Medic (ship)
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The Medic was a passenger ship put into service in 1899 by the British shipping company White Star Line , which was used in passenger and freight traffic from Great Britain via Cape Town to Australia . In 1928 she was sold to Norwegian owners and henceforth used as the whaling ship Hektoria in the Antarctic until she was sunk by a German submarine off the south coast of Ireland in 1942 .
The ship
The 11,985 GRT, steel-built steamship Medic was built in 1898 at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast . She was the second of three new sister ships , unofficially called The Jubilee Class, which was considered a sign of anticipation for the approaching turn of the century . The other two ships were the Afric and the Persic . With these three ships, the White Star Line entered the passenger and freight traffic to Australia. This step proved so successful that the shipping company completed the Jubilee Class with the Runic and the Suevic in 1900 .
The Medic had all the characteristics that were typical of the Jubilee Class. The 173.7 meter long and 19.3 meter wide ship had three decks , a chimney and four masts . The Medic was powered by an eight-cylinder quadruple expansion steam engine from Harland & Wolff, which operated on two propellers and made 5000 PSi . The top speed was 13.5 knots. 320 passengers could be transported in the cabin class. The ship also had seven holds. Freight and luggage could be loaded with a total of 21 derrick cranes . The daily coal consumption was 80 tons.
history
The Medic was launched on December 15, 1898, but its completion was delayed due to renovation work on her recently launched sister ship, the Afric . On July 6, 1899, the new ship was finally handed over to its owners and on August 3, 1899, the Medic set out on her maiden voyage from Liverpool via Cape Town to Sydney . It was the first voyage of a White Star Line ship to Australia (the Afric first sailed to Australia in September 1899). On the return voyage from her maiden voyage in October 1899, she had Australian soldiers and horses of the 1st Victorian Contingent on board, who were to be used in South Africa in the Boer War . It was not until January 1900 that it returned to commercial passenger traffic.
In the same year, William M. Murdoch joined the ship's crew as second officer until he switched to the Runic in June 1901 . During the First World War , the ship remained in civil trade due to its high cargo capacity. From October 27, 1917 to March 26, 1919, like many other British merchant ships, she was subject to the Liner Requisition Theme of the Royal Navy .
Whaling ship
In January 1928 the Medic was sold to the Norwegian whaling company Hvalfangerselskabet Hektor A / S (owner Nils Bugge) based in Tønsberg and converted into a whaling ship in the Grayson, Rolls & Clover Docks in Birkenhead . Among other things, a rear ramp was installed during the conversion work, which was a relatively new feature at the time. The tonnage increased to 13,797 GRT as a result of the conversions. The ship received the new name Hektoria and was used as the mother ship of a whaling fleet in the Antarctic .
On October 24, 1928, the members of the Wilkins-Hearst Arctic Expedition boarded the Hektoria in Montevideo . The men, led by the polar explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins , lived on the ship for the next five months. Wilkins named the supposed Hektoriafjord on the Antarctic Peninsula after the ship. In 1932 Hektoria was sold to the Hector Whaling Company, the London branch of Hektor A / S. During the Second World War , the Hektoria was used as an oil tanker by the British Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) .
Sinking
On September 4, 1942, the Hektoria ran under the command of Captain Frederick Arthur Gjertsen as part of convoy ON-127 in Liverpool for New York. She was the largest ship in the convoy. She drove in ballast and had 78 crew members and eight gunners on board to defend the ship.
On September 12, 1942 at 1:05 a.m., she was attacked by the German submarine U 211 (Kapitänleutnant Karl Heimat) southwest of Cape Clear Island off the southern tip of Ireland . The ship was hit and damaged by two torpedoes , but did not sink. At 3:51 a.m. she received a safety shot from the submarine U 608 (Kapitänleutnant Rolf Struckmeier) and sank at position 48 ° 55 ' N , 33 ° 38' W - grid square BD 2744. One crew member was killed. The 85 survivors were taken on board the corvette Arvida (Lt. Alastair Ian MacKay) of the Royal Canadian Navy and brought ashore in St. Johns on September 15.
Web links
- Construction data and photos of the Medic on a website about ships of the White Star Line
- The Medic on Norway Heritage
- History of the ship with additional information
- Information about the sinking and the location of the wreck
- The Medic / Hektoria in the submarine database
Footnotes
- ^ John Stewart: Antarctica - An Encyclopedia . Vol. 2, McFarland & Co., Jefferson and London 2011, ISBN 978-0-7864-3590-6 , p. 1705 (English)