CITY OF CAIRO (November 6, 1942)

British passenger ship sunk by the U-68 (Kptlt. Karl-Friedrich Merten) 840 kilometres south of the British island of St. Helena. There were around 100 deaths among its 300 passengers and crew. Merten believed that the ship he had sunk was a 8,000 ton cargo boat. After the sinking, the U-boat commander helped rescue survivors still in the water and had them placed in the lifeboats. He then departed the scene with an apology for the sinking but not before he provided the survivors with precise details of how to reach St. Helena. However, one lifeboat drifted for fifty-one days before reaching the coast of Brazil. Only two of its original eighteen people on board, were still alive. Some years later the British survivors held a reunion in London and Merten was invited to attend having previously published his own account of the sinking. At the reunion, one of the survivors was heard to remark "We couldn't have been sunk by a nicer man". Karl-Friedrich Merten died of cancer in May, 1993.  (For the full story and photo of the City of Cairo go to...http://www.sscityofcairo.co.uk/)

HMS COURAGEOUS (September 17, 1939)

The 22,500 ton light cruiser, later converted to an escort carrier, commanded by Capt. W.T. Makeig-Jones, and accompanied by HMS Ark Royal and HMS Hermes, was sunk by German submarine U-29 (Kptlt. Otto Schuhart) while on anti-submarine duty 150 nautical miles west-south-west of Mizen Head, Ireland. A total of 576 men died in this tragedy, the first Royal Navy ship sunk in the war. Lost were 514 navy men, 26 Fleet Air Arm men and 36 RAF servicing crew. The carrier sank in about fifteen minutes after being hit by two torpedoes from a salvo of three fired from the U-boat. Captain Makeig-Jones stayed on the bridge and saluted the flag as the ship turned over and sank. All such patrols by aircraft carriers were stopped from then on. The entire crew of the U-29 was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class, when the boat made it safely back to Wilhelmshaven, the first time this decoration was awarded to members of the U-boat service. The U-29 survived the war and was scuttled on May 4, 1945.

HMS Courageous and HMS Westminster

 

 LANCASTRIA (June 17, 1940)

The Cunard/White Star passenger liner Lancastria, the former Tyrrhenia (16,243 tons), is bombed and sunk off St. Nazaire, France. While lying at anchor in the Charpentier Roads on the estuary of the River Loire, five enemy planes dive bombed the ship which sank in twenty minutes taking the lives of around 2,000 troops and over 1,000 civilians. The Lancastria had been converted into a troopship and set sail from Liverpool on June 14th to assist in the evacuation of British troops and refugees from France (Operation Aerial) Her captain, Rudolf Sharpe, took on board as many troops and refugees as possible. She was about to sail to England after loading on board soldiers and RAF personnel of the British Expeditionary Force, plus about a thousand of civilian refugees. One bomb exploded in the Number 2 hold where around 800 RAF personnel had been placed. About 1,400 tons of fuel oil spilled from the stricken vessel as the Dorniers dropped incendiaries in an attempt to set the oil on fire. The 2,477 survivors, including her captain, were picked up by HMS Havelock and other ships. The bomb which actually sank the Lancastria went straight down the funnel. The site of the sinking is now an official War Grave protected by The Protection of Military Remains Act of 1986. The loss of the Lancastria was the fourth largest maritime disaster of the war. Captain Rudolf Sharpe later lost his life when the ship he commanded, the Laconia, was sunk. Under the Official Secrets Act, the report on the Lancastria cannot be published until the year 2040. If it is proved that Captain Sharpe ignored the Ministry of Defence instructions not to exceed the maximum loading capacity of 3000 persons, grounds for compensation claims could be enormous. (A remembrance service is held in June each year in the St Catharine Cree Church in Leadenhall Street, London)

ARANDORA STAR (July 2, 1940)

