City of Simla
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The City of Simla was a 1921 passenger ship of the British shipping company Ellerman Lines , which was used in passenger and mail traffic from Great Britain to India and Africa . On September 21, 1940, the ship sank north of Northern Ireland after being torpedoed by a German submarine the previous day with passengers and cargo on board . Three people were killed.
history
The 10,138 GRT steam turbine ship City of Simla was built at William Gray & Company Ltd. built in West Hartlepool and launched on May 10, 1921. The 151.5 meter long and 17.7 meter wide passenger and cargo ship was built for George Smith and Sons shipping company City Line, which had been part of the Ellerman Group (Ellerman Lines, Ltd.) since 1901. In November 1921 the ship was completed. The sister ship City of Nagpur (10,146 GRT) followed in 1922 , which was built by Workman, Clark & Co. in Belfast and also sunk in World War II .
The City of Simla was powered by four steam turbines that ran on two propellers and made 1,243 nominal horsepower. The top speed was 13.5 knots. The City Line ships operated on the route from Glasgow via Liverpool to Port Said , Suez , Bombay , Karachi , Kathiawar , East and West Africa, and back via continental Europe and Glasgow.
On September 20, 1940, the City of Simla was part of convoy OB-216 en route from London via Cape Town to Bombay. On board were 167 passengers, 183 crew members and 3,000 tons of cargo. Captain Herbert Percival was in command. Most of the passengers were wives and children of Army personnel stationed in India. At 9:20 p.m. on the evening of September 20, the convoy was attacked 52 nautical miles northwest of Rathlin Island off the coast of Northern Ireland by the German submarine U 138 (Captain Wolfgang Lüth ). Three ships were hit: the whaler New Sevilla (13,801 GRT), the Panamanian merchant ship Boka (5,560 GRT) and the City of Simla .
The City of Simla remained buoyant for some time, but sank in the early morning hours of September 21 at the position 55 ° 59N / 08 ° 16W. One crew member and two passengers were killed. 165 crew members and 153 passengers were picked up by the British steamer Guinean and transferred to the British destroyer Vanquisher (Lt. Adrian P. Northey), which brought them ashore two days later in Londonderry . 17 other crew members and 12 passengers were picked up by the Belgian trawler Van Dyke and brought to Liverpool.