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The 23^rd of October 1915 saw the infant New Zealand Army Nursing Service suffer its greatest disaster then or since. A torpedo struck the transport ship Marquette leading to the death of ten nurses and great feats of bravery, pluck and tenacity by the 26 surviving nurses.  Read this excerpt from Nursing Review's upcoming feature on the Marquette tragedy 

It was a cool morning as the troop carrier Marquette steamed into the Gulf of Salonika on October 23 2015.

She had left Port Said, Egypt a few days earlier with 600 British troops, more than 500 mules, tons of ammunition and the 130 plus members of the New Zealand Stationery Hospital on board. The ship was expected to dock in its destination, the city of Salonika on Greece's Aegean coast, by midday after a sunny and calm crossing of the Mediterranean that not even rumours of German submarines, lifeboat drills or the Balkan war zone awaiting them could fully take the shine off.

Around 9am that grey morning nurses Mary Grigor and Jeannie Sinclair were walking briskly on the deck with hospital colleague Captain Isaacs. Most of the 36 nursing 'sisters' were below deck – including Fanny Abbott with her stockings off having a morning wash in her slippers – when the trio saw a 'green line' whizzing through the sea. They wondered aloud whether it was a torpedo just before it struck the Marquette's starboard – close to the bow. The ship quickly dipped in the bow and started to list heavily to port.

What happened in the next few minutes (some say it took just seven and others up to 15 minutes for the Marquette to sink) is not without controversy. Some contemporary media reports were later criticised by surviving nurses for exaggerating their bravery and condemned by some army officers for calling into question their gallantry.

By all accounts at first the lifeboat drills held people in good stead with the nurses donning their life belts and dividing in two groups with 18 stoically waiting at the port lifeboat station and 18 at the starboard for the boats to be lowered 

"Everyone was so calm and although men and girls alike were as white as sheets no-one cried or spoke even except to give orders," recalled survivor Edith (Poppy) Popplewell.

But then things started to go terribly awry as reported by Major Wylie of the New Zealand Medical Corp in his official statement:

"Owing, however, to the unfortunate bungling of the lowering of these boats a series of catastrophes occurred on each side of the vessel." 

On the port side one boatload of nurses was successfully lowered but 'bungling' and the list of the ship saw the second boat swing and fall on the first killing some of the nurses outright and severely injuring others.

Jeannie Sinclair was on the damaged first boat and was pulled onto the "hopeless overloaded" second boat but with the Marquette listing ominously she decided – though a poor swimmer – to risk returning to the water and swimming for it. She asked a swimming crew member to give her "a tow" which he did. "It was awful going past the ship and seeing a large, gaping hole and all the mules there, and wondering if the vessel would fall on top of us and I would be killed."

(Rest of article will be available in our edition in early May)