The Live Bait Squadron

Henk van der Linden

In one of the largest naval disasters in world history, three British cruisers -- HMS Cressy, Hogue and Aboukir -- were torpedoed by a German submarine and went down in the North Sea just off the Dutch coast seven weeks into the First World War. The British crews were totally unprepared for the attack, and the number of victims almost equalled that of the Titanic. For weeks afterward, bodies of British sailors washed ashore on the Dutch coast. Of the combined crew of 2296 there were 837 survivors.