Asturias (ship, 1908)
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The Asturias (I) was a 1908 passenger ship of the British shipping company Royal Mail Line , which was used in passenger and mail traffic from Great Britain to South America . During the First World War it served as a hospital ship until it was badly damaged by a submarine attack in 1917 and written off. In 1923 she was renamed Arcadian and henceforth sent on cruises until she was decommissioned in 1930 and scrapped in Japan in 1933.
Passenger ship on the South American route
The 12,015 GRT steamship Asturias was built at Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast and was the last in a series of four sister ships. The others were the Amazon (II) (1906), the Araguaya (1906) and the Avon (III) (1907). Except for the Araguaya , which was built by Workman, Clark & Company , all ships in this series were built by Harland & Wolff. The Asturias had a chimney, two masts and two propellers . The top speed was 15 knots. In the passenger quarters there was space for 300 first class passengers, 140 second class passengers and 1200 third class passengers.
The 158.49 meter long and 18.89 meter wide passenger and mail ship was launched on September 26, 1907 and was completed on January 8, 1908. On 24 January 1908, ran Asturias in Southampton for its maiden voyage to Australia via Suez from. After this voyage she was put on the route from Southampton to Buenos Aires , which she stayed on for the following years. In 1909, however, she went to Australia again.
Hospital ship in the First World War
On August 1, 1914, she was requested by the British Admiralty for military service and left Southampton four days later for Scapa Flow to join the Grand Fleet stationed there. On August 23, however, she was back in Southampton and was handed over to the Royal Army , which converted her into a hospital ship with the capacity to transport 896 wounded. On a single trip, however, she had 2,400 on board. HMHS Asturias carried patients from Le Havre to Southampton until the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915. From then on, it was used in the Mediterranean . The ship transported the wounded from the Dardanelles , Thessaloniki and Egypt back to England.
During this time she was attacked twice by German submarines , but escaped destruction on both occasions : On. February 1, 1915, the Asturias was torpedoed by U 20 (Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger ) near Le Havre , but the torpedo missed. She was less fortunate in the second incident when, on March 20, 1917, a torpedo from UC 66 (Oberleutnant zur See Herbert Pustkuchen ) hit her stern six miles south of Start Point on the Devon coast . The stern was almost completely torn away and the rudder and starboard shaft were destroyed. 35 men on board the Asturias were killed. The ship was put aground at Bolt Head.
The Asturias was so badly damaged that it was declared a total loss and written off. The wreck was bought, recovered and repaired by the British government. For the remainder of the war, the ship served as a floating ammunition store in Plymouth .
As a cruise ship Arcadian
After the war ended, the Asturias was bought back by the Royal Mail Line and towed to Belfast, where it lay for two years. Repair work began in the summer of 1922. The Asturias was redesigned as a cruise ship and began service in 1923 under the new name Arcadian . The ship went on cruises to Scandinavia , Southeast Asia , the Mediterranean and also sailed from New York to Bermuda .
The Great Depression in the early 1930s brought a slump in the cruise business and the Arcadian was no longer needed. It was launched in Southampton in October 1930 and sold to Japan for demolition in February 1933 . It arrived in Osaka on April 18, 1933 , where it was scrapped shortly afterwards.