Avelona Star
 Deck plans of the Avila & Avelona
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The Avelona Star (I) was a cargo and passenger ship of the British shipping company Blue Star Line built in 1927 by the John Brown & Company shipyard in Clydebank , Scotland for transatlantic traffic from Great Britain to South America .
The ship
She was the fourth ship in a series of five commissioned by the British Blue Star Line founded in 1911. The Avelona Star was built in 1927 as the second after her sister ship Avila , at the John Brown & Company shipyard on the River Clyde in Scotland . Three more largely identical ships came from the Cammell, Laird & Company shipyard in Birkenhead . They were the Almeda (1926) with 14,935 GRT, the Andalucia (1927) with 14,934 GRT, and the Arandora (1927) with 14,694 GRT. The ship quintet was largely identical when it was built and was generally called The Luxury Five (in German: "The luxurious five"). In later years, the five ships were rebuilt in various ways.
It was driven by two sets of Parsons steam turbines, which acted on twin screws via simple gear sets with 120 revolutions per minute. The steam required was generated in three double-ended and two single-ended steam boilers . The holds with six hatches and a capacity of 12,000 m³ were completely insulated for the transport of refrigerated cargo and were loaded and unloaded with a total of 27 cargo booms.
In addition to the dining room and the smoking room, the 162 passengers of the Avila Star had access to two promenade decks, a music room and a veranda café. All common rooms had a height of 3.50 meters. The ship was launched on December 6, 1926 under the name Avelona from the pile and began in May 1927 their scheduled service to South America and back. In May 1929 the steamer was renamed Avelona Star . In 1931 the ship was converted into a pure cargo ship due to the overcapacity of passenger seats as a result of the global economic crisis in Greenock , whereby both two superstructure decks and the functionless rear chimney were removed. The removed chimney was installed on the ship Celtic Star in 1934 .
Sinking
On 16 June 1940, the ran Avelona Star in Freetown , Sierra Leone , under the command of Captain George Hopper from the crossing to the United Kingdom; 85 crew members were on board. The cargo consisted of 5,630 tons of frozen meat and 1,000 tons of oranges .
On June 30, 1940, the unarmed ship sailing near convoy SL-38 , about 220 nautical miles northwest of Cape Finisterre at position 46 ° 35 ′ 24 ″ N , 12 ° 10 ′ 12 ″ W by the German U -Boat U 43 torpedoed under the command of Wilhelm Ambrosius. One crew member was killed. The survivors were picked up by the French ship Beignon , which lost contact with its convoy and was also sunk by the German submarine U 30 on July 1 , whereby another three crew members of the Avelona Star died. The Avelona Star turn dropped on July 1, in position 46 ° 35 '24 " N , 11 ° 23' 24" W . All survivors were recovered from the destroyers HMS Vesper (D55) and HMS Windsor (D42) and later put ashore in Plymouth .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Excerpt 150 / Shipbuilding and Shipping Record September 5, 1927, Archives for Shipbuilding and Shipping: Building description of the Avila and Avelona . In: Werft * Reederei * Hafen 1927, No. 24, pages 566f
- ↑ The Avelona Star at Miramar Ship Index (English) ( Memento of 20 December 2012 at the Web archive archive.today )
- ↑ a b SS Avelona Star ( Memento from December 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive )