Abukir ~ 28 May 1940

Found at www.colabee.blogspot.com

Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson built this ship at Wallsend on the River Tyne in northeast England, completing her in November 1920. She was built as Island Queen for the London and Channel Islands Steamship Company, which appointed Cheesewright and Ford of London to manage her. In 1934 London and Channel Islands sold the ship to Monroe Brothers of Liverpool, who renamed her Kyle Queen. In 1935 Monroe Brothers sold her to the Khedivial Mail Steamship and Graving Dock Company of Alexandria, which operated ships and docks for the Kingdom of Egypt. The company, which traded as the Khedivial Mail Line (KML), renamed the ship Abukir after the coastal town of Abu Qir on the edge of the Nile delta and registered her in Alexandria. In 1936 the company was reconstituted as the Pharaonic Mail Line, but continued trading as the KML.

Although Egypt was supposedly independent, in practice the British Empire controlled the country. In 1940 the UK Ministry of War Transport requisitioned seven KML ships and placed five of them, including Abukir, under the management of the General Steam Navigation Company, a subsidiary of P&O.

On May 10, 1940 Germany invaded the Low Countries, overrunning Luxembourg within hours and the Netherlands within a week. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and French First Army advanced into Flanders to reinforce Belgian forces, and each sent a liaison mission to coordinate with the Belgian Grand Quartier ("High Command"). The British mission was named after its leader, the staff officer Major-General Henry Needham. Abukir was also sent to Belgium, where she arrived later in May at the Port of Ostend and unloaded a cargo of Army stores for the BEF.

German forces broke the French First Army, crossed the French frontier and on May 20 reached the Baie de Somme on the English Channel. This trapped the BEF and remaining French forces in northern Flanders, where they retreated toward Ostend, Nieuwpoort and Dunkirk. On May 27 Operation Dynamo began to evacuate the BEF by sea from Dunkirk. That afternoon at 1754 hrs the Needham Mission at the Belgian GQG reported that King Leopold III planned to negotiate a surrender to Germany. The Mission then retreated to the Port of Ostend, where Abukir was berthed. The Mission was among more than 200 BEF soldiers, RAF and Belgian Air Component personnel who crowded onto Abukir, along with 15 German prisoners of war, six priests, 40 to 50 women including a party of nuns from a convent in Bruges and a group of British schoolgirls. At 2220 hrs, under the cover of darkness, the little coaster sailed for England.

As Abukir slowly headed west for England, Luftwaffe aircraft bombed her for an hour and a half but failed to hit her. Then at 0115 hrs on May 28 a 44-knot   Kriegsmarine E-boat, S-34 commanded by OLt.z.S Obermaier, attacked her off Nieuwpoort near the Westhinder or the Noordhinder lightvessel. Abukir Captain Rowland Morris-Woolfenden, took a zigzag course by which the coaster avoided two torpedoes from S-34. The coaster sighted S-34 off her port bow 20 minutes later. Morris-Woolfenden changed course to ram the torpedo boat, but with a top speed of only 8 knots Abukir was too slow. S-34 fired two more torpedoes. The first missed, but the second hit the coaster amidships, blowing her in two. Abukir burst into flames and sank within a minute. She was the first Allied ship to be sunk by an E-boat.

Many of those aboard were killed in the impact and sinking, but S-34 then trained a searchlight on survivors in the water and machine-gunned them. Abukir Second Officer, Temporary Sub-lieutenant Patrick Wills-Rust RNR, was on the bridge when Abukir was hit. Concrete slabs that had been installed to protect the bridge from machine-gun fire pinned him down and he went down with the ship. However, as the ship settled on the seabed the slabs were dislodged, freeing Wills-Rust and letting him return to the surface.

At first light five Royal Navy destroyers came to search for survivors: HMS Anthony Codrington, Grenade, Jaguar and Javelin. They spent several hours searching between the North Goodwin lightvessel and the Kwinte Bank lightbuoy but found only a small number of survivors (accounts vary between 26 and 33), including Captain Morris-Woolfenden, Sub-lieutenant Wills-Rust and two nuns. About 200 of the people aboard Abukir were killed. HMS Codrington rescued most of the survivors. They had been in the water for six hours.

In 1969 a commercial diver found Abukir wreck off the coast of Nord-Pas-de-Calais in northern France. Items found at the wreck site included plates, cups, teapots and cutlery initialled "KML" for the Khedivial Mail Line, Lee-Enfield .303 calibre rifle ammunition and rosary beads.

Recognizing many acts of wartime courage by seafarers, in December 1940 Lloyd's of London announced a new award, the Lloyd's War Medal for Bravery at Sea. The first such medal awarded was to Captain Morris-Woolfenden, and the second was to Sub-lieutenant Wills-Rust. Morris-Woolfenden was also awarded the MBE.

Calabria ~ 8 December 1940

The SS Calabria was a passenger and cargo steamship built by AG Weser for Norddeutscher Lloyd. She was launched as the Werra and completed in 1922. The Werra was one of a series of six sister ships that AG Weser built for NDL. Werra and Weser were completed in 1922; Coblenz, Saarbrücken and Trier in 1923 and Fulda in 1924.

In 1935 NDL sold Werra, Coblenz and Saarbrücken to Flotte Riunite Cosulich-Lloyd-Sabaudo which renamed them Calabria, Sicilia and Toscana and registered them in Genoa. In 1937 the three ships were sold to Lloyd Triestino, which registered Calabria in Trieste.

On June 10, 1940 Italy declared war on France and the United Kingdom. At the time Calabria was in drydock in Calcutta in British India, so on June 11 the British authorities seized her. She was transferred to the MoWT, which appointed the British-India Steam Navigation Company to manage her. The MoWT planned to rename her Empire Inventor, but this intention was overtaken by events.

In December 1940 the Calabria was en route to the UK with a cargo of 4,000 tons of iron, 3,050 tons of tea and 1,870 tons of oil cake. Her Master, David Lonie, commanded 128 officers and crew plus one DEMS gunner. She was also carrying 230 mostly Indian supernumeraries who were travelling to crew other ships. Calabria‍ '​s crew and supernumeraries including four Hong Kong Chinese crewmen and one Danish merchant officer.

Calabria left Freetown in Sierra Leone with convoy SLS-56 to the UK but fell behind. On the evening of Sunday December 8 German Type IX submarine U-103, commanded by the U-boat ace Viktor Schütze, torpedoed her in the Western Approaches about 295 nautical miles (546 km) west of Slyne Head in County Galway, Ireland. U-103 hit Calabria with one torpedo at 2058 hrs and a second at 2106 hrs. All 360 hands and passengers were lost.

Calabria‍ '​s latitude was 52 degrees 26 minutes north, at that time of year the sun would have set just before 1600 hours local time, and the ship would have been blacked out under wartime regulations. However, the moon was waxing gibbous, had risen at 1315 hrs and did not set until 0218 hrs in the small hours of the next morning. If the sky was clear, Schütze would have been able to target Calabria by moonlight.

The oldest man aboard was Calabria‍ '​s chief cook, Santan Martins, who was 79 years old. Martins may have been the oldest merchant seaman killed at sea in the Second World War.

Click HERE for details of 219 people who were on board.

City of Benares ~ 17 September 1940

Pre-war postcard produced by the Ellerman Line
to publicize their passenger service to India.

Found at www.ww2today.com

The City of Benares left Liverpool on September 13, 1940 with 406 people on board, including 90 children who were being evacuated from wartime Britain to Canada. Late that day, in rough mid-Atlantic seas, the U-48 made two unsuccessful attempts to torpedo her. The third shot was successful and City of Benares sank in about 30 minutes.

There was difficulty getting all the boats away. Rescue was still a long way off even for those that did make it into boats or rafts. One lifeboat was missed by HMS Hurricane. The 46 occupants, including six boys, were only spotted by a flying boat 8 days later and picked up by HMS Anthony. In total 248 people died. The loss of 77 children lead to the abandonment of further overseas evacuations.

