Medina (ship)
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The RMS Medina was a passenger ship of the British shipping company Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O), which was put into service in 1912 and was built for passenger and freight traffic from Great Britain to Australia . She was the tenth and last ship of P & O's M-Class and in her day one of the largest ships in the P & O fleet. During the First World War , the medina was sunk by a German submarine on April 28, 1917, off the coast of the English county of Devon , killing six people.
The ship
The medina was commissioned by P&O for the regular transatlantic service to Australia and built by the Scottish shipyard Caird & Company . P&O had almost all of their ships laid there. The Medina was a ship of the M-Class and its construction cost 332,377 pounds sterling (after's then monetary value ). The ship was named after the city of the same name in Saudi Arabia . The 12,358 GRT steamer was launched on March 14, 1911 and was completed on September 3, 1911. The Medina had a sister ship , the Maloja (I) (12,431 GRT) , which was launched a short time earlier . She later also fell victim to the submarine war .
On April 26, 1911 - the steamer was not yet completed - the shipping company announced that the medina should serve as a royal yacht to transport King George V and Queen Mary of England to Delhi , where on December 12 of the same year George the Emperor of India to be crowned. For this purpose, a third was added to the two planned masts so that the royal flag could be hoisted on them. Instead of the usual black hull of a passenger ship , that of the medina was painted white and some of its public spaces were converted into royal apartments. The liner was temporarily assigned to the Royal Navy and manned with appropriate naval personnel.
The ship was completed on October 10, 1911 and left Portsmouth on November 11, 1911. On February 5, 1912, it returned to England. After completion of this one-off mission, the Medina was ordered back to its shipyard, converted and handed over to P&O passenger traffic in June 1912. On June 28, 1912, the ship made its first voyage on the Australian route. During the First World War, the medina was not drafted by the British Admiralty and converted into an auxiliary cruiser , but remained active in passenger traffic.
Sinking
In April 1917, the ocean liner with 417 passengers and crew left Sydney for London via Bombay , Port Said and Plymouth . The command was Captain Henry Sandys Bradshaw. In addition to Australian food for war-starved England, the consignment included a valuable private collection of coins, jewels and paintings by the British diplomat and governor of Madras and Bengal , Sir Thomas Gibson-Carmichael, 1st Baron Carmichael . Sir Carmichael and his wife, Lady Mary Gibson-Carmichael, were passengers on this voyage, but disembarked in Port Said, Egypt.
On Saturday, April 28, 1917, the medina passed the south coast of England after leaving Plymouth from its last stopover. At 5:50 p.m., the unarmed ship was torpedoed three miles from the Start Point headland by the German UB 31 type UB II submarine under the command of 26-year-old sea lieutenant Thomas Bieber without warning . The fourth machinist Palmer and five machinists were killed by the explosion of the torpedo in the engine room . Passengers were not harmed. All other people on board had enough time before the ship's sinking to board the lifeboats that took them to the port cities of Dartmouth and Brixham .
The British destroyers HMS Spitfire and HMS Laurel came to the aid of the sinking ship. The Laurel towed the medina to take it to the next port, but the passenger steamer that was hit sank at 7.15 p.m. UB 31 ran into a mine in the Dover Strait on May 2, 1918 and sank. All 26 crew members were killed.
Recovery of the cargo
In the 1970s and 1980s, there were repeated rescue operations on the wreck (position 50 ° 15 ′ N , 3 ° 30 ′ W ) with the aim of finding works of art and others Recovering valuables from the wreckage of the medina . The British salvage companies Risdon Beazley Marine Trading Company and Consortium Recovery Ltd. took part.
The actions were very successful because the items found included a collection of oriental paintings, perfume flacons, Japanese porcelain, Indian brassware, Australian precious stones, ancient Egyptian pearl jewelry, Assyrian cuneiform tablets , a coin catalog from the auction house Sotheby’s and still legible letters from British War Minister Lord Kitchener and the former Prime Minister Earl Rosebery . Passengers' personal belongings were also recovered from the holds. Some suitcases contained items of clothing that were still dry after 70 years on the ocean floor. Most of the artifacts were auctioned off.