Persia (ship, 1900)

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Persia
The Persia in the port of Aden (postcard)
The Persia in the port of Aden (postcard)
Ship data
flag United KingdomUnited Kingdom (trade flag) United Kingdom
Ship type Passenger ship
home port London
Shipping company Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company
Shipyard Caird & Company , Greenock
Build number 295
Launch August 13, 1900
takeover 20th October 1900
Whereabouts Sunk December 30, 1915
Ship dimensions and crew
length
152.3 m ( Lüa )
width 16.5 m
Draft Max. 7.5 m
measurement 7,974 GRT
 
crew about 300
Machine system
machine 1 × three-cylinder triple expansion steam engine
Machine
performance 		11,000 PS (8,090 kW)
Top
speed 		18 kn (33 km / h)
propeller 1
Transport capacities
Permitted number of passengers I. class: 314
II. Class: 212
Others
Registration
numbers 		109258

The Persia was a passenger ship of the British shipping company Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) put into service in 1900 , which carried passengers, freight and mail from Great Britain to India . In her day she was one of the largest and most luxurious ocean liners in the P&O fleet.

The Persia was torpedoed and sunk on December 30, 1915 in the Mediterranean by the German submarine U 38 without warning, with 343 passengers and crew members killed, including many women and children. The Persia -Incident marked by the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915 (1,198 deaths) and Leinster on 10 October 1918 (501 dead) one of the largest loss of life in the sinking of a civilian merchant ship by a German U-boat in First World War . She was the first ship that the shipping company P&O lost in the First World War.

The ship

The 7,974 GRT steamship Persia was built at the Caird & Company shipyard in the Scottish port city of Greenock and was launched on August 13, 1900. Completion took place on October 20, 1900. The 152.3 meter long and 16.5 meter wide ship was the last to be completed in a quintet of sister ships that P&O commissioned for their passenger and freight traffic to Asia . The others were China (1896), India (1896), Egypt (1897) and Arabia (1898). Since she regularly transported large amounts of gold, jewels and other precious metals on her crossings, she was nicknamed the Gold ship of the Empire .

The passenger accommodations were designed for 314 passengers in the first and 212 passengers in the second class. The passenger and cargo steamer served P&O on the London - Bombay route via the Mediterranean , Suez Canal , Red Sea and Indian Ocean . The Persia completed more than 70 crossings on this route, which was commonly known as the "Empire Run". The ship had two funnels, two masts and could reach a top speed of 18 knots.

The last ride

Departure

On Saturday, December 18, 1915, the Persia cast off under the command of the 57-year-old Commander William Henry Selby-Hall of the Royal Navy Reserve with about 560 people on board from Tilbury near London. The majority of the passengers were British, but there were also many Persians and Indians on board who were on their way home. Due to the war, there were numerous British military personnel on board, some with families, who were on their way to their offices in India. Business travelers, vacationers, missionaries and soldiers' wives were also on the passenger list, including a group of five Belgian nuns on their way back to their convent in Karachi and a group of employees of the Indian maharajah Jagatjit Singh from Kapurthala . The cargo also included the maharaja's gold and jewels.

Among the passengers on board were:

The passengers were aware of the danger of being attacked by a submarine on the high seas, as several unarmed British merchant ships had already been sunk in the course of the submarine war . Especially the sinking of the Lusitania seven months earlier was still in everyone's mind. The Persia circled Spain and reached her first port of call, Gibraltar , on December 22nd. 36 passengers disembarked, others came on board. The next destination was Marseille on the Côte d'Azur , where the Persia came in on December 26th. The island of Malta was reached on December 28th. Here the Persia was anchored for several hours, which many passengers used for a beach break. The next stop on the trip should be Port Said in Egypt . From there the ship was supposed to travel through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean to India and call at the ports of Bombay and Karachi there .

Sinking

On Thursday morning, December 30, 1915, the Persia was 71 miles south of Cape Martello off the island of Crete , heading for Egypt. The ship had been festively decorated for the holidays, and there were large Christmas trees in the dining rooms. During the journey there had been two safety exercises with lifeboats , and all passengers and crew members had been informed of which boat they had to go to in an emergency. This was a direct result of the Lusitania disaster, where the evacuation of the rapidly sinking liner had ended in disaster due to a lack of emergency exercises.

The Persia was sunk by the U 38 submarine

At 11.50 a.m. local time, on board the German submarine U 38 , Captain Max Valentiner sighted through his periscope the chimneys and masts of the Persia , which passed him on port side. Valentiner watched the steamer for a while and could see guns on deck. He therefore considered the people on deck to be soldiers, which was sufficient justification for torpedoing without warning. He gave the order to attack.

Aboard the Persia passengers were sitting having lunch when at 13.05 the torpedo of 38 U at port in the engine room struck the steamer and caused a violent explosion. The ship was hit at full speed of 18 knots. The force of the detonation was so strong that the dishes slid off the tables in the dining rooms. The Christmas trees tipped over and fell on the passengers, who immediately got up and ran on deck. It was clear to everyone what had happened, after a few moments the boat deck was full of people. The Persia , which was still sailing during the sinking, leaned to port and sank so quickly that most of the passengers had no chance to board a lifeboat. Most slipped due to the flip side, just into the water or were purged from the boat deck by high waves. The ship lifted its stern high out of the water, then slid beneath the surface at increasing speed. Five minutes after the attack, it was gone, leaving a wide field of debris, deck chairs, and swimmers.

In the short time only four lifeboats had been properly manned and lowered, one had capsized and drifted keel up in the water. According to eyewitness reports, several fully occupied boats, which were still hanging on the davits, were pulled into the depths when the steamer sank. The three buoyant boats were tied together and picked up on the evening of December 31st by the Mallow of the Royal Navy , which brought the survivors to Alexandria . The overturned boat, with eleven survivors clinging to its keel, drifted far and was only found on January 1, 1916. The rescued were transported to Malta.

Of the 519 people on board, 175 survived (99 crew members and 76 passengers, including fifteen women). Only two of the nineteen children survived the accident. 343 people died, including Captain Selby-Hall and most of the women and children on board. The sinking of the Persia is considered to be one of the greatest loss of life from the sinking of a civilian ship in the naval war of the First World War. The sinking triggered violent international reactions from politicians, the media and the population, as the Persia had been attacked as an unarmed merchant ship without warning.

Discovery of the wreck

The wreck of the Persia was considered lost for 88 years and was only discovered in the summer of 2003 by the British researcher couple Alec and Moya Crawford from the Scottish salvage company Deep Tek Ltd. found. It is in relatively good condition and lies upright on the sea floor at a depth of almost 3000 meters ( 33 ° 58 ′ 16.9 ″  N , 25 ° 58 ′ 17.8 ″  E, Coordinates: 33 ° 58 ′ 16.9 ″  N , 25 ° 58 ′ 17.8 ″  E ). The chimneys have broken off, otherwise it is almost intact. The coveted gold and diamond cargo of the Maharajah that the Crawfords wanted to find has remained undiscovered to this day.

See also

  • Laconia , sunk by a German submarine on February 25, 1917
  • Hesperian , sunk by a German submarine on September 4, 1915
  • Ancona , sunk by a German submarine on November 8, 1915
  • Abosso , sunk by a German submarine on April 24, 1917

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