Balkans (ship, 1883)
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The Balkan was a passenger ship put into service in 1883 by the French shipping company Compagnie de Navigation Fraissinet. During the First World War , in addition to its previous passenger traffic, it also served as a troop transport until it was sunk by a German submarine on August 16, 1918 northwest of Corsica . 417 of the 519 passengers and crew members on board were killed.
The ship
The 1,709 GRT steamship Balkan was built at the A. McMillan & Sons shipyard in Dumbarton on the Clyde , Scotland , and was launched on December 26, 1882. The 79.25 meter long and 11.13 meter wide ship had a chimney, two masts and a single propeller and was powered by a two-cylinder steam engine that developed 231 nominal hp (nhp).
The Balkans were built for the shipping company Compagnie de Navigation Fraissinet, founded in 1836 by Marc Fraissinet and headquartered in Marseille , which operated a regular service from southern France to the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea and called at ports such as Constantinople , Sulina , Odessa , Varna or Galați .
Sinking
On Thursday, August 15, 1918 at 9 a.m., the Balkans left Marseille under the command of Captain Jacques Antoine Giorgi for a voyage to Bastia in Corsica . There were 32 crew members and 487 passengers on board, including 300 French soldiers on leave from the front. The rest of the travelers were civilians , including many women and children. She drove in a convoy with the Pelion and the Boree , but they turned off again shortly after departure.
At 1:35 a.m. on August 16, 1918, the Balkans were hit by a torpedo eight nautical miles northwest of the port city of Calvi . The ship had been attacked by the German submarine UB 48 under the command of Kapitänleutnant Wolfgang Steinbauer. Due to the force of the impact, the transmitter mast buckled so that the radio operator could not make an emergency call . The Balkans took a heavy list to port side until they lay vertically in the water and just two minutes after the torpedoing decreased (position 42.40N, 08.39E).
417 passengers and crew members were killed. 102 people (12 crew members and 90 passengers) survived. They rowed to the lighthouse of Revellata , until they removed about 10 am three miles from the coast of two seaplanes were sighted and eventually picked up by a ship.