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.

Armenia ~ 7 November 1941

Found at www.historyinanhour.com

Hospital ship Armenia torpedoed by the Nazis

On the 7 November 1941, the Soviet hospital ship, the Armenia, was torpedoed and sunk by the Nazis. It was one of the worse maritime disasters in history. All but eight of the 7,000 passengers perished on a ship designed for not more than a thousand. A comparatively modest 1,514 died on the Titanic (1912) and 1,198 on the Lusitania (1915) yet the sinking of the Armenia on 7 November 1941 is all but lost to history.

Sunk in the Black Sea, the exact location of the wreck is still a mystery and for years, the question remained – was a hospital ship, identified by a Red Cross, a legitimate target?

A stricken city

Designed for 980 passengers and crew, over seven times that number had surged onto the ship in the Crimean port of Yalta that fateful night of 7 November 1941. The reason was blind panic. The Nazi war machine, which had invaded the Soviet Union less than five months before, had overrun the Crimean peninsula and was bearing down on Yalta. People expected the city to fall within a matter of hours. The only possible means of escape for its stricken population was by sea – the roads outside the city having been sealed off by the Germans.

Built in Leningrad in 1928, the double-decker Armenia began its career as a passenger ship. In August 1941, following the outbreak of war, it was pressed into military service as a hospital ship. The day before its sinking, the Armenia had left the port of Sevastopol having taken civilian evacuees and the occupants of several military hospitals. Crammed with up to 5,000 passengers, the ship made for Tuapse, a town on the northeast coast of the Black Sea, about 250 miles east. But the captain, Captain Vladimir Plaushevsky, received orders to pick up extra people from nearby Yalta.

More civilians and wounded soldiers, some severely, crammed onto the ship amid scenes of chaos and utter panic. No register was taken, no names recorded of these additional two thousand passengers. Captain Plaushevsky then received orders to remain in port until escort vessels were at hand to chaperon him out. The delay frustrated the captain, he had to get going, they were cutting it too fine.

Torpedoed

The next morning, seven o’clock, the Armenia finally set sail, escorted by two armed boats and two fighter planes.

The escorts were unable to prevent a German torpedo bomber, a Heinkel He-111, swooping-in low and firing two torpedoes at the ship. It was 11.29 am, the ship was 25 miles into its journey. The first torpedo missed but the second one scored a direct hit, splitting the ship into two. The Armenia sunk within just four minutes. All but eight of the 7,000 passengers died, the survivors being picked up by a patrol boat.

The tragedy lay in the postponement of its departure. If Captain Plaushevsky had not lost those precious hours, the ship may well have arrived at its intended destination.

Lying at a depth of about 480 metres, the location of the Armenia wreck remains unknown despite the efforts of oceanic explorer, Robert Ballard, discoverer of several historical wrecks including the aforementioned Titanic and Lusitania.

A legitimate target?

Was the Armenia a legitimate target? As a hospital ship, it was clearly marked with the Red Cross, both on its sides and, clearly visible to the German pilots, on the deck. But it had a military escort, and it had two of its own anti-aircraft guns, so under the rules of war, it was a perfectly acceptable target.

But this doesn’t detract from the catastrophe of its sinking and today we should remember, if only momentarily, the forgotten tragedy of the Armenia.

Rupert Colley

Rupert Colley is the author of The Black Maria, a chilling tale set in Stalin’s Moscow.

Barøy ~ 13 September 1941

The SS Barøy was a 424 ton steel-hulled steamship delivered from the Trondhjems mekaniske Værksted shipyard in Trondheim in 1929. She had been ordered by the Norwegian shipping company Ofotens Dampskibsselskab for the local route from the port city of Narvik to the smaller towns of Lødingen and Svolvær. After the company suffered ship losses in the 1940 Norwegian Campaign Barøy was put into Hurtigruten service on the Trondheim–Narvik route. 

After surviving the German invasion on April 9, 1940 and the 62-day long Norwegian Campaign that followed it, Barøy was set to assist in the transportation of released German prisoners of war from the Norwegian prisoner of war camp on the island of Skorpa in Kvænangen, Troms. Barøy carried out the mission together with Finnmark Fylkesrederi's steamer Tanahorn, the latter carrying some 200 Germans to Tromsø and Barøy taking the remaining 260 to the same port city. Barøy continued serving in Nordnorge's place during the German occupation of Norway, Nordnorge having been sunk by Royal Navy warships during the Norwegian Campaign after she had been pressed into service as a covert troopship by the invading German forces. Barøy was considered too small a vessel for the longer distances, such as the Hurtigruten route between Bergen and Narvik, and her prolonged service on the route was an emergency measure.

A year and a half after the German invasion Barøy was still sailing the Hurtigruten route as the fifth weekly northbound departure from Trondheim to Narvik. In the early hours of September 13, 1941 she was on her way northwards, and had recently called at Skutvik on her way to Tranøy on Hamarøy. On board the ship was a crew of 26, as well as 105 passengers, 37 of whom were German soldiers. The German troops on board were members of the 197th Infantry Division.

At 0350hrs on September 13 Barøy was struck by a torpedo some 2 nautical miles (3.7 km) west of Tranøy Lighthouse and sank within minutes. The torpedo ripped open the ship's hull, quickly flooding her with water, and immediately knocking out the electrical power on board. Due to the ship sinking so rapidly there was no time to lower the lifeboats, and the people on board had to jump into the water in order to survive. At the time of the sinking the water temperature was 7–8 °C. 

Nazi propaganda posters attempted
to link Norwegian King Haakon VII
to the sinking of civilian
Norwegian ships.

The torpedo that sank Barøy had been dropped by an 817 Squadron Fairey Albacore, one of seven that attacked shipping in the Vestfjorden area that morning. At the time of the attack Barøy had been sailing with full lighting due to work being carried out on the deck cargo. The wreck of the ship rests at depth of around 980 ft.

The first ship to discover the sinking of Barøy was the 762 ton Norwegian cargo ship SS Skjestad, which passed the scene of the sinking on her way southwards and rescued 19 survivors, as well as recovering 15 bodies. The survivors of the sinking were set ashore at Svolvær. Seventy-seven Norwegians died in the attack, including seven children and 21 women. Fifty-nine of the 68 Norwegian passengers were lost, while 18 of the 26 crew members died. Of the 37 German soldiers only two survived.

One of the consequences of the sinking of Barøy, together with the sinking of fellow Hurtigruten ship SS Richard With off Rolvsøy in Finnmark later the same day, was that the Hurtigruten ships would no longer sail further north than Tromsø. Between Tromsø and Hammerfest the route was taken over by smaller replacement ships.

The Nazi regime in Norway used the attack on Barøy, together with other attacks on civilian Norwegian shipping, in propaganda against the Allies. On May 20, 1944 the Nazi-controlled Norwegian Postal Service issued a series of postage stamps commemorating three of the most infamous cases of Norwegian ships sunk by Allied attacks. Barøy was the subject of the 10 øre stamp, while SS Sanct Svithun and SS Irma were depicted on the 15 øre and 20 øre stamps respectively. The shipwreck stamps were designed by German-born Norwegian Nazi propaganda artist and war reporter Harald Damsleth.