When Titanic survivor Mary Roberts climbed aboard a hospital steamship in October 1914, she hoped for a relatively straightforward passage to France. But what happened next put over 200 lives in danger – and made history …

In the midst of the First World War, the hospital ship Rohilla set out from Queensferry on the east coast of Scotland with 229 crew and medical staff aboard. Their mission: to reach Dunkirk and bring wounded soldiers to medical help and safety. As they headed south, the crew, surgeons, St John Ambulance men and nurses were preparing to come face to face with people battling for their lives. But the ship would never reach its destination – and it was the people aboard her who would fight for survival.

The 7,400-ton Rohilla slammed through shuddering swells along the north east coast of England in the earliest hours of 30 October 1914. It was new territory for Rohilla’s Captain, David Landles Neilson. He and his crew only had a clock, chart and compass to fix their position, and had last calculated their location at sunset. Now the Rohilla drew close to a dark, rocky shoreline as a full-blown gale rose from the east. ‘It was one of the roughest nights we had had since we have been away,’ wrote Fred Reddiough, a St John Ambulance man who was aboard the ship. ‘The wind was blowing the ship wherever it wanted.’

Under wartime restrictions, navigation aids had been blacked out and silenced. No lights shined, no bells rang. But when Coastguard Albert James Jefferies peered to the north east through tired eyes from the Whitby cliffs, he saw the lights of a ship heading towards the rocky shoreline. He desperately signalled a warning using his morse lamp. The ship’s crew spotted the light and Captain Neilson altered the ship’s direction. It was too little, too late. Just after 4am, the Rohilla hit a reef known as Saltwick Nab. ‘The ship shook from stem to stern,’ wrote Reddiough. ‘We all nipped out of bed and the water was pouring down the hatches in torrents.’

Driven onto the reef
Up in the wheelhouse, Captain Neilson played his last card. The ship was still in deep water, putting the whole crew at risk of drowning. If he could power her further ashore, there was a hope that survivors could make their way to the little beach under the cliffs. Up at the Coastguard Station, Albert Jefferies watched with disbelief as the Rohilla steamed forward. She hit an underwater reef at speed. The impact broke the ship in half.

The vicious sea immediately reclaimed the aft part of the ship – it was swept away, taking the lives of anyone unlucky enough to be on that part of the deck. Among those on the remainder of the ship were Mary Roberts and Fred Reddiough, who wrote: ‘No sooner had I got up onto the boat deck than I was swept off my feet three times, the waves coming mountains high.’

In Whitby, lifeboat Coxswain Thomas Langlands rose to the firing of maroons. He decided that visibility was too poor to make an effective rescue attempt before daybreak. He also realised that the town’s main lifeboat could not launch without putting his own crew’s lives at risk: the gale had sent swells funnelling up the slipway. The alternative was Whitby’s No.2 lifeboat, John Fielden, moored in the harbour. But attempting to row her out of the harbour and down the coast through the gale would be equally dangerous. The Coxswain’s solution would involve a feat of human strength: he declared that the heavy wooden lifeboat would have to be carried across land to the beach within sight of the wreck. That would involve lifting John Fielden over a 2.4m sea wall.

Lifting, launching and lifesaving
At around 9.30am, the John Fielden finally approached the Rohilla. The lifeboat had been damaged by rocks, and her crew were exhausted after helping to launch and row her through the gale. But they were determined to save as many people as they could. Five women were the first to slip down the ship’s rope ladder and into the lifeboat.

Among them was Titanic survivor Mary Roberts, who can only have been wondering whether she was the luckiest or unluckiest woman alive. Twelve male medical staff followed and Langlands guided the lifeboat back to shore. Volunteers helped the survivors to the beach, while Langlands vowed to return to the wreck.

‘I said to myself, when that boat comes back, I am for it,’ wrote Fred Reddiough. ‘When it did come back, I got hold of a rope and slid down it into the lifeboat. A man pulled me in by the feet … I could not go through it again. Not for a fortune.’ Fred was one of 18 more people pulled to safety by the Whitby crew, and the lifeboat limped to shore, holed and awash with water. The John Fielden, now broken and unseaworthy, had played her last part in the Rohilla rescue. Where would hope lie for the rest of the wreck’s survivors?

