Qualla: HMS Cressy

HMS Cressy: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AnonymousUnknown author, Public domain. By 7:20 a.m. on 22 September 1914, HMS Cressy's crew already knew. They had watched Aboukir go over and Hogue capsize ten minutes after; they had seen U-9's bows break the surface as she fired and her gunners had even put rounds at her. Cressy had tried to ram and failed. By every rational measure, she should have run. Instead, Captain Robert Johnson kept his boats in the water and his decks full of men dragging soaked stokers out of the North Sea. When Otto Weddigen's last torpedo struck her port side at 7:30 and ruptured her boilers, scalding the men in the engine room, she had been standing still in a known killing ground for a quarter of an hour, on purpose, to save other Englishmen.

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Image: AnonymousUnknown author | Public domain

HMS Cressy: A Ship of the Old Navy

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hugh Llewelyn from Keynsham, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. Cressy was the lead ship of her class, an armoured cruiser of twelve thousand long tons, 472 feet long and 69 in the beam, with thirty Belleville boilers feeding two four-cylinder triple-expansion engines that could push her at 20.7 knots on her sea trials - the slowest of her si...

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Image: Hugh Llewelyn from Keynsham, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

HMS Cressy: The Live Bait Squadron

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agence Rol. Agence photographique (commanditaire), Public domain. When war came in August 1914 she was recommissioned into the 7th Cruiser Squadron, set patrolling the Broad Fourteens of the southern North Sea with her sister ships. Officers in the Grand Fleet called the squadron the Live Bait Squadron with grim accuracy: three obsolete cruiser...

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Image: Agence Rol. Agence photographique (commanditaire) | Public domain

HMS Cressy: Twenty Minutes That Knew Better

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wilhelm Malchin (1874-1942), Public domain. On the morning of 22 September the destroyers that should have escorted the cruisers were sheltering from heavy weather. Cressy, Aboukir and Hogue steamed line abreast, 2,000 yards apart, at ten knots. Otto Weddigen brought U-9 to periscope depth and put a torpedo into Aboukir's ...

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Image: Wilhelm Malchin (1874-1942) | Public domain

HMS Cressy: The Last Torpedo

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit UK Government, Public domain. Weddigen fired two torpedoes from his stern tubes at 07:20; only one struck. He swung U-9 around to bring his last bow torpedo to bear. At 07:30 he fired from about 550 yards. The torpedo opened Cressy's port side and ruptured the boilers - men below boiled in steam in the same i...

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Image: UK Government | Public domain

HMS Cressy: What Cressy's Boats Mean

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit UK Government, Public domain. Cressy's officers and her captain knew what they were doing when they kept lowering boats. They were not naïve. They could see U-9 surface and dive; they had even opened fire on her. They stopped anyway, because the alternative was leaving hundreds of men to drown in 50-degree wa...

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Image: UK Government | Public domain