RMS Laconia (ship, 1912)
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The RMS Laconia (I) was a 1912 passenger ship of the British shipping company Cunard Line , which was used for the transport of passengers, mail and cargo between Great Britain and the USA . On February 25, 1917, the Laconia was sunk off the Irish coast by the German submarine U 50 . Two of the twelve fatalities included two US citizens. The sinking of the Laconia was one of the factors that contributed to the United States' entry into World War I just under two months later.
The ship
The Laconia and her identical sister ship , the RMS Franconia (I), were commissioned by the Cunard Line to replace their older ships Ivernia (1900) and Saxonia (1900) on the Liverpool – Boston route. In addition, they were to be used as a replacement for the shipping company's two flagships , the Mauretania and Lusitania , in case they were called up for military service in the event that war broke out. On July 25, 1910, the two ships were laid down at the Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson shipyard in Wallsend ( North Tyneside ) in northern England .
Which was named Laconia after the region Laconia in southern Greece. She was a Lloyds 100 A1 passenger ship (according to Lloyd's Register of Shipping) and was equipped with 16 lifeboats (capacity: 972 people). Her test run took place on December 8, 1911 and on December 12, 1911 she was handed over to the Cunard shipping company. On January 20, 1912, she left Liverpool on her maiden voyage to Boston and New York . Immediately afterwards, on February 3, 1912, she made her first journey between Liverpool, Naples and Fiume . From then on she was used in regular transatlantic traffic between New York and various Mediterranean ports.
When the First World War broke out in 1914, the Laconia was drafted by the Royal Navy and converted into an armed auxiliary cruiser. She was relocated to Simon's Town in South Africa , from where she went on patrols through the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans until April 1915 . Then the former passenger ship served as the headquarters for several operations related to land conquests in South Africa. In July 1916, the Laconia was returned to the Cunard shipping company and began its usual passenger traffic on September 9, 1916. From now on she traveled the route Liverpool-New York.
Sinking
Depart New York City
The Laconia cast off on Sunday, February 17, 1917 under the command of Captain William Robert Duncan Irvine, RNR, (1868-1933) from New York City for an Atlantic crossing with destination Liverpool. The ship was scheduled to arrive in Liverpool on Tuesday, February 26th. She had 216 crew members and 75 passengers on board, 33 of them in first and 42 in second class.
Six American citizens were among the passengers, most of whom were British nationals: Floyd Gibbons , a journalist for the Chicago Tribune newspaper , Mrs. Mary E. Hoy, her daughter Miss Elizabeth Hoy (all three from Chicago ), Mrs. Frank E. Harris from Du Pont, Delaware , Arthur T. Kirby from Bainbridge, New York, and the clergyman Rev. Joseph Waring from New York . The passengers also included the French-Polish actress Mitsie Siklosi, who was traveling with her manager Cedric Percy Ivatts, the London lawyer Henry Chetham and Lucien J. Jerome, a British diplomat deployed in Ecuador . In addition to the master, the most important crew members included the chief officer AW Robertson, the chief engineer George Bain, the ship's doctor Dr. Gerald L. Kennedy, the purser Charles T. Spedding, the assistant paymaster William P. Gerson, and the chief steward William Ballyn. The stewardess Elizabeth Dewhurst had already survived the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in 1915 .
During the crossing, a total of three rescue exercises took place during which the passengers were explained how to use the life jackets . In addition, everyone on board was told which of the twelve lifeboats they had to go to in an emergency. The passengers made bets about the chances of being torpedoed.
The submarine attack
Eight days after sailing, on the evening of February 25, the ship was about eleven kilometers west of Fastnet Rock , near the southern Irish coast, when it was attacked by the German submarine SM U 50 (Kapitänleutnant Gerhard Berger). In the first class lounge, the on-board orchestra played the piece Poor Butterfly , and several couples danced to it. In the smoking room they talked about how small the chance was of actually being attacked by the Germans.
