Almeda Star
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The Almeda Star (I) was a passenger ship of the British shipping company Blue Star Line , which was put into service in 1927. It was built for transatlantic traffic and carried passengers , freight and mail from England to South America . She was the largest passenger ship that the Blue Star Line ever put into service. On January 17, 1941, the ship, which was not in a convoy , was torpedoed and sunk in the North Atlantic by the German submarine U 96 . All 360 passengers and crew were killed. She was the largest ship that U 96 sank during its service life and the largest ship that the Blue Star Line lost during its entire existence.
The ship
The Almeda Star was built in 1926 at the Cammell, Laird & Company shipyard in the English city of Birkenhead . She was the first of a quintet of sister ships commissioned by the British shipping company Blue Star Line, founded in 1911. Her sister ships were the Andalucia Star (1927) with 14,934 GRT, the Arandora Star (1927) with 14,694 GRT, the Avelona Star (1927) with 13,376 GRT and the Avila Star (1927) with 14,443 GRT. The group of sister ships was commonly called The Luxury Five .
The ship was launched on June 29, 1926 under the name Almeda and was only renamed Almeda Star on May 7, 1929 . In that year the five ships were rebuilt, enlarged and the word "Star" was added to the name of all of them. In 1935 the hull of the Almeda Star was lengthened, thus increasing the volume from 12,848 GRT to 14,935 GRT. In addition, the bow was redesigned according to the Maierform design . On December 22, 1940, the steamer was damaged during a German air raid on Liverpool. The Almeda Star was after the outbreak of World War II, not from the British Admiralty called up for military use. She continued to work in regular passenger traffic.
Sinking
In mid-January 1941, the Almeda Star left for another crossing from Liverpool to South America. The destination was Trinidad , Río de la Plata and Buenos Aires . The command was the 61-year-old Captain Harry Cecil Howard. There were 166 crew members and 194 passengers (a total of 360 people) on board . The ship was not in a convoy. At 5:08 a.m. on Friday, January 17, 1941, the German submarine U 96 , which was under the command of Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock on its second patrol voyage , sighted the steaming ship westward. It was located 35 miles northeast of the rocky island of Rockall and 350 miles west of the Hebridean island of Lewis .
The submarine began an attack on the passenger steamer, which dragged on for two and a half hours. At 7.10 a.m., U 96 shot a G7 torpedo at the Almeda Star , but it missed the ship. The Almeda Star responded with gunfire to the attack by the submarine, which was then forced to dive. The second torpedo attack took place at 7.45 a.m. The Almeda Star was hit amidships and stopped the engines. When the ship still did not sink after two fishing shots at 8.05 a.m. and 9.07 a.m., U 96 reappeared and opened fire on the Almeda Star . Although it could be seen on board the submarine that passengers were gathering on deck and the lifeboats were being prepared for lowering, the ship was hit by 15 shells from the deck cannon between 9.32 and 9.48. As a result, fires broke out in several places on board the Almeda Star .
At 9.55 a last torpedo was fired, which hit the foredeck of the steamer. The Almeda Star sank in just three minutes. Seven ships arrived at the scene of the accident and searched for survivors, but no one was found alive. All 360 passengers and crew members were killed.
The four sister ships of the Almeda Star were also sunk by German submarines during World War II. The Andalucia Star sank off Fremantle on October 7, 1942 (four dead), the Arandora Star on July 2, 1940 on the north-west coast of Ireland (805 dead), the Avila Star on July 5, 1942 off the Azores (84 dead) and the Avelona Star on June 30, 1940 off Land's End on the Cornish coast (one dead). In 1976 the Blue Star Line commissioned a second ship called the Almeda Star , a 9784 GRT refrigerated ship that was in service until 2001.
Web links
- Detailed technical and historical information, photos and description of the sinking
- Shorter summary of the history of the Almeda Star
- Description of the sinking in the submarine database
- Information on wrecksite.eu