HMS Ben-my-Chree (Manx: "Woman of My Heart"[1]) was a British packet steamer which served as a seaplane carrier in the Royal Navy during World War I.

[3] After Gallipoli was evacuated at the end of the year, Ben-my-Chree became the flagship of the East Indies and Egypt Seaplane Squadron which operated in the Eastern Mediterranean, performing reconnaissance missions and attacking Ottoman facilities and troops.

She was sunk by Ottoman artillery fire while anchored at the recently occupied island of Kastellorizo in early 1917, with five members of her crew being injured.

They were powered by steam provided by four cylindrical boilers at a working pressure of 170 psi (1,172 kPa; 12 kgf/cm2)[6] that gave her a speed of 24.2 knots (44.8 km/h; 27.8 mph).

[2] She was ordered in 1907 by the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company and was built at the Vickers shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness at a cost of £112,000.

[2] SS Ben-my-Chree was chartered by the Royal Navy on 1 January 1915 and she began her conversion into a seaplane carrier at the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead the following day.

[7] On 6 May, while on another unsuccessful mission to attack Norddeich, she was accidentally rammed by the destroyer Lennox in thick fog, although damage was slight.

Her aircraft were mainly involved in spotting for ships providing naval gunfire support for troops ashore, although they also conducted reconnaissance missions of the area.

On 11 August, one of these missions had spotted an Ottoman ship off the north coast of the Sea of Marmora and, on the following day, Flight Commander Charles Edmonds attacked it flying a Short 184 seaplane.

He left his observer behind and flew with a reduced fuel load to lighten his aircraft enough to carry a 14-inch (356 mm), 810-pound (370 kg) torpedo.

[13] French troops occupied the Greek island of Kastellorizo, off the southwest coast of Turkey, on 20 December 1916 to use it as an advance base against the Ottomans.

Not pleased at the presence of the French, the Ottomans secretly deployed an artillery battery of four 155-millimetre (6.1 in) and twelve 77-millimetre (3.0 in) guns within range of the island.

[3] (See Mustafa Ertuğrul Aker) The crew was ordered to abandon ship after about forty minutes of the bombardment using the only remaining operable motor lifeboat of the three stowed on board.

Later in the day, the captain and the chief engineer returned to the wreck to rescue the ship's mascots, a cat and dog which had both survived the attack.