Melbourne Star
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The Melbourne Star (I) was a motor ship of the British shipping company Blue Star Line , which carried passengers and cargo from Great Britain to South America , the Caribbean and Australia from 1936 to 1943 . The ship was sunk by a German submarine on April 2, 1943 southeast of Bermuda , killing 114 people.
The ship
The motor ship Melbourne Star belonged to the Imperial Star Class, a new type of ship that the Blue Star Line had built in the 1930s. The Blue Star Line was a shipping company founded in 1911 with headquarters in London , which had a very successful liner service to South America. The Melbourne Star was mainly designed as a cargo ship that could transport large quantities of food to South America with its modern cooling systems. In addition, it also carried passengers and was therefore a combined ship . It drove to the usual ports of call for its shipping company in South America, but also to Australia.
The Melbourne Star was 11,076 GRT (6,788 NRT) and was built at the Cammell, Laird & Company shipyard in the English port city of Birkenhead . There it was launched on July 7, 1936 with construction number 1014. The ship was 161.54 meters long, 21.45 meters wide and 9.81 meters deep. It was completed in November 1936. She had several sister ships , which differed significantly, especially in the type of drive. The Melbourne Star was equipped with two 10-cylinder diesel engines from the Swiss manufacturer Sulzer AG from Winterthur , which operated on two screws and enabled the ship to reach a speed of 18 knots (33.33 km / h).
With the outbreak of World War II, the Melbourne Star remained in regular passenger and cargo service, but was manned by artillerymen for her defense . On September 5, 1940, she fell victim to a German air raid near Achill Island on the west coast of Ireland , but was repaired and resumed service a month later. On July 24, 1941, the Melbourne Star was attacked by a German submarine in the Mediterranean on the way to Malta . But it made it safely to the port of Valletta . During the British naval operations Substance (July 1941) and Pedestal (August 1942), she made it to Malta and back unmolested.
Sinking
On Monday, March 22, 1943, the Melbourne Star ran from Liverpool for a crossing to Melbourne and Sydney in Australia. The first port of call was Greenock in western Scotland on March 24th. After that, it would go across the Atlantic Ocean and the Panama Canal to get to Australia. In Panama a stopover in Cristóbal was planned. On board were 76 crew members, eleven artillerymen and 31 passengers, a total of 118 people. Among the passengers were five reserve officers from the Royal Australian Navy and a number of civilians , including 14 women and two children. The 8,285 tons of freight consisted partly of ordinary cargo, but also of military goods such as torpedoes and ammunition .
The command was the 57-year-old Captain James Bennett Hall. Hall had been the captain of the Andalucia Star when it was sunk by U 107 off Cape Palmas on October 6, 1942 . The Melbourne Star drove without an escort . In the early morning hours of April 2, 1943, a Friday, the Melbourne Star was sighted by U 129 about 480 nautical miles southeast of Bermuda . U 129 was a German submarine of the type IX C , which was under the command of the 32-year-old corvette captain Hans-Ludwig Witt on its seventh patrol . A storm raged over the North Atlantic and visibility was almost zero.
At 8:23 a.m., the ship was shaken by a massive explosion when two torpedoes from U 129 hit the hull in direct succession . The detonations ignited the Melbourne Star's explosive charge , which was then blown up. About three-quarters of the entire length of the ship were blown up in one fell swoop. It happened so quickly that passengers and crew didn't have time to go to their boat stations. Most of the lifeboats were also destroyed. Almost all human life on board was wiped out by the explosion. The burning remains of the Melbourne Star sank within two minutes. As the ship sank, several Carley life rafts came loose and floated free. Several survivors were able to hold on to it. At daybreak, however, only eleven people were still alive on two rafts.
After sunrise, U 129 appeared next to the rafts. An officer and a seaman with a machine gun came on deck and asked the survivors about the ship's name, destination, and cargo. Then it dived and left the castaways alone at sea. The sea was still choppy and stormy. Since no distress signal could be sent before the sinking, it took some time before the loss of the Melbourne Star became known. One of the rafts disappeared after a short time and was no longer seen. Crew members William Best, William Burns, Ronald Nunn, and Leonard White clung to the other. They had managed to save minimal rations of water, food and oil. They could also catch fish with an improvised fishing rod. After three days on the high seas, the storm subsided and the water calmed down. The raft drifted in the current for days.
It was only on May 9, 1943, 38 days after the sinking of the Melbourne Star , the four men were west 150 miles from Bermuda by an American maritime reconnaissance aircraft of the type Consolidated PBY rescued and brought to Bermuda. Although they had due to the salt water ulcers are carried away and salt water boils and had medical care, but in general they were in a surprisingly good shape.
They were the only survivors of the sinking of the Melbourne Star . 72 crew members, all eleven artillerymen and all 31 passengers were killed. The London Gazette announced in August 1944 that all four had been awarded the British Empire Medal . The seaman Ronald Nunn received the award posthumously because he was killed on June 10, 1944 at the age of 19 when the freighter Dungrange was sunk by a German speedboat on the Normandy coast .
Others
The wreck of Melbourne Star located in position 28 ° 5 ' N , 57 ° 30' W . At 11,076 GRT, it was the largest of the 29 ships sunk by U 129 . At the War Memorial Tower Hill Memorial in London (plaque 69) of the woodwork is Melbourne Star and its death toll expected.
Among the passengers on the last voyage were Kenneth and Caroline McWhae from Fife, Scotland. Your only son, Lieut. John Henry McWhae, a Royal Navy pilot , was killed with two other men on February 8, 1943, when a Lockheed Hudson crashed off Queensland during a bombing exercise.