caused the major maritime powers to attend a Hague Conference on the subject in 1907, but the resulting ‘Convention Relative to the Laying of Automatic Submarine Contact Mines (No. VIII)’9 was not strong enough or well enough observed, to stem the use of the weapon.
The Japanese battleship Hatsuse, sunk by a Russian mine in May 1904. (IWM Q 41327)
The Royal Navy finally began taking steps toward a minelaying capability. Beginning in 1907, it converted to minelayers seven old Apollo class cruisers, two of which were named the Apollo and the Latona. They could make about 20 knots, were armed with 4.7in guns and could carry 100 mines. They constituted the ‘Minelaying Squadron’ commanded by a ‘Captain-in-Charge Minelayers’ and operated directly under the orders of the Admiralty. The Navy also developed a ‘Service’ type mine with a charge of 325lbs.10
At the beginning of the First World War, the Royal Navy was galvanised into action by almost immediate use of offensive minelaying by the Imperial Germany Navy, which had enthusiastically embraced the relatively new form of warfare. Shortly after a state of war broke out between Britain and Germany, the Germans wasted no time and sent the former pleasure steamer Königin Luise across the Channel into waters off the English coast to lay her 200 mines. On the morning of 5 August, she was sighted by HMS Amphion, a scout cruiser of 3440 tons armed with 4in guns,11 and the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla. She hurriedly laid her mines 30 miles off the coast of Suffolk before her pursuers opened fire.
The Königin Luise fled at her maximum speed of 21 knots and fought back gamely with her light guns, as her 3.4in guns had not yet been fitted. A truly fast minelayer might have escaped, but this one was pounded to pieces after Captain Biermann refused to strike her colours. She finally sank, with much of her crew still aboard and the survivors were picked up by her British pursuers. The next morning, the same British ships unwittingly sailed over part of the minefield and the Amphion struck a mine. After another massive explosion, she foundered in just minutes, taking with her more than 150 of her officers and men and many of the German survivors aboard.
The naval mining war was on. The first British minelaying operation was carried out on the night of 2 October in the Channel to the north of Ostende by the old minelayers Apollo, Intrepid, Andromache and Iphegenia, who were escorted by destroyers. Two more fields were laid on succeeding nights, with a total of 1064 mines laid. As it turned out, the field interfered with the route to Zeebrugge and part of the first minefield had to be swept.12 It was a learning experience.
The cruiser Amphion after hitting a German mine, 6 August 1914. (IWM Q 57066)
The battleship Audacious sinking after hitting a German mine, 27 October 1914. (IWM Q 48342)
The first major victim of German minelaying after the Amphion was the British dreadnought battleship Audacious. On 27 October 1914, she was sailing off the coast of Ireland for a gunnery exercise when she struck a single mine laid by the former passenger liner Berlin. After a twelve-hour battle to keep her afloat and tow her to safety, she finally sank by the stern, her magazines exploding as she went down. Unlike the Königin Luise, the Berlin evaded notice for some time, until she finally entered Norwegian waters to evade British ships and was interned.13
Shortly afterwards, naval mines achieved one of their greatest successes. During the Gallipoli campaign, a Turkish steamer named the Nousret laid a mere twenty mines in the path of an Anglo-French naval effort to force the Narrows on 18 March 1915. This seemingly meagre minefield was cleverly laid and caused the sinking of the French pre-dreadnought battleship Bouvet and the British predreadnoughts Irresistible and Ocean. The mines caused the attempt to force the Narrows with warships alone to be abandoned.14 As a result, Allied and Anzac troops had to be sent in and in the end the campaign in Gallipoli eventually failed miserably. Revenge for the destruction wrought by the humble Nousret was a long time coming, but it did come. In January 1918, mines laid by the Latona sank the once-German-then-Turkish light cruiser Breslau and severely damaged the battlecruiser Goeben in the Aegean.
The Royal Navy was encouraged by the possible use of mines against the emerging threat from German U-boats. During the War, the Royal Navy did not design or build any new minelayers, but employed a number of ships converted into minelayers. The most unusual conversion took shape when a ‘Clapham Junction’ maze of mine rails was fitted to the quarterdeck of the ‘large light cruiser’ Courageous, a white-elephant project of First Sea Lord ‘Jacky’ Fisher. At 18,600 tons, she was the largest minelayer ever, with her four 15in guns, she was certainly the most heavily-armed minelayer ever and with a speed of 32 knots, she was one the fastest of any era.15 Unfortunately, perhaps, she never laid a mine operationally. A few years after the end of the First World War, she and her sister Glorious were converted into aircraft carriers and served as such into the Second World War until their untimely ends.
The minelayer Latona in 1916. (Imperial War Museum SP 333)
The most prodigious minelayers in the Royal Navy in the Great War were converted merchant ships, which laid many thousands of mines in defensive minefields designed to entrap U-boats venturing out to attack merchant shipping. Of course, they were too slow for offensive minelaying. The Royal Navy eventually found a different sort of ship for that.
In 1916 the Royal Navy began to convert destroyers into minelayers and by far the best known and most successful was undoubtedly the Abdiel, a Marksman class flotilla leader. Ordered as part of the 1914 war programme, she was laid down in 1915 and was converted before her completion in 1916 to carry eighty mines. Essentially a large destroyer for her day, she was 324ft overall and displaced about 1600 tons and was armed with 4in guns. She had four funnels and her turbines could generate 36,000 horsepower. She could make 34 knots, much faster than any other minelayer conversion up to that time.16 She did not have an enclosed mining deck and when carrying mines on the rails on her deck she would erect a screen to hide them, painted to depict the torpedo tubes she would otherwise have been carrying.
The large light cruiser-minelayer Courageous. (Constance Keogh via Hermione Alcock)
Shortly after her completion, the Abdiel was attached to the Fleet. On 4 May 1916, she laid one offensive minefield off the Vyl lightship. Under Commander Berwick Curtis, she then played a unique part in the battle of Jutland on 31 May and 1 June. After the rival battlecruiser squadrons and then the two rival battle fleets encountered each other on the afternoon and evening of the 31st, the German High Seas Fleet turned away and the fleets lost contact with each other in the fading light. Admiral Jellicoe sought to cut off the escape routes of the High Seas Fleet and, as one precaution, at 21.32 he ordered the Abdiel to lay a minefield 15 miles off the Vyl lightship,17 an area through which the German High Seas Fleet would have to pass if it attempted to escape via the Horns Reef.
It had been intended for the Abdiel to lay this minefield anyway, even before the British knew the High Seas Fleet was at sea and the Abdiel duly laid the new minefield, in two lines of forty mines each, between 01.24 and 02.04 the morning of 1 June. As it turned
