird's Birkenhead shipyard on 15 August 1903, was launched on 16 July 1904 and completed on 18 July 1905.^[2]

Not long after completion, two additional

In November 1907, Pathfinder was docked at Chatham Dockyard for inspection of her underwater fittings.^[7] On 8 February 1908, the torpedo gunboat Leda collided with the old cruiser Andromache in Harwich harbour and was holed, needing to be beached to avoid sinking. Pathfinder accompanied Leda to Sheerness Dockyard where the gunboat was repaired.^[8] In August 1909, Pathfinder, now leader of the 1st Destroyer Flotilla, was under refit at Sheerness.^[9]

When the aviator

At the beginning of September 1914,

One survivor of the sinking,^[citation needed] Acting Sub-Lieutenant Edward Oliver Sonnenschein,^{[12][page needed]} described the sinking as such:^{[citation needed]}

The ship gave a heavy lurch forward and took an angle of about forty degrees down by the bow. Water came swirling up to the searchlight platform. The Captain said, 'jump you devils jump !'. The Captain and his secretary remained with the ship until the very end but somehow both survived"

Also among the survivors was staff surgeon Thomas Aubrey Smyth, who lived at Bedeque House in Dromore, Co Down.

Recounting the experience in a letter to his mother, he said the explosion had blown a "great hole in the side of the ship".

"I was at the time in the wardroom, but ran up on deck immediately, and it was then evident by the way the bow was down in the water that she would sink rapidly," he said.

"I was then thrown forward by the slope of the deck and got jammed beneath a gun (which I expect is the cause of my bruising) and while in this position was carried down some way by the sinking ship, but fortunately after a time I became released and after what seemed like interminable ages I came to the surface, and after swimming a short time I was able to get an oar and some other floating material with the help of which I was just able to keep on the surface."

Fishing boats from the nearby fishing port of Eyemouth were the first on the scene and encountered a field of debris, fuel oil, clothing and body parts. Additionally, the British destroyers HMS Stag and Express had spotted the smoke and headed for the pall of smoke, only to find that what few survivors there were had already been rescued. (There was an anecdotal story that one of the destroyers had an engine problem when a water inlet was blocked by a leg in a seaboot.)

There is significant confusion regarding the numbers of survivors. On 6 September The Times declared that 58 men had been rescued but that four had died of injuries. The fact that it is impossible to determine how many were on board that day adds to the problem, but modern research indicates that in all probability, there were 268 personnel on board plus two civilian canteen assistants. There were just twenty known survivors.

Four more men died of injuries or exposure and are buried at Dalmeny in Fife and Warriston near Edinburgh. One unknown Pathfinder sailor is buried at Dunbar overlooking the scene of the sinking.

The explosion was seen by British writer Aldous Huxley (while staying at Northfield House, St. Abbs) who recorded the following in a letter to his father sent on 14 September 1914:

I dare say Julian told you that we actually saw the Pathfinder explosion – a great white cloud with its foot in sea.

The St. Abbs' lifeboat came in with the most appalling accounts of the scene. There was not a piece of wood, they said, big enough to float a man—and over acres the sea was covered with fragments—human and otherwise. They brought back a sailor's cap with half a man's head inside it. The explosion must have been frightful. It is thought to be a German submarine that did it, or, possibly, a torpedo fired from one of the refitted German trawlers, which cruise all round painted with British port letters and flying the British flag.

Despite the events of 5 September having been easily visible from shore, the authorities attempted to cover up the fact that Pathfinder had been sunk by a torpedo, insisting instead that it had struck a mine. The reason for this is unclear, but probably has to do with the Admiralty's position that submarines — a still new and largely untested weapons platform — lacked the capacity to sink a surface warship with a torpedo. A local paper, however, The Scotsman, published an eye-witness account by an Eyemouth fisherman, who had assisted in the rescue, that confirmed rumors that a submarine had been responsible. (However The Scotsman also reported that Pathfinder had been attacked by two U-boats and had accounted for the second one in her death throes. Admiralty intelligence later claimed that cruisers had cornered the U-boat responsible and shelled it to oblivion.) The sinking of Pathfinder by a submarine made both sides aware of the potential vulnerability of large ships to attack by submarines.

• Chesneau, Roger & Kolesnik, Eugene M., eds. (1979). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905. Greenwich: Conway Maritime Press.
  ISBN 0-8317-0302-4
  .
• Friedman, Norman (2009). British Destroyers From Earliest Days to the Second World War. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press.
  ISBN 978-1-59114-081-8
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• Friedman, Norman (2011). Naval Weapons of World War I. Barnsley, South Yorkshire, UK: Seaforth.
  ISBN 978-1-84832-100-7
  .

• ISBN 0-89839-256-X
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• Gardiner, Robert & Gray, Randal, eds. (1985). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press.
  ISBN 0-85177-245-5
  .

• Media related to HMS Pathfinder (1904) at Wikimedia Commons
• Pathfinder class in World War I
• History of the Pathfinder class
• List of Casualties

56°07′21″N 02°09′15″E / 56.12250°N 2.15417°E / 56.12250; 2.15417