RMS Mauretania (1906) and launched with passengers. When "Britannic", working as a hospital ship during World War I, sank in 1916 after hitting a mine in the Kea channel the already davited boats were swiftly lowered saving nearly all on board, but the ship took nearly three times as long to sink as "Lusitania" and thus the crew had more time to evacuate passengers. "Mauretania" departed Liverpool on her maiden voyage on 16 November 1907 under the command of Captain John Pritchard, and on the return voyage captured the record for the fastest eastbound crossing of the Atlantic, with an average speed of
U-boat Campaign (World War I) operations. One of the ships sunk near the Norwegian coast was the Romanian merchant "Bistrița", sunk by "U-43" on 11 November. Before sinking the ship, the captain of the U-boat allowed the ship's crew to take refuge in his submarine, then later he handed over the crew to a Russian sailing ship which took them to Vardø. From there, they were eventually repatriated. The Constantinople Flotilla was established in May 1915 and operated U-boats in the Black Sea. Bulgaria joined the campaign in May 1916, when the German submarine "UB-8" was commissioned by the Bulgarian Navy as "Podvodnik". In three