Carolina (ship, 1896)
 |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
The Carolina was an American passenger steamer that was sunk on June 2, 1918 by the German submarine U 151 . This day was known as Black Sunday, because U 151 sank six ships under the American flag with a total volume of 12,680 GRT on this day off the coast of New Jersey within twelve hours . The Carolina was the largest of these ships and the only one that killed people when it was sunk. The sinking of the Carolina so close to the American coast shocked the American public and prompted a rapid influx of the American Navy.
period of service
The client and first owner of the ship was the Plant Investment Company, a shipping and railroad company founded in 1882, which maintained an extensive network of railways and shipping lines for the transport of passengers, mail and freight in the southern states . The Plant Investment Company commissioned the passenger and cargo ship from the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Newport News , Virginia, in April 1895 . Contractually the amount of the construction costs was set at 500,000 US dollars, but the ship was only delivered after three years and in the end cost 536,000 US dollars. In percentage terms, this represented the largest financial loss ever recorded on a ship built by Newport News Shipbuilding.
The 5,018 GRT steamer was 115.82 meters long, 14.54 meters wide and was christened La Grande Duchesse on January 30, 1896 . It was powered by two quadruple expansion steam engines manufactured at the shipyard with an output of 599 nominal horsepower . After completion and the test drives, the La Grande Duchesse was handed over to the Plant Investment Company in November 1896, but was immediately returned due to problems with the boilers and the propellers . Despite repairs, the owners let the ship go back again in November 1897 in order to have further modifications carried out. The previous water tube boilers were replaced by shell boilers .
After further test drives in June 1898, the steamer was finally accepted by the Plant Investment Company on April 9, 1899 and immediately afterwards chartered by the US government to be used as a transporter in the Spanish-American War . In November 1901 it was transferred to the Ocean Steamship Company ( Savannah Line ) from Savannah , which it renamed the City of Savannah and used on the route from New York to Charleston ( South Carolina ).
In January 1906, the ship was sold to the Porto Rico Line (actually New York and Porto Rico Steamship Company ), which maintained passenger and freight traffic to Puerto Rico (then called Porto Rico) and Cuba and renamed the ship Carolina . For this shipping company, the ship drove from New York to Puerto Rico and called the cities of Ponce , Mayagüez and San Juan .
During her early years of service, the Carolina struggled with her machinery. It vibrated heavily and its stern, which was sized for a twin propeller, caused steering problems. On November 21, 1907, she was badly damaged in a fire in the dry dock on Shooters Island . In 1913 the deficiencies were remedied by renovations at their shipyard. Four single-end boilers were installed, the stern was rebuilt and the two quadruple expansion steam engines were replaced by a new one with triple expansion. Although the Carolina now only had one engine and 3,000 hp less than before, it drove faster, was easier to control and no longer vibrated. On March 2, 1914, Newport News Shipbuilding handed over the renewed ship to its shipping company.
Two months later the steamer collided with the HAPAG steamer Cleveland (16,960 GRT) in New York Harbor .
Black Sunday
Patrol of U 151
On Sunday, June 2, 1918, the Carolina was sunk by the German submarine U 151 . U 151 was a submarine of the Imperial Navy , which was commanded by Korvettenkapitän Heinrich von Nostitz and Jänckendorf. The submarine had already had a very successful patrol . The crew was tasked with weakening shipping along the northeast coast of the United States and had been in those waters since the end of May.
June 2, 1918 was the most successful day of the submarine's entire mission. At 7.50 a.m., the schooner Isabel B. Wiley (776 GRT) was shot at with shells 60 nautical miles off the coast of New Jersey . The team was able to save itself unscathed. At 8:10 a.m. the freight steamer Winneconne (1869 BRT) was stopped and searched. After the master and the rest of the crew had half an hour to leave the ship, the Winneconne was sunk by artillery fire at 09.12. Around noon the schooner Jacob M. Haskell (1,798 GRT) was stopped by a shot in front of the bow . Again, the crew was given time to disembark before the ship was sunk by grenades.
In the afternoon the schooner Edward H. Cole (1791 BRT) was circled and stopped. The captain and the crew of eleven boarded a lifeboat , after which their ship was sunk by fire at 4 p.m. The tanker Texel (3220 GRT) was the next victim around 5:20 p.m. The Texel sank in just three minutes. The 36 crew members rowed ashore independently and reached the Atlantic City beach at midnight.
