One hundred years today, on June 5, 1916, Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War, drowned when the HMS Hampshire sank in the North Sea off the Orkneys. Of the 655 crewmen and 7 passengers, including Lord Kitchener, aboard the cruiser, only 12 crewmen survived. His death, just days after the ambiguous outcome of the Battle of Jutland, came as great shock to the British populace. Lord Kitchener’s death would also spawn a myriad of conspiracy theories.
Lord Kitchener was famous for his imperial campaigns in Khartoum and the Boer War and had played a central, if not always a successful role in shaping British military strategy during the First Word War. His image on recruiting posters is considered to be one of the most enduring and iconic images of the war. Despite his fame and ubiquitous image on recruiting posters, Kitchener was facing increased criticism from within the British government. Lord Kitchener had been convinced to support the Gallipoli campaign which was a costly defeat and also became caught up in the Shell Crisis of 1915 when the British forces faced a shortage of artillery shells on the front lines of World War I.
On June 4, 1916, Lord Kitchener departed on a secret diplomatic mission to Russia, bound for Archangel on the Devonshire-class armored cruiser HMS Hampshire. On the 5th, the cruiser is believed to have struck a mine laid by the German minelaying submarine U-75 just before the Battle of Jutland.
Kitchener’s sudden and unexpected death coupled with his celebrity helped to spawn numerous conspiracy theories explaining his demise. Some have claimed that he was assassinated variously by Irish nationalists, Russian communists, a German spy or by the British government. Another claimed that Kitchener was killed in a conspiracy masterminded by Winston Churchill to make a fortune on the stock market. Perhaps the wildest theory was that Kitchener fled to Russia, changed his identity and became known to the world as Joseph Stalin. He was also allegedly spotted living in a cave in Orkney.
The British Admiralty conducted two investigations of the sinking of HMS Hampshire. The first, immediately after the sinking and the second, 10 years later. Each of them concluded that the ship must have hit a German mine. Nevertheless, many Admiralty documents were kept secret, further fueling the claims of conspiracy.
Finally, in the late 1960s, the secret records of Admiralty investigations were declassified. Reports from captured German archives note that the log of submarine U75 recorded her scattering mines in the area around Scapa Flow just before the disaster and that the U75 claimed the Hampshire as one of her victims.