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27 October 1914 – the first British battleship of World War I to be lost to enemy action

The 598-foot King George V-class battleship HMS Audacious is another important first in British naval history. She had the misfortune of being the first British battleship to be sunk by enemy action during World War I, on 27 October 1914, just two months into the war. She was also the only modern British dreadnought battleship to be sunk by enemy action in the war. The story of the loss of HMS Audacious also involves a famous White Star liner, RMS Olympic, which would carry out a dramatic rescue attempt.

The 23,400-ton King George V-class dreadnought battleship HMS Audacious– the first British capital ship to be sunk by the enemy during WWI. (IWM)

Audacious was one of the four dreadnought battleships of the King George V class provided for under the 1910 building programme. Battleship design had taken a dramatic leap forward in 1906 with the launch of the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought, when the Royal Navy, under the charismatic leadership of the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Fisher, boldly embraced a risky radical alteration of the prevailing balance of naval power with the creation of a revolutionary new type of battleship. HMS Dreadnought was such a quantum leap forward in battleship design that her name would be used to define the whole class of such new battleships – dreadnoughts. Almost overnight, the generation of battleships that had gone before her was rendered virtually obsolete; they became known as pre-dreadnoughts, and although they sailed with the respective fleets in World War I, they were relegated to the end of the battle line or given other rear echelon taskings. Soon, other major naval powers raced to build their own dreadnoughts.