Ausonia (ship, 1909)
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The RMS Ausonia (I) was a 1909 posed in service Transatlantic - passenger ship , which from 1911 until its sinking by a German U-boat of the UK in May 1918 shipping company Cunard Line belonged.
The ship
The 7,907 GRT steamship was built at the Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson, Ltd. built in the northern English town of Wallsend am Tyne and launched on August 18, 1909. The 137.3 meter long and 16.5 meter wide ship had a maximum draft of 8.9 meters and was powered by triple expansion steam engines from Palmers Co., Ltd. powered from Jarrow , which made 888 hp on the shafts . In September 1909 the ship was completed. The top speed was twelve knots. The ship was equipped with a chimney, four masts and two screws . The passenger capacity was 37 passengers in first and 1,000 in third class.
The ship was used for the in Dundee sedentary shipping company Thomson built line and ran under the name Tortona launched. The Thomson Line was founded in the middle of the 19th century as a pure freight company, but has also carried passengers from Great Britain to Canada and the Mediterranean region since the 1880s . In 1907 the Thomson Line was integrated into the Cairn Line, but kept its name and ships. The Tortona and the Cairnrona , taken over by Wilson Line in 1909, were the shipping company's only pure passenger ships; all others were still primarily used as cargo ships .
On 22 October 1909 the put Tortona in Middlesbrough for their maiden voyage to Quebec and Montreal from. On November 20, 1909, she left Montreal for her first voyage (via Québec) to Naples , Genoa and Livorno . In March 1910 her first crossing from Naples to Portland took place. Later it was also used on the Naples – Québec – Montreal and London – Québec – Montreal routes.
In 1911, the Tortona , the Cairnrona (7,640 BRT, 1900) and the not yet finished Gerona (9,111 BRT, 1911) were sold to Cunard, since the Thomson Line was again only active in freight traffic under the name Cairn-Thomson Line and no longer carried passengers. The Tortona was renamed Ausonia (I), the Cairnrona in Albania (I) and the Gerona in Ascania (I). The three new ships served Cunard's new route London - Southampton - Québec - Montreal, with which they entered the trading business to Canada. The Ausonia was chartered to the Anchor Line in 1914 , which had recently been taken over by Cunard. For the Anchor Line, the ship completed four voyages on the Glasgow - Moville - New York route before returning to the Canada route.
In the first World War
In April 1915 the Ausonia carried the Irish Royal Dublin Fusiliers infantry regiment to Limnos . In January 1916, the same regiment evacuated them from the Gallipoli peninsula . On June 11, 1917, the Ausonia was torpedoed on a trip from Montreal to Avonmouth by the German submarine U 55 under the command of First Lieutenant Wilhelm Werner , where one person was killed. It was damaged but made it to Queenstown .
On May 30, 1918, the Ausonia was attacked again by a German submarine and this time sunk. The ship was under the command of Captain Robert Capper on a voyage from Liverpool to New York and was attacked 620 nautical miles southwest of the Fastnet rock by U 62 under the command of Lieutenant Ernst Hashagen . In 1917, Hashagen also sank the Norwegian coal freighter Storstad with U 62 , which collided with the Empress of Ireland in 1914 and caused its sinking.
Eight crew members died on board the ocean liner when the torpedo detonated. About 45 minutes after the torpedo hit, U 62 appeared and put the sinking ship under artillery fire. The Ausonia finally dropped to the position of 47 ° 59 ' N , 23 ° 42' W . The surviving crew could leave the ship beforehand. It was not until June 8, eight days after the sinking, that the survivors were found by the Zennia and an American destroyer . In the meantime, the number of dead had risen to 44 and the boats had drifted about 900 nautical miles from the sinking site. Captain Capper was subsequently awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC).