Aguila (ship, 1917)
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The Aguila (II) was a 1917 passenger ship of the British shipping company Yeoward Line, which carried passengers, freight and mail between Great Britain , Portugal and Spain . On August 19, 1941, the Aguila was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of southern Ireland. 157 people were killed.
The ship
The 3,255 GRT passenger and cargo ship Aguila was built at the Caledon Shipbuilding & Engineering Company in Dundee , Scotland , and was launched on September 12, 1916. Completion dragged on until November 1917. The aguila was 96.1 meters long and 13.5 meters wide. It could accommodate 150 passengers in first class. She was the largest ship of her shipping company until then and was only surpassed by the 3445 GRT Alondra in 1922 . The triple expansion steam engine , which drove a single propeller , developed 395 nominal horsepower and accelerated the steamer to 12.5 knots (23.15 km / h).
The ship was built for the Liverpool- based shipping company Yeoward Line, founded in 1894 , which originally only imported fruit, but since 1900 has maintained regular passenger and freight traffic from Liverpool to Spain, Portugal and the Canary Islands . The names of the ships of the Yeoward Line all began with an A. The funnel was black and had a red-edged yellow stripe with the letter Y. She was the second ship of the Yeoward Line named Aguila . The first Aguila was sunk by the same submarine as the Falaba during World War I , killing eight people.
Sinking
On Wednesday, August 13, 1941, the Aguila set off with 91 passengers, 397 mail bags and 1,288 tons of cargo for another crossing from Liverpool to Gibraltar and Lisbon . She was part of the 21-ship convoy OG-71 and had the convoy commander, Vice-Admiral Patrick Edward Parker, and another five men from the escort team on board. The convoy was accompanied by six corvettes and two destroyers of the Royal Navy . In addition, 71 crew members and five artillerymen were on board to defend the ship (a total of 173 people). Captain Arthur Firth was in command. The westbound convoy was sighted by U 201 early in the morning on Tuesday, August 19, southwest of the Fastnet rock on the south coast of Ireland . U 201 was a German type VII C submarine , which was under the command of Kapitänleutnant Adalbert Schnee on patrol .
At 4:06 am, Schnee fired a volley of four torpedoes on the convoy. Two of them hit a tanker , the third the cargo steamer Ciscar . The fourth hit the Aguila , which went down within 90 seconds. In the short time the ship could not be evacuated. Admiral Parker, four members of his staff, 58 crew members, five artillerymen and 89 passengers died (157 people in total).
Captain Firth, six crew members, a member of the staff and two passengers were taken from the corvette Wallflower under the leadership of Lieut. Commander Ismay James Tyson was taken and brought to Gibraltar. Six other crew members were picked up by the small tug Empire Oak from the same convoy, which, however, was sunk by U 564 three days later , in which all six were killed. Convoy OG-71 lost a total of eight ships and nearly 400 lives before reaching Gibraltar. Two of his escort ships, the destroyer Bath and the corvette Zinnia , were also sunk.
The Yeoward Line arranged the return of the ten survivors to England on their steamer Avoceta , which left Lisbon for Liverpool on September 17, 1941. On September 26, this ship was sunk by a German submarine, and 123 people died. Captain Firth was among the survivors. Among the passengers on the Aguila on the last voyage were 21 women from the British Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) who had volunteered for service as operator in Gibraltar, as well as a nurse from Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service, Kate Ellen Gribble . None of them survived the sinking. In their honor, a lifeboat of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution , which was launched on June 28, 1952, was christened Aguila Wren .
The wreck of Aguila is in position 49 ° 23 ' N , 17 ° 56' W .