RMS Franconia (ship, 1911)
 |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
The RMS Franconia (I) was a 1911 passenger ship of the British shipping company Cunard Line , which was built by the Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson shipyard in Wallsend ( North Tyneside ) in northern England . It was on October 4, 1916 at the Mediterranean by a German U-boat sunk , which twelve people were killed. She was the eighth largest ship that was sunk by a German submarine during World War I.
The ship
.jpg)
The Franconia and their structurally identical sister ship , the RMS Laconia (I) (1912), commissioned by the Cunard Line in order to keep their older ships RMS Ivernia (I) and RMS Saxonia (both 1900) on the route Liverpool - Boston to replace . In addition, they were to be used as a replacement for the shipping company's two flagships , the RMS Mauretania and RMS Lusitania (both 1907), in the event that war broke out, if they were drafted for military service. The Franconia was the first passenger ship to have a fitness room .
The ship was the first of three passenger ships on the Cunard Line to be christened Franconia . The second Franconia was launched in 1923 and was used as a troop transport during World War II . The third Franconia was the 1955 passenger ship Ivernia (II), which was converted into a cruise ship in 1963 and renamed Franconia . She was in service until 2004.
Franconia was launched on July 25, 1910 . The ship classification society Lloyd's Register of Shipping placed the Franconia in its highest category, 100 A1. The hull was made of steel . The 190.5 meter long steamship had three decks and was powered by quadruple expansion steam engines that gave it a speed of 17 to a maximum of 18 knots. The passenger accommodations were designed for 300 first class passengers, 350 second class passengers and 2,200 third class passengers. On February 25, 1911, the Franconia made her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York . After completing this trip, she was used on the Liverpool – Boston route. In the winter months, the ship headed from New York to ports in the Mediterranean.
When she left New York on January 20, 1912, the Franconia had the three Canadian businessmen J. Hugo Ross, Thomas F. McCaffry and Thomson Beattie on board, who set out on a holiday together in Egypt and on the Aegean Sea . The three men made the return trip aboard the Titanic . None of them survived.
As with many other British passenger ships, the outbreak of the First World War changed the intended purpose of the Franconia : On February 15, 1915, the ocean liner was requested by the Admiralty and converted into a troop transport with a capacity of 2,700 people. It was supposed to bring wounded soldiers from Gallipoli to Alexandria and Malta as part of the Dardanelles Campaign . After the end of the Battle of Gallipoli , Franconia was back to regular transatlantic passenger traffic . Her sister ship, the Laconia , was also sunk by a German submarine without warning during a regular transatlantic crossing during the First World War.
Sinking
On Wednesday, October 4th, 1916, the Franconia was en route from Liverpool to the Greek port city of Thessaloniki . She was under the command of Captain David S. Miller, RNR , who was awarded the Order of the British Empire and the Decoration for Officers of the Royal Naval Reserve.
She had no soldiers on board on this voyage; there were only civilian passengers and crew members on board. 195 miles east of Malta , the unarmed passenger ship was torpedoed and sunk by the German UB 47 type UB II submarine under the command of First Lieutenant Wolfgang Steinbauer . 12 of the 314 people on board came to life (all crew members). The survivors were recovered from the British hospital ship Dover Castle and brought ashore. The Dover Castle , which saved the survivors of Franconia , was itself a victim of a submarine attack during World War I: on Saturday, May 26, 1917, it was sunk by the German submarine UC 67 off the Algerian coastal city of Annaba , killing seven of its crew members.
A submarine comradeship based in Cologne was named after Wolfgang Steinbauer (1888–1978), the commander of the submarine that sank the Franconia . During the First World War, Steinbauer sank 49 ships with a total volume of 170,432 GRT.
Web links
- The Franconia on a website about Cunard ships (with picture)
- Facts and a model of Franconia ( Memento of February 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- Cover page of a 1911 Franconia passenger list
- A poem in memory of Franconia by Jill Elton-Wall
- The sinking of the Franconia in the submarine database
- The Franconia on relevantsearchscotland.co.uk (English)