100 Kiwi Stories from WWl: Sub sank ship full of nurses

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Hundreds of vessels were sunk by U-boats and Allied submarines during World War I, from the Mediterranean to the South Atlantic to the Pacific.

Somehow, hospital ships became caught up in the carnage - and New Zealand was dragged into it.

The Naval Defence Act of 1913 gave birth to the New Zealand Naval Forces, as they were first called. New Zealand asked Britain for training and equipment, and HMS Philomel was given to us on July 15, 1914 - to be used strictly as a training vessel. World War I erupted two weeks later.

The next step was for New Zealanders to train by serving in the Royal Navy on the Psyche and Pyramus, which escorted the NZEF to Samoa. After that we had to organise our first battle cruiser, HMS New Zealand, which helped the British fight Germany at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

Around this time, the practice of laying mines in key shipping routes steadily turned into routine attacks on hospital ships. Usually those ships were sunk with torpedoes; occasionally U-boats would point their weapons at a vessel, order its occupants out, and destroy the vessel.

Hospital ships were supposed to bear a red cross and green stripes, not carry troops or arms, and offer themselves up for spot inspections. But they were sunk during the war at the rate of one every two months. Even the British destroyed the hospital ships Tirol, Tabora, Oceania and Elektra; Germany sunk four times as many as the Allies.

It was little surprise, then, that the transport ship HMT Marquette was attacked on October 23, 1915. It was full of nurses, but unmarked, and its French naval escort had left it the previous day.

Catherine Anne Fox of Dunedin had begged authorities to let her enlist in the Army Nursing Service Corps in 1915. She tended the wounded in Egypt before the Marquette sailed from Alexandria up the Aegean towards NZ troops needing relief from Gallipoli in October 1915.

When a torpedo from U-35 hit, the Marquette quickly sank with 10 Kiwi nurses among the 167 dead.

Fox is commemorated at the Mikra Memorial in Greece, in a glass ceiling at Auckland War Memorial Museum and at the Christchurch Nurses Memorial Chapel.

100 Kiwi Stories runs every Monday and Thursday.