One of four ships placed at the disposal of the War Office for the transportation of enemy aliens to Canada. The Arandora Star sailed from Liverpool, without escort, to St. John's, Newfoundland, carrying 473 German male civilians interned when war broke out in 1939, and 717 Italian male civilians interned after Mussolini declared war on June 10, 1940. The vessel carried a crew of 176 and a military guard of some 200 men. Also on board were some Italian internees from internment camps on the Isle of Man, many of whom were genuine refugees mistakenly selected for deportation. The 15,501 ton Arandora Star (Blue Star Line) was torpedoed and sunk by the German U-boat U-47, (Korvkpt. Günther Prien, 1908-1941) seventy five miles off Ireland, at 7.05am. A second explosion, apparently a boiler, broke the ship in two before she finally sank at 7.40am. At about 2.30pm, the Canadian destroyer, HMCS St. Laurent, found the lifeboats and started to take the survivors on board. They reached Greenock in Scotland on Wednesday, July 3, at 8.45am. where the sick and injured were taken to Mearnskirk Hospital  in Newton Mearns by a fleet of ambulances. The 813 survivors were later put on another ship, the Dunera, and transported to Australia. A total of 743 persons lost their lives on the Arandora Star: 146 Germans, 453 Italians, and 144 crew and soldiers. (The U-47 went missing on March 7, 1941) In Bardi, a village in northern Italy, a chapel has been built to commemorate the victims of the Arandora Star. This disaster changed British internment policy. From then on, all internees were interned in British camps only. (On a remote cliff on the island of Colansay a memorial was unveiled to commemorate all those who perished and in particular to a Giusseppe Delgrosso whose body was washed ashore near this spot. Near the memorial plaque is a cairn of stones. All visitors are requested to bring a stone and add it to the cairn so that it will continue to grow)

                                                  

CITY OF BENARES (September 17, 1940)

City Lines passenger liner of 11,000 tons (Captain Landles Nicoll) carrying some 400 passengers and 99 evacuee children on their way to a new life in Canada. Part of convoy OB-213, the ship was torpedoed by the U-48 (Heinrich Bleichrodt) when 600 miles and five days out from Liverpool, its starting point. A total of 325 souls were drowned including seventy seven of the ninety children on board. Many survivors were picked up by the destroyer HMS Hurricane. This tragedy ended the British Government's Children's Overseas Resettlement Scheme in which 1,530 children were sent to Canada, 577 to Australia, 353 to South Africa, 202 to New Zealand and another 838 children sent to the United States by the American Committee in London. In August, 1940, the Dutch liner Vollendam was torpedoed and sunk off Ireland but the 321 children on board were all saved. (HMS Hurricane was later lost on December 24, 1943 to the U-415). The U-48 survived the war and was scuttled on May 3, 1945.

                           
                                                                 City of Benares

 

SS PATRIA (November 25, 1940)

In September, 1940, around 3,000 Jewish refugees from Vienna, Prague and Danzig were attempting to reach Palestine. In a convoy of four river steamers, they set sail down the Danube and reached the Romanian port of Tulcea where they transferred to three Greek cargo ships named Atlantic, Pacific and Milos. Conditions on board these three ships were horrendous, reminiscent of Japanese hell-ships later in the war. Eventually the ships reached Palestinian waters, but the British Colonial Office refused them permission to land. It was finally decided to deport the refugees to the island of Mauritius where a special camp was to be built. The three ships were then brought into Haifa harbour where the liner Patria was berthed. The refugees were then embarked on the Patria and as the last passengers from the Atlantic were coming on board, a tremendous explosion ripped the liner apart. The death toll amounted to 267 refugees killed. The explosion was the work of the Jewish underground army, the Haganah, who had meant only to damage the ship to prevent it sailing but had miscalculated the amount of explosives needed to disable the ship.