Dr Peter Collinson was the Medical Officer on board the destroyer HMS Hurricane, which went to the rescue:

"At about midnight on the 17th September, I unscrambled the ciphered signal in which their Lordships commanded H.M.S. Hurricane to proceed with ‘utmost despatch’ to position 56.43 21.15 where survivors are reported in boats. On taking this to Captain Simms, he remarked ‘Utmost Despatch’ I bet this means there are women and children amongst them. Apparently a normal signal would say ‘proceed forthwith’.
   We sighted the survivors at about 2pm. The first raft about 6 ft by 3 ft had two men and a boy clinging to it. These were Eric Davis and John McGlashen who were shielding Jack Keeley, aged 6. As we manoeuvred alongside the raft, I managed to take a photo with my box Brownie, which I later sold to the Daily Mirror for 6 pounds. It has since reappeared in several publications. Unfortunately I was unable to take any more photographs of the rescue, as the survivors needed medical attention.
   All survivors were suffering from severe exposure, and varying degrees of shock, being physically and emotionally exhausted. Some were dehydrated and most were suffering from bruised and sprained bodies, limbs, and suspected fractures. Several had severe swollen legs due to prolonged exposure to sea water, the so called ‘Immersion Feet’.
   Three little boys could not be revived in spite of the valiant efforts of the Petty Officers’ Mess at artificial resuscitation. They were later given a full Naval Burial by the Captain."

[Pictured Left] Royal Navy destroyer HMS Anthony rescues survivors from a lifeboat from the City of Benares which had been been adrift for 9 days after the ship sank. The ship was evacuating children from Britain to Canada under the auspices of the Children’s Overseas Reception Board [CORB] as part of Convoy OB 213 when it was torpedoed and sunk with heavy loss of life in the Atlantic by the German submarine U-48. The sinking became one of the most notorious events of WWII.

Click HERE for details of 265 people who were on board.

Commissaire Ramel ~ 20 September 1940

The Commissaire Ramel was launched on March 20, 1920, and entered service with the Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes on April 24, 1921, as a cargo ship, sailing between France and the Far East.

In 1926 she was refitted in La Ciotat as a cargo-passenger ship, receiving a promenade deck, lifeboat deck and an additional boiler. This gave her the capacity to carry up to 552 passengers. The additional boiler increased her power, giving her a top speed to 14 knots. On January 19, 1927 she returned to service, sailing between France and Australia. In 1933 she was refitted again, with her coal-fired steam engine being replaced with oil-fired steam turbines delivering 6,250 hp.

In 1935 she was transferred to a new route, sailing between Marseille and New Caledonia in the South Pacific, via the Panama Canal. On May 19, 1940 she sailed from Marseille under the command of Captain Sabouret, bound for Tahiti. She arrived at Papeete on June 28, 1940, five days after the signing of armistice between France and Germany that ended the battle of France. On 18 July 18, 1940 she arrived at Suva in British Fiji to refuel, but was requisitioned by the authorities there. She was taken to Sydney, Australia, where 26 members of the crew, including the captain, volunteered to serve aboard.

Under the management of the Shaw, Savill & Albion Line she sailed from Sydney on September 1, 1940 bound for Britain via Cape Town, under the command of Captain R. MacKenzie. Just after midnight on September 19 she was attacked by the commerce raider Atlantis. 

After the crew abandoned ship, they were picked up by Atlantis, who then finished off the ship. Three of her crew were killed and 63 were taken prisoner. Two hundred prisoners taken by Atlantis from several ships were later transferred to the captured Yugoslavian ship Durmitor, and landed at Warsheikh in Italian East Africa on November 22, 1940. They were held in a camp at Merca until liberated by British troops on February 25, 1941 during the East African Campaign.

Narissa ~ 30 April 1940

The SS Nerissa was the last ship built for the Bowring Brothers' Red Cross Line service between New York, Halifax, Nova Scotia and St. John's, Newfoundland. Due to the severe winter conditions expected on her routes, Nerissa was designed with a strengthened hull and icebreaker style sloping stern to cope with ice floes.

