Dunottar Castle
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The Dunottar Castle was a passenger and cargo steamer put into service in 1890, which was used by the British shipping company Union-Castle Line in passenger and mail traffic between Great Britain and South Africa . In 1913 the ship was sold to the Royal Mail Line . After the outbreak of the First World War , the ship served as HMS Caribbean first as a troop transport and then as an auxiliary cruiser until it sank in a storm off the Scottish coast on September 27, 1915.
The ship
The 5625 GRT steamship Dunottar Castle was built at Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering in Govan near Glasgow and was launched on May 22, 1890. The ship was 131.97 meters long and 15.15 meters wide and had a maximum draft of 7.62 meters. The Dunottar Castle had a single propeller, three masts and two chimneys. The triple expansion steam engines accelerated the ship up to 13 knots (according to other sources up to 17 knots). The Dunottar Castle was built for the British shipping company Castle Mail Packet Company Ltd., founded in 1862. ( Castle Line ) and used in their passenger and freight traffic from Southampton to Cape Town in South Africa . The passenger accommodations were designed for 160 passengers in the first class, 90 in the second class and 100 in the third class.
After completion, the Dunottar Castle carried out its test drives in the Outer Hebrides and ran from Dartmouth to Cape Town on its maiden voyage in September 1890 . On June 20, 1891, she set sail for the first time from Southampton to Cape Town and completed the crossing in 16 days and 14 hours. She was one of the fastest ships on her route at the time. Until then, the crossing usually took about 40 days. In 1894 Dunottar Castle ran aground by Eddystone Lighthouse on the Cornwall coast . She was made afloat and repaired. In 1897 renovations were carried out, in the course of which the chimneys were lengthened and a wheelhouse was added. On July 25, 1899, Robert Baden-Powell arrived on board the ship in Cape Town. On October 14, 1899, Winston Churchill embarked on Dunottar Castle , which entered Cape Town on October 31.
In November 1899, the steamer was requested as a troop transport during the Boer War . On the first voyage in this new service, 1500 soldiers under Sir Redvers Buller were brought to Cape Town on board Dunottar Castle . On the following departure from Southampton on December 23, 1899, Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts and Lord Kitchener were on board. In March 1900, the ship was transferred to the newly established Union-Castle Line , which had been formed through the merger of the Castle Line with the Union Line. She was the ship that housed the shipping company directors Sir Donald Currie and Sir Francis Evans on the occasion of the merger celebrations.
During the war she made frequent journeys between England and the Cape Colony and carried another famous boy scout, Major Frederick Russell Burnham , in addition to Churchill, who was then the young war correspondent for the Morning Post , and Colonel Baden-Powell . In July Churchill and Burnham returned to England on board the ship. On November 25, 1901, the Dunottar Castle had to be towed into the port of Dakar after a collision with the Runic of the White Star Line . Later she had to be towed as far as Great Britain after the propeller shaft broke near Cape Verde .
In 1904 the Dunottar Castle was launched in Southampton. In 1907 she was chartered to the Panama Railroad Company from New York , which she used in its passenger service between New York and Colón . In 1908, the ship was chartered to Sir Henry Simpson Lunn, the founder of the travel agency Lunn Poly, and used for cruises to Norway and the Mediterranean. In 1911 she brought guests to India for the coronation of King George V of Great Britain as Emperor of India.
Sale and doom
In 1913 the Dunottar Castle was sold to the Royal Mail Line and used for cruises under the name Caribbean . In September 1914, the ship was requested as a Caribbean troop transport and brought Canadian troops to Europe. Afterwards it was converted into an armed auxiliary cruiser, for which the ship was considered unsuitable after a short time. In May 1915 the ship was converted into accommodation for dock workers.
On September 27, 1915, the steamer was on its way to Scapa Flow when it capsized and sank 35 miles off Cape Wrath on the coast of Northern Scotland in stormy weather . The light cruiser Birkenhead tried to take the damaged ship in tow, but this failed. 15 crew members drowned. The rest of the crew was picked up by the Birkenhead .
An investigation into the accident made the ship's carpenter responsible and accused him of not having closed all hatches. This led to the ingress of water and the resulting sinking. He was accused of not being familiar enough with the ship. Like most of the other crew members, he had only gone on board for the first time ten days earlier.
Web links
- Summarized ship data in The Ships List (almost at the bottom)
- Ship data in the Clydebuilt Ships Database