Aragon (ship)
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The Aragon (I) was a transatlantic liner put into service in 1905 for the British shipping company Royal Mail Line (RML), which was built for passenger and mail traffic between Great Britain and Brazil . She was the Royal Mail Line's first twin screw steamer. During the First World War , the ship served as a troop transport until it was sunk by a German submarine on December 30, 1917 off Alexandria (Egypt) . 610 crew members and soldiers were killed.
The ship
The 9,588 GRT steamship Aragon was built at Harland & Wolff in Belfast, Northern Ireland for the Royal Mail Line shipping company for their passenger and mail service to Brazil. The Aragon was 156.4 meters long, 18.4 meters wide and had a maximum draft of 9.4 meters. She was equipped with quadruple expansion steam engines that worked on two propellers and made 875 nominal horsepower (nhp). She could reach a top speed of 16 knots (29.6 km / h). On board there was space for 306 passengers in the first, 66 in the second and 632 in the third class.
On February 23, 1905, the Aragon was launched at Harland & Wolff and was christened by Maud Dundas, Countess Fitzwilliam. It was completed on June 22nd. On July 14, 1905, she ran from Southampton on her maiden voyage to Brazil. After the outbreak of the First World War, the steamer was used as a troop transport. On April 13, 1915, the ship reached the Dardanelles , after which the troops boarded the 4000-tonne Collier River Clyde , which was used as a " Trojan horse " on April 25 when landing at Cape Helles .
Sinking
On Monday, December 17, 1917, the Aragon left England under the command of 37-year-old Captain Francis Ames Bateman for a crossing to Alexandria with stops in Marseille and Malta . It had 2,700 people on board, including 160 nurses, 150 officers, the ship's crew and around 2,200 men to reinforce the troops fighting in Palestine under General Edmund Allenby . There were also some civilian passengers on board. She was escorted by the HMS Attack (780 t), an Acheron- class destroyer of the Royal Navy .
Almost two weeks later, on December 30, 1917, the ship was granted entry into the port of Alexandria, and she received radio warnings from trawlers about sea mines . The attack then signaled her to follow her back into the open sea. The Aragon entered the channel in front of the port entrance to anchor there, making it an easy target for attacks. There the ship was attacked by the German submarine UC 34 (Oberleutnant zur See Horst Obermüller) at 10:55 in the morning about eight nautical miles from Alexandria . UC 34 left the port of Kotor ( Montenegro ) on December 20 and laid seven mines off Alexandria on December 26.
On board the Aragon one could see the periscope and then the bladder trail of a torpedo , whereupon an attempt was made to turn the ship. The torpedo hit the ship, which was shaken by the explosion. The Aragon sank within 20 minutes at position 31 ° 18 ′ N , 29 ° 48 ′ E , killing 610 people, including Captain Bateman, three ship officers, ten military officers and 581 soldiers. While the attack was busy rescuing survivors, it was also torpedoed by UC 34 and sank within a few minutes. Ten of their crew members were killed. The Aragon was the largest ship sunk by UC 34 . The following day, December 31, the British troop carrier Osmanieh ran into one of the mines laid by UC 34 and sank. 199 people were killed, including their captain Lieutenant Commander David R. Mason and eight British nurses from Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS).