SS Athenia - Sinking

Sinking

Athenia, under Captain James Cook, departed Glasgow for Montreal on 1 September 1939, via Liverpool and Belfast, carrying 1,103 passengers, including more than 300 Americans, and 315 crew. She left Liverpool at 13:00 on 2 September, and on the evening of 3 September was 60 mi (97 km) south of Rockall (250 miles/400 km northwest of Inishtrahull, Ireland), when she was sighted by the German submarine U-30 (1936) commanded by Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp around 16:30. Lemp later claimed that the fact that she was a darkened ship steering a zigzag course which seemed to be well off the normal shipping routes made him believe she was either a troopship or a Q-ship or an armed merchant cruiser. U-30 tracked the Athenia for three hours until eventually, at 19:40, when both vessels were between Rockall and Tory Island, Lemp ordered two torpedoes to be fired. The first struck home and exploded, while the second misfired. Athenia began to settle by the stern.

Several ships, including HMS Electra, raced to the site of the attack. The captain of Electra, Lt. Cdr. Sammy A. Buss, was Senior Officer Present, so he took charge. He sent the destroyer HMS Fame on an anti-submarine sweep of the area, while Electra, another destroyer, HMS Escort, the Swedish yacht Southern Cross, the 5,749 ton Norwegian tanker MS Knute Nelson, and the American freighter SS City of Flint, rescued the survivors. Between them, about 981 passengers and crew were rescued. The German liner SS Bremen en route from New York to Murmansk, also received Athenia's distress signal, but hardly surprisingly ignored it. The City of Flint took 223 survivors on to Halifax, and the Knute Nelson landed 450 at Galway.

Athenia remained afloat for over fourteen hours after being torpedoed, until she finally sank stern first at 10:40 the following morning. Of the 1,418 aboard, 98 passengers and 19 crew members were killed. The toll in lives included fatalities caused when the torpedo struck, and from accidents and other misadventures during the evacuation. Most of the fatalities occurred in the engine room and after stairwell, where the torpedo hit, though other sources dispute this. Some died later when one of the lifeboats was crushed in the propeller of the Knute Nelson. In this case No. 5A lifeboat came alongside the empty tanker and tied up against advice astern of No 12 lifeboat. Only 15 feet separated the life boat from the tanker's exposed propellor. Once the No. 12 lifeboat was emptied it was cut adrift and began to sink. This fact was reported to the bridge of Knute Nelson. For some reason the ship's throttle was then set to full ahead. The 5A lifeboat's warp parted under the strain, causing the lifeboat to be pulled back into the fast revolving propellor. This resulted in about 50 deaths. A second accident occurred at about 0500 hrs when No. 8 lifeboat capsized in a heavy sea below the stern of the yacht Southern Cross causing ten deaths. Three passengers were crushed to death while attempting to transfer from lifeboats to the RN destroyers. The other fatalities were due to falling overboard from Athenia and her lifeboats, or to injuries and exposure. Twenty-eight of the dead were American citizens, which led to German fears that the incident would bring the US into the war.