City of Cairo
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The City of Cairo was a passenger ship of the British shipping company Ellerman Lines put into service in 1915 , which carried passengers , freight and mail from England to India , Africa and South America until the Second World War . On November 6, 1942, the City of Cairo was sunk more than 1000 miles off the west coast of Africa by the German submarine U 68 without warning. The ship did not travel in a convoy and had neither troops nor contraband , but ordinary cargo and civilian passengers on board. Because of the distance to land, it took several weeks to find the lifeboats. A total of 104 people were killed.
Attack on the ship
The City of Cairo was used by the British government as a supply ship at the beginning of World War II , which was supposed to bring food and other supplies to Britain. The steamer was also still active in regular passenger service. He did not transport any troops during the war .
On Thursday, October 1, 1942, the City of Cairo ran under the command of the 46-year-old Captain William Alexander Rogerson in Bombay for another crossing to Great Britain. The trip should take the ship to Durban and Cape Town in South Africa and Recife in Brazil . On board were 200 crew members, 101 passengers (including 28 women and 19 children) and ten artillerymen who were supposed to defend the ship in the event of an attack with gunfire as part of the Defense Equipped Merchant Ships (DEMS) program. In addition, a total of 7,422 tons of cargo were on board, including wood, wool, cotton , pig iron , manganese and 2000 boxes with silver coins .
At 6:00 a.m. on November 1, 1942, the City of Cairo left Cape Town. It steamed about 800 miles north along the west coast of South Africa, zigzagging during the day and staying about 45 miles from land. Then she turned west into the open Atlantic to head for her next destination in Brazil. The City of Cairo drove without escort, only managed twelve knots and was also visible from afar because of its intense billows of smoke.
On the evening of November 6th, this smoke was sighted by U 68 , a Type IX C submarine of the German Navy . The submarine was under the command of Korvettenkapitän Karl-Friedrich Merten on its fifth patrol . At 21:36, Merten fired a torpedo that hit the City of Cairo at the height of the aft mast. Captain Rogerson immediately ordered the boats to be lowered and radioed for help. The ship kept going and stayed on a level keel, but began to sink slowly stern first. The radio message from the City of Cairo was forwarded by U 68 to the radio station in Walvis Bay ( Namibia ).
Twenty minutes after the first attack, U 68 fired a second torpedo, which caused the boilers to explode and the already battered City of Cairo to sink, stern first, within a minute. Six people, two crew members and four passengers, were killed in the attack, including chief radio operator Harry Peever, who had sent the SOS signal . Everyone else made it safely to the lifeboats .
After the ship sank, U 68 appeared next to the lifeboats. Merten used a megaphone to ask the 55 survivors in lifeboat no. 6 the name of the ship, the cargo and whether there were prisoners of war on board. Then he showed the people in the boats the way to land. The closest point was the volcanic island of St. Helena, 480 miles away . The African coast was 1000 miles away, the Brazilian 2000 miles. He left her with the words "Good night and sorry for sinking you" and went underground.
In the lifeboats
After the submarine disappeared, the castaways were left to their own devices. It took days to find them. A total of six lifeboats (No. 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 and 8) had been launched into the water before the ship sank. After the situation had been discussed among the survivors, it was decided to head for the nearest country, St. Helena. Each of the boats had a compass , but only the sixth officer Leslie Boundy in boat # 7 had a sextant . Since this was needed together with the Rolex by Captain Rogerson for navigation, the boats had to stay together. The survivors expected to reach St. Helena in two to three weeks. The water supply was rationed to 110 ml per person per day despite the tropical heat .
During the weeks that followed, the lifeboats lost contact with each other. Rogerson had hoped to keep the boats together for as long as possible. But when one took in water and ran out of supplies, he allowed it to take up head start. Other boats were damaged and lost connection over time. In addition, the majority of the boat occupants gradually died, including many of the women and children.
rescue
Three of the lifeboats, including the one that Captain Rogerson had on board, were found on November 9 by the Clan Alpine passenger steamer of the Clan Line shipping company . Rogerson informed Clan Alpine captain Charles W. Banbury that there were three other boats on the ocean, but could not confirm exactly where they were. After an unsuccessful search, Clan Alpine brought the 154 rescued people to St. Helena. Two of them died on board the ship and four others in a hospital on St. Helena. Another boat with 47 survivors was found on the evening of November 19 from the Ben Line cargo ship Bendoran under Captain William C. Wilson. The people in the boat had spent 13 days at sea and were brought to Cape Town by the Bendoran . One man died during the trip.
The German blockade breaker Rhakotis ¸, who was on the way from Japan to Bordeaux , saved three other people on December 12th who had spent 36 days in their boat. One of the people, the 21-year-old passenger Diana Tyrrell Jarman, died shortly after the recovery. The Rhakotis was torpedoed and sunk on January 1, 1943 off Cape Finisterre by the British light cruiser HMS Scylla . The two survivors of the City of Cairo made it back into the lifeboats and also survived this sinking.
The 17 people in Lifeboat No. 2 believed they had missed St. Helena on November 23 and headed for South America. It was not until December 27, 51 days after the sinking of the City of Cairo , that the boat was found by the miner Caravelas of the Brazilian Navy. Only two people were left alive, third officer James Allister Whyte, 25, and passenger Margaret Hope Gordon, a 32-year-old Australian teacher who lost her husband in the sinking. The Caravelas brought the two to Recife. James Whyte was awarded the Order of the British Empire . He was killed on March 4, 1943 on the City of Pretoria of the same shipping company that was sunk by U 172 northwest of the Azores . Margaret Gordon was awarded the British Empire Medal in December 1943 and decided not to cross the Atlantic until the end of the war. Of the 311 people on board, 104 were killed, including 79 crew members, three of the ten artillerymen and 22 passengers. Six died immediately from the sinking, 91 in the boats and seven after the rescue. 207 people were saved. The names of some of the victims are engraved on the Tower Hill Memorial , a war memorial in London.
Similar cases
Other British passenger ships sunk by German submarines:
- Athenia , 1939
- City of Benares , 1940
- Oropesa , 1940
- Ceramic , 1942
Finding the wreck again
The wreck was discovered in November 2013 at a depth of 5150 m off Namibia by a Franco-British treasure hunter team from the Deep Ocean Search Company after more than two years of searching at position 23 ° 30 ′ S , 5 ° 30 ′ W again and raised their silver treasure in today's market value of more than 50 million euros. Under a contract with the British Ministry of Transport, several dozen tons of silver coins and the second torpedo, which finally brought the steamer to sink, were lifted. The depth record that had been set when the Titanic was found was exceeded .
literature
- Ralph Barker. Goodnight, Sorry For Sinking You. The Story of the SS City of Cairo Harper Collins Publishers Ltd, London, 1984
- Brian Crabb. Beyond the Call of Duty Shaun Tyas, 2006
Web links
- The City of Cairo
- Information in the submarine database
- Memories of a surviving machinist
- Goodnight, sorry for sinking you
- Deep Ocean Search press release about wreckage
Footnotes
- ↑ Record dive rescues $ 50m wartime silver from ocean floor. BBC News, April 15, 2015, accessed April 15, 2015 .