Britannia ~ 25 March 1941

The Britannia was built in Glasgow by Alexander
Stephen & Sons. She entered service in 1926.
Found at www.ssbritannia.org.

The SS Britannia was built in Glasgow by Alexander Stephen and Sons. She entered service in 1926. On the 11th March 1941 SS Britannia set out from Liverpool to Freetown, Durban and Bombay. She was originally a passenger ship of the Anchor Line and was operating as a troop ship under the command of Captain A Collie.

The voyage began with the Britannia as a member of a convoy with an anti-submarine escort. By the 25th of March the rest of the convoy had disappeared and the Britannia was on her own. Early that same morning she was attacked by the German Hilfskreuzer (auxiliary cruiser) Thor, a converted merchant ship, under the command of Kapitän Otto Kähler.

The Thor was armed with six 5.9 inch guns and easily overpowered the Britannia. When her single rear 4 inch gun was destroyed Captain Collie gave the order to abandon ship.

Britannia's radio operator had managed to get off an RRR (Raider, Raider, Raider) signal with her location, which was acknowledged by Sierra Leone radio. The Thor picked up radio traffic which indicated that a Royal Navy warship was on its way at speed. In the light of this information, Kapitän Kähler did not stay to pick up survivors.

After giving warning and allowing time to abandon ship, he shelled the Britannia on her waterline and she sank quickly. He heard later that no warship had arrived and that some of the survivors had spent many days on rafts and in lifeboats before being picked up by other ships that happened to be in the area. 

The SS Britannia was carrying service personnel, passengers and crew when she was attacked and sunk. There were 492 people on board, 243 of them survived. The survivors took to the ship's lifeboats and some threw baulks of timber overboard and used them as makeshift rafts. Many died at sea as they waited to be rescued. Lifeboat #5 carried about 50 survivors who were picked up by the Spanish ship Bachi.

The Spanish ship Cabo de Hornos was in the area five days after the sinking and picked up 2nd Lt. Cox, Sub Lt. Davidson and Lt. Rowlandson from the 1st Raft. On board the Cabowas a French Baroness who, with Lt. Rowlandson, persuaded the captain to keep searching. They later picked up Spencer Mynott and Alfred Warren from the 2nd Raft, and survivors from another raft and two lifeboats, a total of 77, who were taken to the island of Tenerife.

67 were rescued by the MV Raranga and taken to Montevideo. Four more survivors on another raft were picked up by another Spanish ship. After 23 days at sea, 38 survivors reached the coast of Brazil on Britannia's Lifeboat Number Seven, having navigated across most of the Atlantic.

Sources differ considerably between the numbers of passengers, crew and survivors. Official sources record 243 survivors out of a total of 492 who set out.

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