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Sinking of the SS Athenia - NaGe > .
SS Athenia (1922) was a steam turbine
transatlantic passenger liner built in
Glasgow, Scotland in 1923 for the Anchor-Donaldson Line, which later became the Donaldson Atlantic Line. She worked between the United Kingdom and the east coast of Canada until September 1939, when a
torpedo from the
German submarine U-30 sank her in the
Western Approaches.
Athenia was the first UK ship to be sunk by Germany during WW2, and the incident accounted for the Donaldson Line's greatest single loss of life at sea, with
117 civilian passengers and crew killed. The sinking was condemned as a
war crime. Among those dead were
28 US citizens, leaving Germany to fear that the US might join the war on the side of the UK and France. Wartime German authorities denied that one of their vessels had sunk the ship.
An admission of responsibility did not come from German authorities until 1946.
She was the second Donaldson ship of that name to be torpedoed and sunk off
Inishtrahull by a German submarine. The
earlier Athenia (1903) was similarly attacked and sunk in 1918.
On 1 September 1939 Athenia, commanded by
Captain James Cook, left Glasgow for Montreal via Liverpool and
Belfast. She carried 1,103 passengers, including about 500 Jewish refugees, 469 Canadians, 311 US citizens and 72 UK subjects, and 315 crew. Despite clear indications that war would break out any day, she departed Liverpool at 13:00 hrs on 2 September without recall, and on the evening of the 3rd was 60 nautical miles (110 km) south of
Rockall and 200 nautical miles (370 km) northwest of
Inishtrahull, Ireland, when she was sighted by the
German submarine U-30 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, a
Q-ship or an
armed merchant cruiser.
U-30 tracked 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. One exploded on Athenia's port side in her engine room, and she began to settle by the stern.
Several ships, including the
E-class destroyer HMS Electra, responded to Athenia's
distress signal. Electra's commander, Lt. Cdr. Sammy A. Buss, was senior officer present and took charge. He sent the
F-class destroyer
HMS Fame on an anti-submarine sweep of the area, while Electra, another E-class destroyer,
HMS Escort, the Swedish
yacht Southern Cross, the 5,749
GRT Norwegian
tanker MS Knute Nelson, and the US
cargo ship City of Flint, rescued survivors. Between them they
rescued about 981 passengers and crew. The German liner
SS Bremen, en route from New York to
Murmansk, also received Athenia's distress signal, but ignored it. City of Flint took 223 survivors to Pier 21 at Halifax, and Knute Nelson landed 450 at
Galway.
Survivors in one of Athenia's lifeboats alongside
City of FlintAthenia remained
afloat for more than 14 hours, until she finally
sank stern first at 10:40 the next morning. Of the 1,418 aboard,
98 passengers and 19 crew members were killed. Many died in the
engine room and aft stairwell, where the torpedo hit. About 50 people died when
one of the lifeboats was crushed in the propeller of Knute Nelson. There was a second accident at about 05:00 hrs when No. 8 lifeboat capsized in a heavy sea below the stern of the yacht Southern Cross, killing ten people. Three passengers were crushed to death while trying to transfer from lifeboats to the
Royal Navy destroyers. Other deaths were due to falling overboard from Athenia and her lifeboats, or to injuries and exposure.
Ultimately, all deaths were the result of the U-boat violating orders and torpedoing a merchant passenger liner.
54 dead were Canadian and
28 were US citizens, which led to German fears that the incident would bring the US into the war.
It was not until the
Nuremberg Trials after the War that the
truth of the U-boat sinking of Athenia finally came out. The sinking was given dramatic publicity throughout the English-speaking world. The front pages of many newspapers ran photographs of the lost ship along with headlines about the UK's declaration of war. For example, the
Halifax Herald for 4 September 1939 had a banner across its front page announcing "LINER ATHENIA IS TORPEDOED AND SUNK" with, in the center of the page, "EMPIRE AT WAR" in outsized red print.
A
Canadian girl, 10-year-old Margaret Hayworth, was among the casualties, and was
one of the first Canadians to be killed by enemy action. Newspapers widely publicised the story, proclaiming "Ten-Year-Old Victim of Torpedo" as "Canadians Rallying Point", and set the tone for their coverage of the rest of the war. One thousand people met the train that brought her body back to
Hamilton, Ontario, and there was a public funeral attended by the mayor of Hamilton, the city council, the Lieutenant-Governor,
Albert Edward Matthews, Premier
Mitchell Hepburn, and the entire Ontario cabinet.
