City of Benares
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The City of Benares was a 1936 passenger ship of the British shipping company Ellerman Lines , which brought passengers and cargo from Liverpool first to Bombay and later to Canada . On September 18, 1940, the ocean liner was sunk in the North Atlantic by a German submarine . 248 people were killed, including 77 British children who were about to be evacuated to Canada under a British government-initiated program. The sinking of the City of Benares in connection with the deaths of the many children caused a worldwide outcry of indignation, as had already occurred in the First World War in the case of the Lusitania .
The ship
The 11,081-ton steamer SS City of Benares was at the shipyard Barclay Curle in Glasgow built district Whiteinch and expired on 5 August 1936 from the stack . The passenger and cargo steamer was 148.16 meters long, 19.08 m wide and had a maximum draft of 9.35 m. In October 1936 the ship was completed and on December 7, 1936 it went on its maiden voyage .
The ship was powered by three oil-heated steam turbines from Cammell, Laird & Company , whose 1,450 horsepower acted on a single propeller and allowed a speed of 15 knots (27.8 km / h). The callsign of the City of Benares was GZBW. The steamer could carry 219 passengers and was operated in peacetime by a crew of 209. It was named after the city of Varanasi (then Benares ) in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh .
The City of Benares belonged to Ellerman Lines, a British shipping company founded in 1892 with headquarters in London , whose passenger and cargo ships mainly served the routes of commercial shipping to the Mediterranean , the Middle East and India . The City of Benares operated on the Liverpool – Bombay route before World War II .
Sinking
Departure in convoy
On Friday, September 13, 1940, the City of Benares departed from Liverpool under the command of Captain Landles Nicoll (51) for another transatlantic crossing. The destinations were Quebec and Montreal . Unlike most other British passenger ships, she had not been requisitioned by the British government and converted into a troop transport or hospital ship. She continued to serve the transatlantic passenger service.
The City of Benares was the flagship of convoy OB-213, which consisted of a total of 19 ships. She had the convoy's commodore, Rear Adm. Edmond Julius Gordon Mackinnon, and his staff of five on board. The convoy was accompanied by the destroyer HMS Winchelsea of the Royal Navy . The City of Benares sailed in the center of the convoy of which it was the largest ship. There were a total of 406 people on board (209 crew members, 191 passengers and six seamen accompanying the convoy). Among the 191 passengers on this trip were among others:
- Ruby Grierson , British documentary director and producer ( London Wakes Up ), sister of John Grierson (died)
- Colonel James Baldwin-Webb, a member of parliament of the district Telford and Wrekin in the county of Shropshire (died)
- Dr. phil. John Percival Day, Canadian economist, professor at McGill University in Montreal (survived)
- Monika Mann , German writer, daughter of Thomas Mann (survived); her husband, the art historian Jenő Lányi , died.
- Rudolf Olden , German lawyer and journalist (died)
- Zygmunt Graliński , Polish diplomat and Member of Parliament (died)
- Anthony Quinton , later British politician, with his mother Letitia (both survived)
- Bohdan Nagórski, Polish shipping magnate, general director of Gdynia America Line , former port manager of the Free City of Gdansk (survived)
Passengers also included a group of 90 children sent to Canada under the Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB). CORB was a program launched by the British government in June 1940 to evacuate children to safe foreign countries during the war. By the time the City of Benares was sunk , over 2,600 British children had been brought to Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand (Great Britain's Dominions ). The children were accompanied by a group of ten teachers, nurses and two clergymen led by Marjorie Elizabeth Day, director of Wycombe Abbey School , a private school in High Wycombe .
The attack
On the evening of September 16, the Winchelsea left the convoy as it was called out for another mission as an escort. The convoy then broke up. One day later, on September 17th after dark, the City of Benares was sighted by the German submarine U 48 under Lieutenant Heinrich Bleichrodt . The ship was already about 600 nautical miles from land and steamed about 250 nautical miles southwest of the Rockall Rock through heavy seas and strong gusts of force 5.
After dinner, most of the passengers had withdrawn, but some were still in the smoking room and in the bars of the ship. At 23:45 fired U 48 , located on its eighth war patrol was, without warning two torpedoes on the passenger ship, both of which missed their target. At 00:01 on September 18, Bleichrodt had a third torpedo fired, which hit the City of Benares on port near the stern . A heavy detonation shook the steamer, which immediately sagged to port, causing dishes and furniture to move on board. The rescue was problematic: the lifeboats on the port side could not be lowered because this side of the ship was high in the air and the boats scraped against the hull . The boats on the starboard side swung out wide, creating a large gap between the boats and the deck. Several boats crashed because ropes came loose or they were lowered too quickly. Many passengers were washed away by the stormy waves from the starboard side, which after a short time was level with the water surface.
About 30 minutes after the attack was the City of Benares with the stern first to the position 56 ° 48 ' N , 21 ° 15' W under. 248 people were killed in the sinking, including 121 crew members, the six escort members and 121 passengers. Of the 90 children in the rescue program, 77 died. 158 people survived: 88 crew members and 70 passengers, including 13 children. Among the crew members who did not survive were the captain, second officer Hugh Asher, chief stewardess Christina Sharp Cook, and radio chief Alister Fairweather.
With the City of Benares sinking in a very remote area, it took some time for rescue to arrive. It was not until noon on September 18 that HMS Hurricane , a destroyer of the Royal Navy, arrived at the scene of the accident. She rescued about 100 of the survivors of the ocean liner and brought them to the western Scottish port city of Greenock . Lifeboat No. 12, which had 46 survivors on board and was commanded by fourth officer Ronald Mitchell Cooper, drifted a long way and was not found by the destroyer HMS Anthony until eight days later . The lifeboat also held six children from the CORB program, who had been cared for by London music teacher and pianist Mary Cornish and by Catholic Rev. Roderick O'Sullivan during that time. Mary Alice Clara Cornish (1899-1946) was awarded the Order of the British Empire in January 1941 .
The sinking of the City of Benares saw the Children's Overseas Reception Board's rescue program shut down. The British government did not want to answer for another case like that of the City of Benares . The last ride of the City of Benares is the background of the 1997 novel Wish Me Luck by James Heneghan , which was awarded the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize in 1998.
Similar cases
Other British passenger ships sunk by German submarines during World War II:
- Athenia , 1939
- Oropesa , 1940
- City of Cairo , 1942
- Ceramic , 1942
literature
- Tom Nagorski: Miracles on the Water. The heroic Survivors of the U-boat Attack on the SS City of Benares - one of the great lost Stories of WWII. Constable & Robinson, London 2007, ISBN 978-1-84529-432-8 .
- Brian James Crabb: Beyond the Call of Duty. The story of British Commonwealth Service and mercantile Women lost at Sea during the Second World War. Shaun Tyas, Donington 2006, ISBN 1-900289-66-0 .
- Janet Menzies: Children of the Doomed Voyage. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester 2005, ISBN 0-470-01887-9 .
- Ralph Barker: Children of the Benares. Methuen, London 1987, ISBN 0-413-42310-7 .
Web links
- Entry in the Miramar Ship Index
- The City of Benares in the Clydebuilt Ships Database (with picture)
- Details about the sinking in the submarine database
- BBC article on a memorial service for the victims of the City of Benares in 2005
- Eyewitness report from surviving Fourth Officer RM Cooper
- Illustrated excerpt from the book Miracles On the Water by Tom Nagorski
- Report of the sinking in the Liverpool Daily News of 23 September 1940