HMHS Rewa
 The Rewa before the war (1907)
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The Rewa (II) was a 1906 posed in service steamship of British shipping company British India Steam Navigation Company , which was used initially as a combined passenger and cargo ship in World War I as HMHS Rewa as (His Majesty's Hospital Ship) hospital ship served. In 1918, a few months before the end of the war, the Rewa was sunk by a German submarine in the Bristol Channel , killing four people.
The ship
The 7,308 GRT steamship Rewa was built at the William Denny and Brothers shipyard in the Scottish town of Dumbarton and was launched on February 14, 1906. The ship was completed on June 7, 1906. The Rewa was 139 meters long, 17.1 meters wide and had a maximum draft of 9.1 meters. It was powered by three Parsons turbines that developed 9,344 SHP (6,968 kW) and allowed a speed of 18 knots (33.3 km / h). The ship had six steam boilers . The passenger accommodation was able to accommodate 100 travelers in first and 65 in second class. The crew consisted of 175 people.
Her sister ship was the Rohilla (7,114 GRT) launched at Harland & Wolff on September 6, 1906 . Both ships were registered in Glasgow and designed as passenger ships. In 1908 both were withdrawn from passenger traffic and converted into troop transports . The Rewa was troop transporter No. 5, the Rohilla No. 6. With the outbreak of the First World War , both steamers were requested by the Royal Navy and converted into hospital ships.
Sinking and consequences
On Friday, January 4, 1918, the Rewa returned with 279 patients from Moudros via Malta and Gibraltar to Avonmouth . In Gibraltar, neutral Spanish inspectors went on board to confirm that the Rewa was not exercising any military function. At 11.15 a.m. on January 4, 19 miles from Hartland Point on the coast of Devon , the Rewa was hit by a torpedo from the German submarine U 55 (Kapitänleutnant Wilhelm Werner ). It sank within about two hours, leaving enough time to get all the patients off board. However , four machinists were killed by the explosion of the torpedo .
The sinking of the unarmed hospital ship caused great excitement in Great Britain. The Imperial Navy denied that a German submarine had sunk the Rewa and put the blame on a British sea mine . Although the German submarine fleet had been ordered to sink every ship in the spirit of total sea warfare , Lieutenant Werner seemed to fear the consequences of the attack on the Rewa . In his war diary he noted that he had sunk an unknown freighter and not a ship recognizable as a hospital ship. After the end of the war, the Allies tried Werner's war crimes charges , but he emigrated to Brazil in 1919 and escaped conviction.
The wreck of the Rewa was discovered by divers 33 miles off Newquay in September 2003 . It lies at a depth of 61 meters at 50 ° 55 ′ N , 4 ° 49 ′ W, upright on the ocean floor. It was located by the British using sonar as early as the Second World War . However, it was mistaken for a submerged German submarine and bombed with depth charges. This caused great damage to the wreck.
See also
- HMHS Anglia : British hospital ship; ran into a German sea mine on November 17, 1915 and sank (134 dead)
- HMHS Llandovery Castle : British hospital ship; sunk by a German submarine on June 27, 1918 (234 dead)
- HMHS Glenart Castle : British hospital ship; sunk by a German submarine on February 26, 1918 (153 dead)