Jonathan Holt (ship, 1938)
The Jonathan Holt was an English cargo steamer that was sunk by a German submarine in 1941 .
The Jonathan Holt was built by the Cammell, Laird & Company shipyard in Birkenhead for the shipping company "John Holt & Co. (Liverpool) Ltd." and put into service in September 1938. The ship was measured with 4,973 gross tons.
The Jonathan Holt drove in on February 21, 1941 Liverpool with target West Africa from. The route should lead to Douala via Takoradi , Accra and Lagos . The freighter had general cargo and twelve passengers on board, plus 45 crew members. The captain was William Stephenson.
The ship was in convoy OB 289, three other convoys (OB 287, 288 and OB 290) had each started two days before and two days after from Liverpool. The route initially ran north through the Irish Sea . A route to the south, located far to the west, was to be reached via the sea area between the Faroe Islands and Iceland in order to avoid the area of operations of German long-range bombers and submarines operating near the coast. The leading convoy OB 288 with 46 ships received an initial submarine warning on February 21. On the morning of February 22nd, the convoy was bombed from the air. On February 23, the escorting three destroyers and one corvette left the convoy. On the night of February 24, nine ships were lost to five submarines.
At that time OB 289 with 25 ships was 130 nautical miles southwest of the Faroe Islands and about 270 nautical miles from the attacked convoy OB 288. U 552 under Kapitänleutnant Erich Topp sighted the convoy on February 23 and brought in U 95 , U 97 and U 108 . U 97 under Oberleutnant zur See Udo Heilmann, on his first patrol from Kiel to Lorient (February 18 to March 7, 1941), sank the freighters Mansepool (4,894 GRT) and Jonathan Holt and the tanker British Gunner in three attempts shortly after midnight (6,894 GRT). All 44 crew members were rescued from the mansepool , three of 44 from the British Gunner died. The losses of the Jonathan Holt were extremely high: 51 people died, including the archaeologist Joseph Hackin and his wife Marie , as well as the British travel writer Robert Byron .
The escort corvette Petunia and the escort rescue ship Copeland were only able to rescue six survivors from the water. Surviving sailor Stanley Candlish's report gives an insight into what happened. A particular tragedy is that of 34 ships that were sunk on the east-west route Liverpool - Halifax in 1941, 23 ships belonged to convoy group OB 287–290.
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ CONVOY OB 288. Roy Martin's Documents .
- ↑ Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : 1941 February. In: Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945. Retrieved December 24, 2015 . ; U 97. In: German U-Boats 1935–1945. U-Boot-Archiv Wiki, September 21, 2014, accessed December 24, 2015 .
- ↑ Crewlist Jonathan Holt
- ^ Ian M. Malcolm: Shipping Company Losses of the Second World War. The History Press, Stoud, Gloucestershire 2013, ISBN 978-0-7509-5371-9 . (on-line)
- ↑ warsailors.com .
- ^ Arnold Hague: The allied convoy system 1939-1945. Its organization, defense and operation. St. Catharines, Ontario 2000. Listed therefrom online .