 

 

HMS HOOD (May 24, 1941)

Britain's largest battle cruiser, (44,600 tons) sunk by the German battleship Bismarck commanded by Admiral Lütjens and captained by Captain Ernest Lindemann. In an early morning action in the Denmark Strait, between Iceland and Greenland, the Bismarck, accompanied by the cruiser Prince Eugen (Captain Helmuth Brinkmann), were en route from Bergen in Norway to the Atlantic when they intercepted the Hood, the Prince of Wales and six escorting destroyers. From 26,000 yards, the Bismarck opened fire and at 16,500 yards scored a direct hit on the Hood's magazine causing the 112 tons of explosives to blow up. The battleship, commanded by Vice Admiral Sir Lancelot Holland, went down in about four minutes. Of a crew of 1,417 (94 officers and 1,323 ratings and Royal Marines) there were only three survivors, a death toll of 1,414. The mighty battleship had only fired its guns once in anger, at Mers El Kebir in 1940. The day the Hood sailed from Scapa Flow repairs were attempted on a defect in the magazines hydraulic system which failed to lift the cartridge into the loading position. In the heat of battle, could this defect have caused the cartridge and the whole magazine to explode? Did the Hood in fact, self destruct? For the Bismarck to score a direct hit on the magazine at this distance must be the luckiest shot of the war. The second question is why did the German battleships break off the engagement instead of pursuing and engaging the Prince of Wales?

BISMARCK (May 27, 1941)

Hitler’s greatest warship. Fully loaded she weighed 50,153 tons. After her encounter with HMS Hood (20 years older than the Bismarck) she headed for St. Nazaire, the only port on the coast of France with a dry dock big enough to hold her. An order was given by Churchill to "Get the Bismarck". The hunt for the battleship dominated the world’s press, the chase lasting four days and covering 1,750 sea miles. Spotted by a Coastal Command Catalina flying boat, her position was reported to the Royal Navy ships. Finally, on May 27, the mighty battleship met her end after 277 days of war service. Severely damaged by salvos from the battleships HMS King George V,  HMS Rodney, and by torpedoes from the cruiser HMS Dorsetshire, she was finally scuttled by her crew. Casualties amounted to 2,097 officers, men and cadets lost including Admiral Lutjens and Captain Lindemann. There were 115 survivors, picked up by the Dorsetshire and the destroyer Maori. In 1989, the wreck of the Bismarck was found. She lies intact and upright at 4,763 metres about 602 miles off the coast of Brittany.

I haven't included many ships that were sunk during this early period of the war, but the few I have submitted so far, give some indication of the number of lives lost at sea, which seem to be neglected in accounts of WW2 casualities, and does not included lives lost in convoys from America to Britain.

Jimbert

 

8860

 

 

HMS BARHAM (November 25, 1941)

The 31,100 ton British battleship blows up in the Mediterranean, north of Sidi Barrani, after being hit on the port side by three torpedoes from the German submarine U-331 commanded by Kptlt. von Tiesenhausen. About four minutes after the torpedoes struck, the Barham's 15-inch magazine exploded, which completely disintegrated the battleship and sending up an enormous cloud of black smoke which covered her sinking. A total of 862 crewmen perished including her commander, Captain G. C. Cooke. There were 449 men rescued from the water by the destroyers HMS Hotspur and HMAS Nizam. The U-331 was later sunk on November 17, 1942, by torpedo-carrying Swordfish from the carrier HMS Formidable. (32 men died, 15 were rescued). Kptlt. Hans-Diedrich Tiesenhausen was one of the rescued and survived the war. He died on August 17, 2000, in Vancouver, Canada, at the age of 85.

It was during a spiritual séance in Portsmouth that the apparition of a dead sailor appeared and told the gathering, which including his mother, that his ship had been sunk. (The ship in question was  the Barham) The gathering was presided over by Helen Duncan, a citizen of Edinburgh and one of Britain's most respected materialization mediums. The dead sailors mother then contacted the War Office asking for details of the sinking and explaining how she came to hear of it. As ship sinkings during wartime was classified 'Secret'  an investigation was launched and Helen Duncan, a mother of seven, was arrested and charged under the Witchcraft Act of 1735. After her release from prison she continued to bring comfort to grieving wartime families. In 1951, the Witchcraft Act was repealed and four years later Spiritualism was formally recognised as a religion. Helen Duncan died in 1956 at age 59 after many attempts to clear her name.

                                             
                                                                   The end of HMS Barham

The first British (non-military) vessel to be sunk in WW II was the liner SS Athenia torpedoed on the day war was declared, 3 September 1939. 112 were killed, including 28 Americans. 

