Mongolia (ship, 1904-1917)
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The Mongolia (II) was a 1903 completed passenger steamer of the British shipping company Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O), which was used in passenger and mail traffic between Great Britain and Australia . The ship ran on June 24, 1917 at Bombay on a sea mine and sank. 23 of the 500 or so people on board were killed.
history
The 9,505 GRT, steel-built steamship Mongolia was the second ship of P & O's M-Class passenger and mail ships. By 1911, nine more ships of this class were put into service. The sister ships of Mongolia were the Moldavia (1903), the Marmora (1903), the Macedonia (1904), the Mooltan (1905), the Morea (1908), the Malwa (1909), the Mantua (1909), the Maloja ( 1911) and the Medina (1911). Of these ten ships, six were sunk by German torpedoes or sea mines during the First World War , killing a total of 250 people. The last one to be scrapped was the Mantua in Shanghai in 1935 .
The Mongolia was built at the Caird & Company shipyard in Greenock and was launched there on August 13, 1903. Like the Moldavia , which was completed around the same time at the same shipyard , the Mongolia was built for passenger and mail traffic to Australia and was designed for 348 First Class passengers and 166 Saloon Class passengers.
The ship had two funnels, two masts and two propellers . It was powered by two three-cylinder triple expansion steam engines from Caird & Company, which allowed a maximum cruising speed of 17 knots (31.5 km / h). Although completed before the end of the year, the Mongolia did not leave London until February 5, 1904, on her maiden voyage to Sydney via Colombo and Melbourne . She stayed on this route throughout her entire service. Between 1910 and 1912 she moored in Auckland (New Zealand) on two trips .
On June 24, 1917 at around 1:15 p.m., the Mongolia , which was on a further voyage from London to Sydney with passengers, freight and mail, ran in the Arabian Sea about 50 nautical miles southwest of Bombay on a sea mine laid by the German auxiliary cruiser Wolf had been. The passengers were just having lunch. The explosion occurred directly under the engine room and, according to survivors, was so violent that the machinery was torn from the ship's hull . The 16 lifeboats could be launched into the water within 12 minutes. The Mongolia sank about five minutes after the last boat left the sinking ship .
Three passengers, three machinists, three European and 14 Asian crew members (a total of 23 people) were killed in the sinking. The remaining 500 or so passengers and crew could safely leave the ship, but the mail went down with the ship. The Mongolia was replaced the following year by a new ship of the same name.
Web links
- Key data in the Clydebuilt Ships Database
- Summary ship data in The Ships List (approximately in the middle)
- Information about the sinking
- The Mongolia in a collection of ship losses in World War I (approximately centrally)
- Brief account of the sinking in the New York Times, August 26, 1917