Busy at work. Directors’ meeting. I had a few letters and managed them all right. Very late for dinner.
Got news that the “Hawke”1 had been sunk by a submarine off Scotland with heavy loss of life. Went up town at night to see Belgian wounded come in, but none arrived. Wrote to Ernie.
HMS Hawke was an old cruiser (launched 1891), on patrol in the North Sea with sister ship Theseus, at which submarine U9 aimed a torpedo, which missed Theseus and hit Hawke; 524 out of 594 crew were lost. In 1911 Hawke had had the distinction of having her bow sheared off in a collision in the Solent with RMS Olympic, sister ship of the Titanic, slightly smaller but at that date still the largest liner afloat. ↩