On the morning of 22 September 1914, just six weeks into the First World War, three Royal Navy armoured cruisers were sunk by a German U-boat in the southern North Sea. The action lasted less than 90 minutes but the lives of 1,459 men and boys were lost - more than the British losses at the Battle of Trafalgar or in the sinking of RMS Lusitania. Yet, curiously, few have ever heard of the incident.

The Coal Black Sea tells the extraordinary true story of the disaster from the perspectives of the men serving on HMS Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy, and the German submariners who orchestrated the attack. It also examines how the ignominious loss provoked widespread criticism of the highly ambitious First Lord of the Admiralty, the 39-year-old Winston Churchill. While the families of the victims grieved, Churchill succeeded in playing down the significance of the disaster and shifted the blame to those serving at sea to save his faltering career.

Using a range of official and archival records, Stuart Heaver exposes this false narrative and corrects over a century of misinformation to honour those who lost their lives in the worst naval catastrophe of the First World War.

Autorentext

Former naval officer Stuart Heaver is a professional journalist and features writer with a special interest in maritime affairs and maritime history. His work has been published in the Independent, Daily Telegraph and the Guardian.

Klappentext

September 1914. When three Royal Navy armoured cruisers were sunk in a single morning in the southern North Sea, causing 1,459 deaths, the British public reacted with shock and dismay. It was only six weeks into the war, and the loss was a huge blow to national morale. The incident also triggered a public relations disaster, a barrage of criticism, and a political crisis for the highly ambitious, 39-year-old First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. And yet, curiously, few have even heard of the incident. Even today, it has no proper name and is not even officially designated as an action by the Royal Navy. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Churchill spun a false narrative for the press and seemingly doctored official documents, all to save his faltering career. He claimed that the cruisers (part of the so-called 'live bait squadron' due to their supposed inefficiencies) were old and expendable, when they were anything but, and, in betraying those who died, shifted the blame onto commanding officers for their handling of the attack. Some of that false narrative was so skilfully woven that it still permeates official histories of the First World War, creating a lasting legacy of misinformation and fake news more than a century later.