Hospital ships Essequibo and Braemar Castle and the French nuns

[JennyW]

There are lots of posts about hospital ship Braemar Castle but I couldn’t resist sharing this story of how HMHS Essequibo picked up the stranded survivors of the Braemar Castle after it was hit in the Aegean Sea on 24^th Nov 1916.  HMHS Britannic had also been in trouble - and sank - at about the same time.

These pages are from notes of temporary Major John Gimlette RAMC  who in 1916 was medical officer in charge on the Essequibo – the interesting part of his story starts 2/3 of the way down the page he has numbered ‘3’.   He blamed torpedoes for the damage to both hospital ships – I gather that it is generally now thought that they both hit mines - but otherwise I can’t see any reason why his story shouldn’t be accurate.

[Falloden]

Essequibo was certainly kept very busy according to this report.