MERCHANT SEAMAN LOSES I THINK WERE  25% JIMBERT FROM CANADA TO BRITAIN.

THEY WERE ALSO PAID EXTRA FOR EACH TRIP ACROSS.

IT WAS ONLY A FEW YEARS BACK THAT THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT RECONNIZED THEIR ACHIVEMENTS AND LISTED THEM ALONG WITH OTHER AS VETRANS. UP UNTIL THEN THEY DIDN'T QUALIFY FOR PENSIONS ETC.

 

PBA

In our Royal and Merchant navies, your pay was stopped from the moment your ship went down until (either) you were repatriated and hit British shore or you signed fresh articles.

Your more optimistic seamen took that as permitting mutiny and drinking the ship's rum and licencing any kind of behaviour.

The hangman wasn't impressed.

Peter

Question about the Hood?  I have heard that there was a 4 crew member that survived the Hood.  He was ashore when the Hood was put to sea and missed the sailing.  That there was so much confusing in completing the refit to the Hood and the Battle happened within days of the sailing he was not missed and presumed dead.  His mother drew his death pension well after the war even thou she knew he was not killed.  Is the a fact or a myth?

 

 

 

sunny  

I've heard something about that, I think it's a true story.

SS STRUMA (February 24, 1942)

The Romanian ship Struma sailed from Constansa under the command of a Bulgarian captain, G.T. Gorbatenkoin, and flying the Panamanian flag. There were 769 Romanian Jews on board, including 269 women and children, many from the town of Barland, their hope was to reach Palestine. After three days at sea, the Struma anchored off the outer harbour at Instanbul, with engine trouble. Here she awaited British permission to proceed to Palestine, permission which the British refused (a mistake they were to regret) one reason given was 'It will encourage a flood of refugees'. Turkey, for some unknown reason, likewise refused them to disembark although the local Jewish community, who were already running a camp for Displaced Persons, were quite willing to take the Struma's passengers and were in the meantime supplying them with food and water. One of the passengers, Medeea Marcovici, suffered an embolism and was transferred to the Jewish hospital in Instanbul. She was granted a visa for Palestine and died there in 1996.

After two months at Istanbul with engines that were damaged beyond repair, conditions on board became appalling, many of the passengers now suffering from dysentery and malnutrition. Eventually the Turkish police arrived to tow the Struma out into the Black Sea. The British had exerted strong pressure on Turkey to pursue this course. The enraged passengers fought then off but a second attempt, where force was used, succeeded and the Struma was towed out and cast adrift outside Turkish territorial waters. This inhuman decision by the Turkish and British governments was to destroy the special relationship between Britain and the Zionist Jews. On the water for 74 days since leaving Conatansa, the Struma, hopelessly overcrowded, and with no country willing to accept them, was suddenly torpedoed and sunk by the Russian submarine SHCH-213 commanded by Lt. Col. Isaev, just ten miles from Istanbul. All on board, a total of 769 persons, perished except one, nineteen year old Romanian Jew David Stoljar who today (1999) lives in Oregon, USA. The British High Commissioner in Palestine, Sir Harold MacMichael, stated: "The fate of these people was tragic, but the fact remains that they were nationals of a country at war with Britain, proceeding direct from enemy territory. Palestine was under no obligations towards them".

USS JUNEAU (November 13, 1942)

American anti-aircraft light cruiser named after the capital city of Alaska. During the night actions of the naval Battle of Guadalcanal the Juneau, commissioned in February, 1942, was struck by a torpedo from the Japanese submarine I-26. The torpedo was meant for the American cruiser San Francisco but missed and hit the Juneau. Badly damaged, the ship tried to escape from the battle zone but was again hit by a second torpedo which apparently hit the powder magazine causing the ship to explode in a great ball of fire. This time the Juneausank in less than thirty seconds taking the lives of her Captain and 687 crew members. There were about 115 survivors but only 10 were alive when help arrived eight days later. On board the Juneau were the five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, George, Francis, Joseph, Madison and Albert who had enlisted together on January 3, 1942 and insisted on serving on the same ship. Four of the brothers died in the explosion, the fifth, George,  died from his wounds on a raft some days later. After this tragedy, President Roosevelt issued instructions that in future if any American family lost more than two sons, the remaining boys would be relieved from further combat duty and sent home. A new ship, The Sullivans, was named in their honour and christened by the boys' mother, Mrs. Alleta Sullivan, in April, 1943. It was the first US Navy ship with a plural name and went on to earn 9 battle stars while serving in the Pacific theatre. She was decommissioned in 1965 and is now moored at the pier side of the Naval and Servicemen's Park in Buffalo, New York.

