Apapa (ship, 1915)
.jpg) The identical sister ship Appam
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The Apapa (I) was a 1915 transatlantic liner of the British shipping company Elder Dempster & Company , which was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Wales on November 28, 1917 .
The ship
The 7,832-ton steamer Apapa in 1914 in the Glasgow district of Govan on the shipyard Harland & Wolff's Govan Shipyard, a 1912 put into operation branch of the Belfast shipyard Harland & Wolff , built. The ship was launched on September 30, 1914 and was completed on March 4, 1915. Consisting of steel -built hull was 135 meters long, 17.47 meters wide and had a maximum draft of 9.54 meters. The ship was built for the Elder Dempster & Company Limited (often abbreviated Elder Dempster Lines ) founded in 1852 , which specializes in passenger and freight traffic to the United States and Canada , but also to more distant destinations such as Africa , the Caribbean and the Canary Islands Islands and India . The Apapa was used for the West Africa service. She was one of the largest ships in the shipping company to date.
Quadruple expansion steam engines with an output of 516 nominal horsepower propelled the ship and accelerated it to a maximum speed of 14 knots . The Apapa had two propellers , a chimney and two masts . It was equipped with wireless radio and refrigeration equipment to transport fresh food.
The Apapa had two sister ships , the 7781 GRT Appam and the 7,782 GRT Abosso (I), both of which had been commissioned in 1912 and 1913 respectively. The Appam was established in January 1916, 319 people on board in the North Atlantic by the German auxiliary cruiser Gull applied . The capture made international headlines. The Abosso was also sunk by a German submarine just a few months before the Apapa .
Sinking
On Wednesday, November 28, 1917, the Apapa passed the island of Anglesey in the Irish Sea at a speed of 13 knots . The Apapa came with 129 passengers, 120 crew members as well as mail and cargo on board from Sierra Leone (West Africa) and was on the way to Liverpool. The command had Captain James Thomas Toft, who had survived the sinking of the sister ship Abosso seven months earlier . The Apapa was lightly armed, but drove without an escort . It was a clear night with calm seas.
In the early morning hours, the Apapa was sighted astern by U 96 three nautical miles northeast of Lynas Point off the town of Amlwch . U 96 was a German submarine of the class medium U, which was under the command of Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Jeß on patrol . Jeß let go and, after the ship had made a 20-degree turn towards land, he launched a stern attack without warning. The submarine was not registered on board the Apapa . At 04.10 in the morning, U 96 fired a torpedo from a distance of around 300 meters that hit the Apapa on the starboard side near the stern . The shock was so great that many sleeping passengers were thrown from their beds. The engine room was immediately flooded. Captain Toft ordered the engines to be stopped and the ship examined.
After the damage on the starboard side had been determined and it was found that the Apapa sank on a level keel, Toft ordered the lifeboats to be launched . There had been two emergency drills during the crossing and each person on board had been assigned a place in one of the boats. Passengers and crew behaved accordingly in an orderly and disciplined manner. Ten minutes after the first attack, while the evacuation was in full swing, a second torpedo struck amidships in the starboard side , causing an even more violent explosion than the first. The power supply collapsed, making it difficult for passengers and crew to pattern. The steamer suddenly heeled heavily to starboard and several lifeboats still hanging in the davits were flooded. Lifeboat No. 9 with 20 to 30 people in it was blown up as the second torpedo detonated right below it.
Lifeboat No. 3 got caught in the rigging of the sinking ship. Several passengers jumped out of the boat in fear and drowned, but the boat was released shortly afterwards. When the ship lay on its side, the tension ropes of the funnel tore, which then overturned and hit a lifeboat that had just been launched. Only three people from that boat survived. 18 minutes after the first hit was the Apapa with the rear forward under. 37 crew members, including the officer in charge, the chief engineer and the chief steward, as well as 40 passengers, including at least seven women, were killed in the sinking. Captain Toft remained until recently the senior officer on the bridge and went down with the ship. Shortly afterwards, Toft was found clinging to a floating lifeboat and rescued.
The survivors were a few hours after the sinking of a patrol boat of the Royal Navy and a tramp steamer added. In newspaper interviews, many of those rescued were very angry about the incident and described the Germans as "Huns" and the act as "cold-blooded murder" and "brutal and unnecessary callousness". In particular, the fact that the ship, which was already sinking, was fired a second time, thus preventing proper evacuation, was denounced. Most of the people affected and also the press assumed that there would have been no deaths without the shooting .
Among the dead were Alfred Farrar, Deputy Colonial Secretary for Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast, and Arthur E. Hebbes, campaign manager for Conservative MP Sir Douglas B. Hall and Conservative Party electoral officer for the town of Lowestoft , Suffolk . The Apapa dropped to the position of 53 ° 26 ' N , 4 ° 18' W .
Web links
- Technical data in the Miramar Ship Index
- WRECK SITE - SS Apapa +1917 Further technical and historical cornerstones of the Apapa
- The Apapa in the Clydebuilt Ships Database (with photo)
- Passenger steamer Apapa - Ships hit by U-boats The sinking of the Apapa by U 96 in the submarine database
- STEAMER APAPA SUNK - 80 PASSENGERS DIE - U-Boat Fires on Women and Children in Open Boats - Crew Also Perish - Announcement of the sinking in the New York Times on December 5, 1917