Oronsa (ship, 1906)
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The Oronsa was a 1906 passenger ship of the British shipping company Pacific Steam Navigation Company , which was used in passenger traffic from Great Britain to South America . On April 28, 1918, the ship was sunk by a German submarine in the St. George Canal , killing three people.
The ship
The 8,075-ton, from steel -built steamer was at the shipyard Harland & Wolff in the Northern Ireland Belfast built and ran on 26 May 1906 by the stack. The 141.7 meter long and 17.1 meter wide passenger and cargo ship had a chimney, two masts and two propellers and was powered by two eight-cylinder quadruple expansion steam engines with a nominal horsepower of 1125 and the ship up to 15.5 knots could accelerate. The Oronsa was three decks high and had seven watertight bulkheads .
She was the structurally identical sister ship of the Ortega (I), which was also launched on March 22, 1906 at Harland & Wolff. The Oronsa was able to take 150 first class passengers, 130 second class and 800 third class on board. On August 16, 1906 she was handed over to her owners and on September 13, 1906 she ran on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Pernambuco (Brazil), Montevideo (Uruguay) and Valparaíso (Chile).
On Saturday, April 13, 1918, ran Oronsa in New York from the return journey to the UK. She was from Talcahuano and had loads of sugar, nitrates, and metal on her, among other things. Captain Frederick Holt Hobson was in command. The Oronsa was the leading ship of a convoy of 13 steamers destined for Liverpool. On April 28, 1918, the ship was about 30 miles south of Holyhead and 12 miles west of Bardsey Island in the St. George's Channel when it was torpedoed by the German submarine U 91 (Kapitänleutnant Alfred von Glasenapp ).
The torpedo struck on the starboard side between holds no. 3 and no. 4. The steam boiler exploded very quickly . The Oronsa sank in a few minutes (position 52 ° 53 ' N , 5 ° 5' W ); three crew members perished. The Oronsa was the largest ship sunk by U 91 and the largest that the Pacific Steam Navigation Company lost in World War I.