USS ARGONAUT(January 10, 1943)

The Argonaut was the largest submarine ever built in the US. (until the advent of nuclear submarines) At 3,128 tons she was designed primarily as a minelayer but later, in 1942, was converted to a troop carrying submarine and based at Brisbane, Australia. In January, 1943, while on patrol in the dangerous waters between New Britain and Bougainville, just south of St. George's Channel, her captain, Lt. Cmdr. John Pierce, spotted a Japanese convoy of five freighters with their three destroyer escorts. When in position for an attack the Argonaut fired one torpedo at one of the freighters and was immediately counterattacked by the destroyers. Badly damaged by depth charges, the destroyers circled the Argonaut pumping shell after shell into her hull until she sank below the waves taking 105 officers and men with her to the sea bed. There were no survivors.

I.J.N. ASASHIO (March 2/7, 1943)

The Japanese destroyer Asahio was one of eight on escort duty guarding a convoy of eight crowded transports carrying 5,954 soldiers of the Japanese 20th and 51st Infantry Divisions of the Japanese Imperial Army, plus 400 naval marines, from Rabaul to Lae, New Guinea, a distance of 260 miles. The convoy was spotted and attacked in relays by a force of 268 American and Australian fighters and bombers of all types from airfields around Milne Bay in Papua. The convoy was spotted while crossing the Huon Gulf and heading towards Lae, about eighty miles away. The attack turned out to be pure slaughter in one of the biggest air attacks of the Pacific war.  All the troop transports, including the 5,000 ton Kyokusei Maru, and the 3,800 ton Shinai Maru, and four destroyers were sunk in this concentrated and persistent attack. Some of the transports were scuttled, the troops making their way to shore in lifeboats and rafts. On the way, most were destroyed by bombing and strafing by Allied fighters, many of the troops being taken by sharks as they struggled in the water like drowning rats.

The slaughter continued for days until nothing more lived on the waters of Huon Gulf. (A legitimate act of war to prevent those enemy troops from reaching land and being rearmed to fight another day). The destroyer Arashio 1,500 tons (sister ship of the Asashio) was sunk, as were two others, the Tokitsukaza, 2,000 tons, and the Shirayuki, 1,700 tons. It was believed that 2,890 Japanese troops and ships crews perished. Around 850 were rushed to Lae at the start of the attack, the destroyers then returning to the battle zone to rescue more survivors.  Some 3,145 men were picked up from the water by the Japanese destroyers and a couple of Japanese submarines and taken to Rabaul. Ninety two men managed to reach the shore of New Guinea and a small number made it safely to nearby islands. Only three allied fighters and two bombers were shot down, the Japanese lost 63 aircraft.

USS MADDOX (DD 622)  (July 10, 1943)

During Operation ‘Husky�?(the invasion of Sicily) the American two stack destroyer Maddox, on antisubmarine duty 15 miles off Gela Point, Sicily, was singled out by a lone JU-88 bomber of KG-54 Group. Two 250 pound bombs were dropped, the second struck the No 5 gun turret. The blast triggered off an explosion in the magazine, demolishing the rear end of the ship. She then rolled over and started to sink below the waves stern first, her depth charges exploding as she went under. It was all over in less than two minutes after the bomb hit the ship, the fastest sinking of any US vessel in WWII. Those men in the bowels of the ship had no chance, 212 of them going down with the vessel. There were 74 survivors who were rescued by a tug nearby. (After the war, the pilot of the JU-88 was traced in Germany and invited to a survivors reunion in May, 1998, a reunion which the pilot, Kurt Fox, now Dr Fox, was delighted to attend)