At 10:30 p.m. a detonation was heard and the Laconia leaned slightly to one side. U 50 had fired a torpedo that hit the starboard directly behind the engine room. Since the ocean liner did not seriously damaged, the submarine fired about twenty minutes later, a second torpedo into the starboard side of the ship that after heavy list was given and about forty minutes after the first impact with the rear forward went down. Of the 291 people on board, twelve were killed, six crew members and six passengers.
The evacuation was orderly. The boat deck was brightly lit, and the passengers, despite being listed, were at their boat stations. The radio operator sent the SOS signal, and the bridge emergency flares were fired to draw attention to themselves near ships located. Songs like I Want to Marry 'Arry and I Love to Be a Sailor were intoned in some lifeboats . Six hours after the sinking, the hypothermic survivors were picked up by the Royal Navy Sloop Laburnum and brought ashore. 279 passengers and crew members were rescued, some injured, in eight lifeboats. Among the survivors was Floyd Gibbons, an American reporter who attracted worldwide attention with his lively account of the sinking of the passenger liner.
At 18,099 GRT, the Laconia was the largest ship that was sunk by the U 50 .
The American casualties
Among the twelve Laconia fatalities were two American citizens, Mary Hoy and her daughter Elizabeth. The death of the two women caused violent reactions, especially in the United States, and was the subject of numerous newspaper articles and discussions.
Mary Elizabeth Hoy (née Young), 68 years old, was born on July 30, 1858 in Gallena, Illinois, to Alexander Young and Elizabeth Bates. She was the wife of Dr. Albert Harris Hoy (1843–1917), a retired medic who served as a surgeon on the Confederate side during the American Civil War . The couple had two children, Austin Young Hoy (1881–1962) and Elizabeth Mary Hoy (born March 13, 1883). The Hoys lived in Chicago for years, but moved to London around 1907, because Austin Hoy had established himself there as the representative of the American machine manufacturer Sullivan Machinery Company .
Mary Hoy and her daughter had traveled to Chicago in November 1916 to spend Christmas and New Year with friends and relatives. Dr. Hoy and his son had stayed in London. When the two women wanted to travel back to England in February 1917, she asked Austin Hoy five times not to return until the submarine danger was no longer so great. Mary and Elizabeth Hoy, unimpressed by the danger of being torpedoed, booked a first class passage on the Laconia .
When the ship went down, after putting on their life jackets , Mary and Elizabeth Hoy ended up in lifeboat number 8, which crashed and leaked while being lowered . The side of the boat was torn open, it could only stay afloat because of the tinny air tanks. Several boat occupants died of exhaustion and hypothermia , and when a major wave swept over the boat, the two women were washed overboard. In the weeks that followed, Austin Hoy addressed notes of protest and open letters to President Woodrow Wilson asking how America would react to the incident. Dr. Albert Hoy died a few months later, in June 1917.
consequences
During the war, Americans were repeatedly killed by the destruction of British merchant ships by German submarines, for example on the Falaba (March 28, 1915), the Lusitania (May 7, 1915), the Arabic (August 19, 1915) or the Persia (December 30, 1915) and the French Canal Ferry Sussex (March 24, 1916). Many of these ships were used for war purposes and thus represented legitimate military targets, but at that time the USA still regarded itself as a neutral state and not involved in the war. With each new incident of this kind involving American victims, the anti-German climate rose in the United States, and the public expected an imminent entry into the war by the United States on the side of England and its allies.
The renewed death of American citizens on the Laconia , caused by Germans , ultimately contributed to America declaring war on the German Empire in April 1917.
Web links
- Ship description in The Ships List
- Technical and historical framework data for Laconia
- The history of Laconia
- The sinking of the Laconia in the submarine database
- Floyd Gibbons' account of the sinking of the Laconia
Footnotes
- ^ Henry Steele Commager: Documents of American History. 4th edition. Appleton-Century-Crofts Inc., New York NY 1948, p. 291.