She was built in Port Glasgow by the shipbuilding company William Hamilton & Company Ltd. in a remarkably short time; her owners only signed the contract for her construction on November 3, 1925 and she was launched on March 31, 1926 ... in time for the 1926 sailing season. After preliminary trials she departed on her maiden voyage to New York on June 5, 1926.

The Red Cross Line relied mainly on American tourist traffic which was much affected by the Depression. The service was abandoned and at the end of 1928 the Line, and its three ships Nerissa, Rosalind and Silvia, was sold to Furness Withy.

The ships then became part of the Bermuda & West Indies Steamship Co. Ltd. The Nerissa continued on the New York, Halifax and St. Johns route until 1931 when she was switched to the New York to Bermuda. She also made voyages to Trinidad and Demerara.

In late 1939 the Nerissa was modified as an auxiliary transport with accommodation for 250 men and was fitted with a 4-inch gun, a Bofors gun and gun crews drawn from the Maritime Regiment of the Royal Artillery. Due to her capability to steam at a higher speed than the usual 9 knots (17 km/h; 10 mph) of escorted convoys, Nerissa sailed alone, since she was considered capable of outrunning enemy submarines.

On September 7, 1940, she left Liverpool bound for Halifax, with 34 evacuated children under the Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB). Their final destination was British Columbia.

By April 1941 Nerissa had made 39 wartime crossings of the North Atlantic. Her 40th crossing began on April 21, 1941 at Halifax, Nova Scotia. She carried 145 Canadian servicemen, RAF and Norwegian Army Air Service personnel, Northern Electric technicians, members of the press and a number of civilians sailing as part of a Britain bound convoy. At 10:15 she separated from the convoy to make her crossing alone, and arrived at St. John's, Newfoundland on April 23, where her captain received his Admiralty orders and she sailed for Britain in the evening.

On April 30 she entered the area patrolled by the aircraft of the Royal Navy's Coastal Command. A Lockheed Hudson aircraft flew over her at nightfall and signaled that the area was clear of enemy submarines. At 11:30 she was struck amidships by a torpedo fired from U-552, 200 miles from her destination of Liverpool. The lifeboats were manned and in the process of being lowered when an explosion split the ship in two, destroying the lifeboats yet to be lowered. U-552 fired an additional two torpedoes to ensure the ship's sinking which had struck together three minutes after the first. 207 civilians, crew and soldiers were killed.

In the short time between the two impacts the ship's radio operator was able to send a Mayday signal along with the ship's position and at first light a Bristol Blenheim of Coastal Command circled the scene. The British destroyer HMS Veteran arrived an hour later at 07:50 and picked up the 84 survivors, who were transferred to the Flower class corvette HMS Kingcup and landed at Derry.

Click HERE for expanded information and passenger list.

Patria ~ 25 November 1940

Before the government of Nazi Germany decided in 1941 to exterminate all Jews in Europe, its policy allowed the reduction of Jewish numbers in Europe by emigration. Jewish organizations, both mainstream and dissident, ran operations that tried to bring Jews from Europe to Palestine in violation of the immigration rules applied by the British government.

This required cooperation with the Nazi authorities, who saw the opportunity to make trouble for Britain as well as to get rid of Jews. The Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration or ZjA) worked under the supervision of Adolf Eichmann, organizing Jewish emigration from the Nazi-controlled parts of Europe. In September 1940 the ZjA chartered three ships, the SS Pacific, SS Milos and SS Atlantic, to take Jewish refugees from the Romanian port of Tulcea to Palestine. Their passengers consisted of about 3,600 refugees from the Jewish communities of Vienna, Danzig and Prague.

The Pacific reached Palestinian waters on November 1, followed by the Milos a few days later. The Royal Navy intercepted the ships and escorted them to the port of Haifa. Warned in advance of the ships' arrival, the British Colonial Office was determined to refuse entry to the immigrants. With the security situation in the region improving following British successes in the Western Desert Campaign, the Colonial Office decided it was less risky to provoke Jewish anger than to risk an Arab revolt, and that an example would be made to dissuade other potential immigrants from making the attempt.

The British High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Harold MacMichael, issued a deportation order on November 20, ordering that the refugees be taken to the British Indian Ocean territory of Mauritius and the Caribbean territory of Trinidad.

SS Patria was an 11,885 ton ocean liner dating from 1913 that the French company Messageries Maritimes ran between Marseille and the Levant. She had reached the port of Haifa shortly before Italy declared war on France and Britain, and then remained in port for safety. After the French surrender to Nazi Germany the British authorities in Haifa first detained Patria and then seized her for use as a troop ship. As a civilian liner she was permitted to carry 805 people including her crew, but after being requisitioned she was authorized to carry 1,800 troops (excluding the crew). She still only had enough lifeboats for the original 805 passengers and crew, so these were supplemented with life rafts.

The refugees from the Pacific and Milos were soon transferred to the Patria for the voyage to Mauritius. The Atlantic arrived on November 24 and the transfer of eight hundred of its 1,645 passengers began.

Meanwhile, Zionist organizations had been considering how to thwart the deportation plan. A general strike had little effect. The Irgun tried unsuccessfully to place a bomb on Patria to disable her. The Haganah also sought to disable Patria, with the intention of forcing her to stay in port for repairs and thus gaining time to press the British to rescind the deportation order. The Haganah officer in charge of the operation was Yitzhak Sadeh, authorized by Moshe Sharett, who led the Political Department of the Jewish Agency in the temporary absence of David Ben-Gurion, who had left for the U.S. on September 22 and did not return until February 13, 1941.

On November 22 Haganah agents smuggled a two-kilogram bomb aboard the ship, timed to explode at 9 p.m. that day. It failed, so a second, more powerful bomb was smuggled aboard on November 24 and hidden next to the ship's inner hull. At 9 a.m. on November 25, it exploded. The Haganah had miscalculated the effect of the charge and it blew a large hole measuring three metres by two in the ship's side, sinking her in only 16 minutes. 

Patria sinking in Haifa port.

When the bomb exploded, the Patria was carrying 1,770 refugees from the Pacific and Milos and had taken on board 134 passengers from the Atlantic. Most were rescued by British and Arab boats that rushed to the scene. However, 260 were killed, 267 were declared missing (over 200 Jewish refugees plus 50 crew and British soldiers) and another 172 were injured. Many of the dead were trapped in Patria‍ '​s hold and were unable to escape as she rolled on her side and sank. 209 bodies were eventually recovered and buried in Haifa.

The surviving refugees from the Patria, together with the remaining 1,560 passengers of the Atlantic, were taken to the Atlit detainee camp. Later, after an international campaign, the survivors of the Patria were given permits to stay in Palestine. However, the other Atlantic passengers were deported to Mauritius on December 9. After the war they were given the choice of where to go; 81% chose Palestine and arrived there in August 1945.

In December 1945 Ha-Po'el ha-Tza'ir ("Young Worker") a Mapai party newspaper, commented, "On one bitter and impetuous day, a malicious hand sank the ship". The comment was written by the deputy editor, Israel Cohen, who did not know that all of the people responsible were Mapai leaders. Angered by the newspaper's comments, some Haganah leaders sent Ben-Gurion's son Amos to the newspaper office where he slapped the editor, Isaac Lofven, across the face.

A bitter debate over the correctness of the operation raged in secret within the Zionist leadership. The decision had been made by an activist faction, without consulting more moderate members according to normal procedure, and this caused serious internal divisions that persisted for many years. An effort was made to enshrine the incident as an icon of Zionist determination, but this largely failed. As early as December 15, 1945 Isaac Lofven warned a Mapai meeting against trying to "sanctify" the tragedy.

Some leaders of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) argued that the loss of life had not been in vain, as the Patria‍ '​s survivors had been allowed to stay in the country. Others declared that the Haganah had had no right to risk the lives of the immigrants, as they had not decided of their own free will to become participants in the underground Jewish conflict with the British authorities.

The Haganah's role was not publicly revealed and a story was put out that the deportees, out of despair, had sunk the ship themselves (the version recounted, for example, by Arthur Koestler). For years Britain believed the Irgun was probably responsible.

The Haganah's role was finally publicly disclosed in 1957 when Munya Mardor, the operative who had planted the bomb, wrote an account of his activities in the Jewish underground. He recounted, "There was never any intent to cause the ship to sink. The British would have used this against the Jewish population and show it as an act of sabotage against the war effort". He said that it was in the highest interest of the Haganah to fight the sanctions of the British White Paper of 1939, and the primary objective was to avoid casualties. The British estimated 267 people were killed, but neither the Jewish Agency nor the Haganah could establish how many people escaped the sinking and how many had died.

The guilt-ridden Munya Mardor continued to work at the port in order to remove suspicion from himself. The Haganah also put up an investigative body to find out why such a relatively small amount of explosives could create such a large hole in the ship. The Haganah investigators concluded that the boat's superstructure was in poor condition, and therefore unable to withstand the pressure of the explosion.

Rudolf Hirsch, a Jewish-German writer who had emigrated to Palestine in 1939, was a close associate of Arnold Zweig there, and later remigrated with Zweig to East Germany, published a novel about the incident, Patria Israel, in which he also explicitly refers to Mardor's account.

Rangantine~ 27 November 1940

Liner sunk by German raiders off East Cape

Found at www.nzhistory.net

Survivors of the Rangitane

The 16,712-ton New Zealand Shipping Company liner MV Rangitane was sunk by two German auxiliary cruisers (armed merchant raiders), Orion and Komet, 550 km off East Cape.

The British-owned vessel was the largest Allied merchant ship to be sunk by a German surface vessel during the Second World War (German submarines and aircraft sank many larger ships).

On 25 November the Orion and Komet (cruising with an unarmed supply ship, the Kulmerland) had sunk the little steamer Holmwood off the Chatham Islands, taking its 17 crew and 12 passengers prisoner. At 3:40 a.m. on the 27th the German flotilla intercepted a far bigger prize, the Rangitane, three days out of Auckland bound for the United Kingdom via Panama. The liner had a crew of 201 and was carrying 111 passengers, including Fleet Air Arm recruits and radar specialists on their way to Britain, and a group of British women who had escorted 477 child evacuees to New Zealand aboard SS Batory. A trainee airman, Alan Jones, recalled the attack:

"Half past three in the morning, the clanging of sirens was going, and there were big crashes…. I went up on deck, and there was one of the raiders on each side of us, and the supply ship in front. You could see some of the shells ricocheting off. To hell with that, so we went down below again. I was a bit scared, a bit bewildered. Then there was another salvo and one of the saloons was on fire…. There was the smell of cordite, and the ship would shudder every so often when it was hit."

Seven passengers were killed or mortally wounded, including four of the female child escorts. Eight crew members also lost their lives, including two stewardesses and two brothers who were both engine-room hands. (Many sources erroneously claim there were only 11 deaths, but it was closer to 17) The other 297 passengers and crew were taken aboard the German ships before the Rangitane was sunk.

Most of the captives were later landed on Emirau Island in the Bismarck Archipelago (near Papua New Guinea), from where they were repatriated to Australia in January 1941. A number of merchant seamen and servicemen, including Alan Jones, were taken to Germany and interned.

The Rangitane Riddle, A new book by Trevor Bell

“A rip-roaring yarn, all the better for being true”

The Rangitane was a large, fast, majestic, two-funnelled ocean liner; an icon of the golden age of sea travel. Early in the Second World War she was intercepted at night and sunk by two small, slow, scruffy German raiders disguised as Japanese merchant traders, far from the main theater of war. Why and how did this happen? Was it true that they knew the wherabouts of Rangitane? Were there really secret agents feeding the Germans with information? Had British secret codes been compromised? Why did the raiders sail over a thousand miles out of their way to release the majority of the survivors on a remote British island while others were shipped back to POW camps in Germany? 

This is the riddle of the Rangitane.

The Rangitane Riddle is the true story of the intrigue surrounding the capture and sinking of RMS Rangitane, based on the personal accounts of those involved. It follows the drama of the conflict and the subsequent amazing acts of humanity to the survivors. Described at the time as a ‘rip-roaring yarn‘, it proves that adversity can bring out the best in most people. Or can it? Read how two survivors made enemies of everybody.