RMS Andania (ship, 1922)
 The identical sister ship Ausonia
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The RMS Andania (II) was an ocean liner put into service in 1922 by the British shipping company Cunard Line , which was used in passenger and mail traffic between Great Britain and the USA and Canada . The ship was sunk on June 16, 1940 in service as an auxiliary cruiser near Iceland by a German submarine.
The ship
The 13,950 GRT steam turbine ship Andania was built at the Hawthorn, Leslie & Company shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne and was launched on November 1, 1921. The 163.98 meter long and 19.90 meter wide passenger and mail ship was powered by steam turbines, the estimated nominal power of which was 1660 hp. The top speed was 15 knots. On board the ship there was space for 484 passengers in the cabin class and 1222 in the third class.
She was one of six sister ships of the "A" class that the Cunard Line put into service in the first half of the 1920s. The others were the RMS Ausonia (II), the RMS Aurania (III), the RMS Antonia , the RMS Alaunia (II) and the RMS Ascania (II).
The Andania left Liverpool on June 1, 1922 on her maiden voyage to Quebec and Montreal . It stayed on this route until it was transferred to the Hamburg - Southampton - Halifax - New York route on November 18, 1924 . On October 26, 1926, she left for New York for the last time, as she then drove from Liverpool via Greenock and Belfast to Quebec and Montreal again. She provided this service until the outbreak of World War II .
War effort
In September 1939, the Andania was requested by the British Admiralty for service as an armed auxiliary cruiser (Armed Merchant Cruiser). The corresponding renovation work was completed on October 28, 1939. The ship was equipped with eight 152-mm guns and two 76-mm guns. From then on, the Andania served in the Northern Patrol , a unit of the Royal Navy that monitored the North Sea and the waters around Scotland .
On June 7, 1940, the HMS Andania cast off under the command of Captain Donald Keppel Bain from the Clyde with 347 crew members on board for another patrol trip in Icelandic waters. On the afternoon of June 13th, the ship was sighted by the German submarine UA (Korvettenkapitän Hans Cohausz) in heavy rain . The submarine took up the chase, but lost sight of the Andania several times because of the poor visibility and the onset of darkness. The Andania also followed a zigzag course. On June 14 at 12:17 p.m. UA shot down a fan of three torpedoes which did not hit and which were apparently not registered on board the auxiliary cruiser. Shortly afterwards, the Andania disappeared from view again.
About 24 hours later, UA hit the ship again and attempted another attack. Half an hour after midnight on June 16, 1940, the Andania was finally hit by a torpedo. The crew of the Andania then fired from all guns, but could not see the attacker because of the darkness and storm. The attack occurred about 230 miles west-northwest of the Faroe Islands at position 62.36N, 15.09W. The submarine fired a total of three fishing shots , but they all went wrong in the heavy seas. Around 2 a.m., UA broke off the attack. The ship sank slowly and the crew was taken on board by the Icelandic trawler Skallagrímur . There were two injured but no dead. The trawler actually wanted to bring the rescued to Kingston upon Hull , but the destroyer HMS Forester picked up the crew of the Andania 36 hours after the rescue and brought them to Scapa Flow on June 17th .
Captain Bain later commanded the destroyer HMS Somali and the heavy cruisers HMS Norfolk and HMS Devonshire .
Web links
- Summary ship data in The Ships List (almost at the bottom)
- Details about sinking on uboat.net
- Entry in the wreck database