Galway Castle
 The identical sister ship Gloucester Castle
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The Galway Castle was a passenger steamer put into service in 1911 , which was used by the British shipping company Union-Castle Line in passenger and mail traffic between Great Britain and South Africa . On September 12, 1918, the ship was torpedoed by a German submarine in the English Channel , killing 143 passengers and crew members. The Galway Castle sank three days later.
The ship
The 7,988 GRT steamship Galway Castle was built for the Union-Castle Line at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast , Northern Ireland . The ship was 137.9 meters long and 17.2 meters wide and had a maximum draft of 9.4 meters. The ship was launched in Belfast on April 12, 1911 and was completed in October 1911. The Galway Castle was the last ship delivered to the Union-Castle Line before the shipping company was taken over by the Royal Mail Line in 1912 .
The twin screw steamer had a chimney, two masts and was equipped with quadruple expansion steam engines that made 722 horsepower and allowed a top speed of 12 knots (22.2 km / h). On board there was space for 87 passengers in the first, 130 in the second and 195 in the third class.
The Galway Castle had two sister ships, which were also put into service in 1911 and were built for the express service called London-South and East Africa Intermediate Service in passenger and goods traffic to South Africa. These were the Gloucester Castle (7,999 GRT), which was sunk in the south Atlantic by a German auxiliary cruiser in 1942, and the Guildford Castle (8,036 GRT), which sank on the Elbe in 1933 after a collision with the steamer Stentor of the Blue Funnel Line .
After the outbreak of war
In August 1914, immediately after the outbreak of World War I , the ship was converted into an armed auxiliary cruiser and from then on transported troops from Cape Town to Namibia , who fought against the German troops from German South West Africa under General Louis Botha . After the occupation of German South West Africa in July 1915, the ship returned to commercial passenger and mail traffic.
On August 3, 1916, the Galway Castle in the Thames estuary near the lightship Gull was attacked by a German aircraft, but got away without major damage, as the bomb that hit the ship did not explode. On October 12, 1917, the ship ran aground on Orient Beach near Quigney, a suburb of East London . However, it was able to be made afloat five days later and continue its journey.
Sinking
On Tuesday morning, September 10, 1918, the Galway Castle put under the command of Captain WB Dyer († 1926) with passengers, freight and mail in Plymouth for a crossing to Durban (then Port Natal). On board were 204 crew members, 346 passengers and 400 South African wounded soldiers, a total of 950 people.
The ship was part of a convoy of 16 steamers, which was accompanied by several cruisers and destroyers . The following day, the convoy steamed at the entrance to the English Channel in a bad weather zone with strong winds and high waves, so that the convoy made slow progress. Captain Dyer instructed passengers to be dressed and to wear life jackets at all times, including at night , as long as they were in the danger zone. He went personally below deck to the passenger quarters at night to make sure that his instructions were being followed. He found that many passengers were still wearing no life jackets and were only lightly clothed.
He also ordered regular rescue drills at the boat stations, but the heavy seas made many travelers seasick and unable to take part in the drills. Around 9:30 p.m. on the evening of September 11th, 36 hours after casting off, the convoy began to break up. While other ships in the convoy took a south course towards the Mediterranean , the Galway Castle took a course in a westerly direction on the instructions of the escort ship Ebro and increased the speed to eleven knots.
The night passed quietly, but on September 12, 1918 at 7:40 in the morning, the Galway Castle was rocked about 200 nautical miles southwest of Land's End by a severe explosion that knocked many people on board and injured Captain Dyer on the bridge . The steamer was hit by a torpedo from the German U 82 submarine , which was under the command of Lieutenant Heinrich Middendorf on an patrol . The lights on board went out immediately, the radio system failed and the machines failed. Within a minute, the Galway Castle was rolling in the sea, unable to maneuver. Captain Dyer tried to contact the engine room but got no answer. Several machinists and stokers were killed in the explosion. The engine room began to fill up quickly.
After Dyer ordered passengers and crew to go to the boat stations, he inspected the damage. The torpedo hit the port just before the boiler room and exploded in the hull. The hull of Galway Castle was broken in the middle, so that the ship sank amidships while the bow and stern rose up. As a result of this load, the superstructures in the middle of the ship slowly collapsed, which caused great noise. Dyer got the impression that the ship was going to sink quickly and therefore ordered the lifeboats to be manned and launched immediately .
The evacuation was made much more difficult by the break and the still stormy seas. Due to the break in the middle of the ship, communication from one half of the ship to the other was difficult and many passengers could not reach the boats assigned to them. In addition, some boats and davits were damaged and made unusable by the explosion. Nevertheless, 18 of the 21 lifeboats could be launched. Some of them were thrown against the side of the ship by the heavy seas, another broke apart when touching the water and threw its occupants into the sea. Many people swimming in the water were injured by debris being thrown around by the waves.
The Ebro had in the meantime emergency settle by radio. Several destroyers then arrived and recovered survivors from the boats for several hours. The Spitfire went alongside the Galway Castle and picked up the people who were still on board. Several tugs arrived from Plymouth and took the steamer in tow. The Galway Castle but fell three days after the torpedoing 160 miles southwest of the Fastnet Rock in position 48 ° 50 ' N , 10 ° 40' W . 143 people were killed in the attack. Captain Dyer was among the survivors.