In the following day and night, five other lifeboats attempted to reach the wreck (see previous page), but none could get close enough to the Rohilla, which was disintegrating in the continuing gale. Many of the wreck’s survivors had given up waiting for rescue and took their chances in the sea, attempting to swim to shore amidst the breaking waves and rocks. Some managed to reach shallow water and were helped ashore by volunteers. Others succumbed to the cold swells that battered the shoreline.

The engine roars
The powered craft used by the RNLI today would have been agile and powerful enough to get alongside the Rohilla. But, in 1914, motor lifeboats were relatively rare and viewed with suspicion by many crew members. There was a new motor lifeboat, Henry Vernon, stationed 40 miles to the north, though, in Tynemouth. Hearing of the failed attempts to reach the Rohilla, the Tynemouth crew assembled and steamed south. Stopping only to rest and to pick up barrels of oil in Whitby, the Tynemouth crew headed to the wreck, where around 50 survivors – including the captain – had clung on for 2½ days.

‘She stopped dead and discharged over the boiling sea gallons and gallons of oil,’ reported the Yorkshire Post in an account of the Tynemouth crew’s efforts. ‘The waves appeared suddenly to be flattened down … a cheer of relief went out from the shore when she reached the lee of the wreck. The feelings of those on board as they saw salvation at hand can only be imagined.’

The Rohilla’s remaining crew used their last ounces of energy to climb down the ladder into the waiting lifeboat, where Tynemouth Coxswain Robert Smith expertly held firm against the growing waves. ‘As the lifeboat shot past the wreck on her return journey she was struck broadside on by a great wave,’ added the Post, ‘but once more she manfully withstood the shock, and swept gaily out to sea.’ After days of failed attempts and lost souls, the story of the Rohilla had ended in rescue, thanks to an RNLI innovation: the motor lifeboat.

OARS VS ENGINES

‘It’s very hard to get alongside anything in a rowing lifeboat,’ says Pete Thomson, who was so inspired by the Rohilla story that he joined the Whitby lifeboat crew in 1967. Pete has restored William Riley (pictured above), the Upgang rowing lifeboat. ‘When you lift your oars, you lose power and half your manoeuvrability,’ explains Pete. ‘This rescue made the lifeboat crews realise that the future lay in engines.’

TIMELINE

9.30am, 30 October:
Whitby No.2 lifeboat
After being carried over a sea wall and rocks, Whitby’s No.2 lifeboat John Fielden launches and rescues 35 people in two attempts before becoming damaged beyond repair.

6.30am, 31 October:
Scarborough lifeboat
Weather prevents Scarborough lifeboat from launching unaided, so she is towed by a local trawler to the wreck site. But the crew can get no nearer and return home.

7am, 31 October:
Teesmouth lifeboat
After battling with the gale for 2 miles, the Teesmouth lifeboat crew hit the trough of a wave, spring a leak and damage their engine. They are taken ashore by tug.

7am and 12.30am, 31 October:
Whitby No.1 lifeboat
The Whitby crew manage to launch down the slipway. After two attempts, Coxswain Langlands has to admit defeat. The Rohilla is out of reach.

9am, 31 October:
Upgang lifeboat
Six horses and 100 men pull the William Riley lifeboat 2 miles to the cliff top at Whitby and lower the lifeboat down to the shore by rope. But the rescue attempt is abandoned.

6am, 1 November:
Tynemouth lifeboat
After a rough 44-mile journey through the night, the lifeboat crew reach the wreck site, calm the curling seas with oil and rescue the remaining crew.

THE AFTERMATH
• 84 people were lost
• 145 people were saved
• 6 RNLI Medals for
Gallantry were awarded to RNLI crew members
• A Silver Medal was awarded to local man George Peart, who swam into the surf and pulled survivors to safety