Research confirms 737 men were lost on the Hampshire

Volunteers working on a planned commemorative wall to more than 700 men lost on HMS Hampshire in the First World War believe they have identified all the men on board, 99 years after the sinking.

The warship sank off the coast of Orkney on 5 June 1916 while taking Earl Kitchener, Britain’s Secretary of State for War, to Russia for secret talks. There were only 12 survivors.

Ten years later the Kitchener Memorial, a 48-feet high stone tower overlooking the site of the sinking, was unveiled on cliffs at Marwick Head.

It has a plaque, which only makes brief reference to the men lost with Kitchener.

But those working for Orkney Heritage Society’s Kitchener & HMS Hampshire Memorial project want to “better remember” all those lost by building an arc-shaped low wall, engraved with their names, alongside the memorial.

It was long believed that 643 men died after HMS Hampshire hit a mine in stormy weather, but recent research by Orkney historian Brian Budge discovered the names of more than 730 men who were lost, with many of the additional names being part of Kitchener’s party.

Now project committee member Andrew Hollinrake has researched online and travelled from Orkney to spend hours digging through hundreds of files at the National Archives in Kew, London, to arrive at a final figure of 737 men lost, including Kitchener. Part of his research involved untangling two family names, which had been wrongly joined together.