Dover Castle (ship)
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The Dover Castle was a passenger steamer put into service in 1904, which was used by the British shipping company Union-Castle Line for passenger and mail traffic between Great Britain and South Africa . During the First World War , the ship served as HMHS Dover Castle as a hospital ship until it was sunk in the Mediterranean by a German submarine on May 26, 1917 .
Passenger ship
The 8,271 GRT steamship Dover Castle was built at the Barclay, Curle and Company shipyard in the Glasgow district of Whiteinch and was launched on February 4, 1904. The passenger and cargo ship was 145.18 meters long, 17.25 meters wide and had a maximum draft of 9.68 meters. The Dover Castle was powered by quadruple expansion steam engines that operated on two propellers and made 969 nominal horsepower (nhp). The top speed was 14.5 knots (26.9 km / h).
The steamer was used in the London-South Africa service and was able to carry 220 passengers in the first class and 250 passengers in the third class. In addition, up to 300 extra passengers could be taken on board. Her sister ships were the Dunluce Castle (8114 GRT), which was also commissioned in 1904 , and was built by Harland & Wolff in Belfast, and the Durham Castle (8217 GRT), which was built by Fairfield Shipbuilders in Glasgow. These two ships were also built for the South Africa service.
Hospital ship
After the outbreak of war, Dover Castle was converted into a hospital ship. In October 1916 she brought the survivors of the sinking of the British passenger ship RMS Franconia ashore, which had been sunk east of Malta by a German submarine. On May 26, 1917, the ship was with several hundred patients on board and correctly marked on a crossing from Malta to Gibraltar . She drove in a convoy with a second British hospital ship, the HMHS Karapara of the British India Steam Navigation Company and the destroyers of the Royal Navy HMS Nemesis and HMS Cameleon . However, contrary to the wishes of the German side, this voyage of the hospital ship had not been announced six weeks before the voyage; for example, ships that had not been registered were suspected of being misused for military purposes following an order from the naval war command of March 1917.
About 50 miles north of Annaba on the Algerian coast, the German submarine UC 67 (under Kapitänleutnant Karl Neumann ) discovered the convoy and shot down a torpedo that hit Dover Castle , which was not reported and was also in a military convoy . Seven stokers were killed below deck by the detonation of the torpedo. The two destroyers and the Karapara took in the crew and the patients. The captain and a small volunteer crew stayed on board, hoping to save the ship. However, about an hour after the first goal shot UC 67 from a second torpedo, after it hits the ship in three minutes at the position 37 ° 45 ' N , 7 ° 36' O sank.
Except for the seven stokers, all on board could be saved. Katy Beaufoy, who had been Dover Castle's head nurse since June 1916 , was not on board on this voyage. She was then transferred to the Glenart Castle , when it was sunk on February 26, 1918, she was killed.
See also
- HMHS Anglia : British hospital ship; ran into a German sea mine on November 17, 1915 and sank (134 dead)
- HMHS Britannic : British hospital ship; ran into a German sea mine on November 21, 1916 and sank (30 dead)
- HMHS Salta : British hospital ship; ran into a German sea mine on April 10, 1917 and sank (130 dead)
- HMHS Glenart Castle : British hospital ship; sunk by a German submarine on February 26, 1918 (153 dead)
- HMHS Llandovery Castle : British hospital ship; sunk by a German submarine on June 27, 1918 (234 dead)
Web links
- Some technical data
- Summary of the sinking
- The Dover Castle in the Clydebuilt Ships Database
- The Dover Castle in the submarine database
Individual evidence
- ↑ See note from Karl Neumann in: Eberhard von Mantey (ed.): Auf See undbesiegt. Vol. 2, Munich 1922, p. 107 ff.