Sinking of the Carolina
The Carolina was on the evening of June 2, 1918 under the command of Captain Thomas RD Barbour on the return voyage from San Juan to New York. The ship had sugar loaded and 218 passengers and 113 crew members on board. The Carolina radio operator had only recently received news of the sinking of Isabel B. Wiley less than 15 miles away. Captain Barbour was informed and immediately ordered a higher speed and a zigzag course.
At around 7.20 p.m. U 151 fired three warning shots into the wake of the steamer 125 nautical miles southeast of Sandy Hook , after which the steamer made an emergency call. This read: “SOS. Steamer Carolina shot at by German submarine ”and was received by the radio station in Cape May and the naval stations in Brooklyn and Arlington . Cape May reacted immediately and asked for the position of the ship. The Carolina did not answer, however, because she received the radio message from the submarine: "You are not radioing - we are not shooting". Before the shelling, no one on the Carolina had noticed the submarine.
Captain Barbour bowed to the will of the submarine crew as he was concerned for the safety of the women and children on board. While the lifeboats were being launched, Barbour burned all important papers and then boarded the last boat. A crew member of U 151 , Lieutenant Captain Friedrich Körner, later recalled that the passenger steamer was quietly and disciplined, but left “with loud cries of female voices”.
After the Carolina was evacuated, U 151 went alongside. No men were sent on board the steamer; instead, the submarine fired three shells into one side of the hull, then circled the Carolina and fired three more shots. Within ten minutes the ship lay on its side and sank almost vertically, bow first, at about 8.15 p.m. Shortly afterwards, U 151 submerged and disappeared.
While the U 151 mission had only caused material and financial damage until then, the sinking of the Carolina was the first time people were harmed. Lifeboat No. 5 was towed by the Carolina's only motorboat during the night . During the night a heavy storm came up, as a result of which the rope broke and the boats drifted apart in the darkness and the high waves. On his search for lifeboat No. 5, the motorboat capsized and eight passengers and five crew members drowned. During the night the motorboat rolled over and over and had to be straightened up every time.
The 19 survivors of the motorboat, including two women, were discovered by the British cargo steamer Appleby and brought to Lewes . Boat # 5 landed on Atlantic City Beach a day later. Beach vacationers helped the 25 men and eight women in the boat ashore. When the lifeboat, which had hoisted a white shirt as an emergency signal, approached the head of the pier and was registered by the bathers, a band playing on the beach promenade waved from Where do We Go From Here? to The Star-Spangled Banner . The remaining eight lifeboats were connected with ropes after the sinking of the Carolina and rowed towards the shore. On the morning of June 3, the approximately 250 survivors were picked up by the four-masted schooner Eva B. Douglass , which was first anchored in Barnegat Inlet and then towed to New York on June 4 by submarine patrol boat No. 507.
consequences
The sinking of the Carolina startled the American public. It seemed as if the war, which the Americans saw as a purely European problem, had arrived in their own country. The day after the reports of the sinking were published in the American newspapers, 3,000 New Yorkers volunteered in the US Navy .
Relatives and friends of the Carolina passengers besieged New York shipping companies, ports were temporarily closed, and departures were canceled. Freight rates rose and insurance premiums reached unimagined heights. The US Navy ordered radio silence at sea, arranged for convoy trains to be assembled and took control of coastal shipping . The Manhattan skyline was shrouded in darkness at night by blackout regulations.
Discovery of the wreck
The Carolina wreck was discovered by divers John Chatterton and John Yurga at a depth of 76 meters. Chatterton received the salvage rights to the wreck from the state of New Jersey in 1995, but announced in an open letter that other divers would be free to remove items from the site.
Together with the well-known American wreck diver and author Gary Gentile, who has already explored the wrecks of the Lusitania , East Friesland and the Andrea Doria , Chatterton hid the paymaster's safe , which contained gold coins and jewelry. In addition, portholes , crockery and the bridge telegraph were recovered and the bronze lettering “Carolina” was removed from the hull.
Web links
- Detailed description of the history of the ship and Black Sunday (illustrated)
- The story of the Carolina steamship
- Information on the sinking of the Carolina
- The Carolina as a diving destination
- Report of the sinking in the New York Times, June 5, 1918
- Passenger list of the last trip