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.