Atrato (ship, 1889)
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The RMS Atrato (II) was a passenger ship of the British shipping company Royal Mail Line that was put into service in 1889 and was used in passenger and mail traffic from Great Britain to the West Indies . In 1912 the ship was sold. During the First World War , she served as HMS Viknor as an armed auxiliary cruiser (Armed Merchant Cruiser). On January 13, 1915, the ship with 295 people on board disappeared while on patrol on the Northern Irish coast. The HMS Viknor may have run into a German sea mine . There were no survivors.
The ship
The 5386 GRT steamship Atrato was built at the Robert Napier & Sons shipyard in Govan near Glasgow and was launched on September 22, 1888. The Atrato was a 128.3 meter long and 15.2 meter wide passenger and mail ship. She had two funnels, three masts and a single propeller and was powered by triple expansion steam engines that could accelerate the ship to a speed of 15 knots. 221 passengers could be carried in first, 32 in second and 26 in third class.
On January 17, 1889, the put Atrato in Southampton for its maiden voyage to Brazil , Montevideo and Buenos Aires from. In the following years, however, the ship only sailed from England to the West Indies . In 1912 the ship was sold to the Viking Cruising Company and renamed the Viking .
After the outbreak of the First World War , the ship was used by the Admiralty on December 12, 1914 as an armed auxiliary cruiser and assigned to the 10th Cruiser Squadron as HMS Viknor . The ship then served in the Northern Patrol , which served as the sea blockade against the German Empire between the Orkney Islands and the Faroe Islands .
On January 13, 1915, just one month after commissioning, the HMS Viknor was under the command of Commander Ernest Orford Ballantyne with 22 officers and 273 lower ranks of the Royal Navy on board on patrol off Northern Ireland . She was in communication with the Malin Head radio station and was last seen off Tory Island about 14 km off the coast of Donegal . After that, all trace of the ship was lost. No emergency calls were recorded either .
In the days after the disappearance, numerous bodies were washed up on the coast. However, no survivors were found. The wreck of the HMS Viknor was located in 2006. It is generally assumed that the ship ran into a minefield recently laid by the auxiliary cruiser Berlin and sank. A severe storm that occurred in the area at the time could also have been the cause. However, the actual cause could never be determined.