HMS Otranto. Charles Goldsworthy, aged 17, survived the Otranto’s disastrous shipwreck in which hundreds of lives were lost.
charles goldsworthy, born 1900
SURVIVOR OF HMS OTRANTO SHIPWRECK
Charles Goldsworthy won a P&O scholarship to the Royal Navy’s training ship HMS Worcester, now the Thames Nautical Training College. He was posted to HMS Otranto, an armed merchant cruiser requisitioned by the Royal Navy when World War I began in 1914. In 1918 it was being used as a troopship, bringing US Army troops across the Atlantic from New York. Goldsworthy describes in this account his experiences in New York City, and the disastrous shipwreck of the Otranto off the coast of Islay in Scotland, during which hundreds lost their lives. Despite suffering from Spanish Flu, which he had caught in New York, Goldsworthy, who was 17, survived the shipwreck. After the war he worked for P&O, then for Sperry Gyroscope, re-joining the Royal Navy in 1939, training cadets at Devonport. After World War II he developed a business manufacturing a novel type of vertical ship’s propellor known as the Voith Schneider.
Source: Contributed in 2020 by Veronica Dare-Bryan, daughter of Charles Goldsworthy.