RMS Niagara
 The RMS Niagara leaving Sydney (1924)
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The RMS Niagara was a 1913 commissioned passenger ship of the New Zealand shipping company Union Steam Ship Company , which was used in passenger and mail traffic from New Zealand across the Pacific to Canada . She was one of the largest ships of her time under the New Zealand flag. On June 19, 1940, the Niagara sank off New Zealand's North Island after running into a mine operated by the German auxiliary cruiser Orion .
The ship
The Royal Mail Ship Niagara was built for her New Zealand owners at the John Brown & Company shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland . It was built at the same time as the Titanic in Belfast . Since the Niagara with a measurement of 13,415 GRT was the largest ship of the Union Steam Ship Company so far, she was quickly given the nickname "Titanic of the Pacific". After the sinking of the real Titanic this was quickly changed to "Queen of the Pacific".
The Niagara was a 159.93 meter long and 20.1 meter wide passenger and mail ship with a draft of 8.56 meters. It had two chimneys, two masts and three propellers and was powered by two four-cylinder triple expansion steam engines and a compound steam engine, which allowed a speed of 17 knots. The ship could carry 290 passengers in the first, 223 in the second and 191 in the third class. It was built for the Auckland - Suva - Honolulu - Vancouver route.
It was launched on August 17, 1912, was delivered to Sydney on March 12, 1913 and ran from there on May 9, 1913 on its maiden voyage via Suva ( Fiji ) and Honolulu (Hawaii) to Vancouver (Canada). Among the passengers on the maiden voyage was the Australian cricket team on their way to their North America tour. The Niagara could carry large amounts of cargo and set new standards on the Pacific route in terms of luxury and speed. The first class premises were in the Louis XVI style . decorated and the cabins were unusually spacious compared to the standards of the time.
In 1931, the Niagara was transferred to the Canadian Australasian Line, which resulted from the collaboration between the Union Steam Ship Company and Canadian Pacific Steamships Ltd. originated.
Sinking
Late on Tuesday evening, June 18, 1940 at 11:30 p.m., the Niagara, under the command of Captain William Martin, with 202 crew members and 136 passengers on board, left Auckland for another crossing to Vancouver. Martin led the ship for four years. Just a few hours after departure, on June 19 at 3:43 a.m., passengers and crew were awakened by a severe explosion. The Niagara had run into a sea mine at the headland Bream Head near the town of Whangarei off the northeast coast of New Zealand's North Island , which the ship had hit at the level of hold no. 2 on the port side .
The mine was laid by the German auxiliary cruiser Orion on the night of June 13-14 . The Niagara immediately began to roll to port. Captain Martin immediately closed the watertight doors and tried to run the struck ship aground in order to save passengers and cargo. When he realized that he would not be able to save the ship, he ordered the disembarkation.
The ship sank at position 35 ° 53 ′ S , 174 ° 54 ′ E. in 120 meters of water. Passengers and crew were picked up by the British coastal steamer Kapiti and the Australian passenger steamer Wanganella and brought ashore. There were no fatalities to mourn.
The gold
A large amount of gold from the Bank of England had gone down with the ship , which was intended as a payment from Great Britain to the USA in return for ammunition in the fight against National Socialist Germany . United Propriety Salvage Ltd., a salvage company from Melbourne , was commissioned with the salvage of the gold on behalf of HM Treasury immediately after the sinking . The team went to work on board the coastal steamer Claymore under the leadership of Captain John P. Williams and the renowned deep-sea diver John Edward Johnstone (1892-1976) .
The operation began on December 15, 1940. It took the crew almost two months to discover the wreck of the Niagara . During the search phase, the Claymore came across non-detonated mines twice and almost was sunk herself. On February 2, 1941, the Niagara was finally found and the salvage work began. The team was able to recover a total of 555 gold bars . During another expedition in April 1953, which also took place under the direction of John Edward Johnstone, a further 30 bars were found, so that to this day (2014) only five bars have remained undiscovered.
It was the rescue operation that had been carried out in the greatest depths. Since the salvage work on the wreck of the British ocean liner Egypt, which sank in 1922, by an Italian company in 1930 in the English Channel at a depth of 118 meters, no such operation had taken place at a comparable depth. After Johnstone's second attempt in 1953, it was over 30 years before the wreck was revisited. In 1986 Jacques-Yves Cousteau undertook another dive to the wreck with his dive boat Denise .
literature
- Robert James Dunn, John Edward Johnstone. Niagara Gold: The Romantic Story of Sunken Treasure Retrieved From Record Ocean Depths, New Zealand . AH & AW Reed, Wellington, 1942.
- James Taylor. Gold from the Sea . George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., London, 1943
- Keith R. Gordon. Deep Water Gold: The Story of RMS Niagara - The Quest for New Zealand's Greatest Shipwreck Treasure . SeaROV Technologies, 2005. ISBN 0-473-10056-8 .
Web links
- Ship data in the Clydebuilt Ships Database
- Entry in the wreck database
- The Niagara in The Ships List (lower half)
- Diving for Lost Gold . Intrepid Magazine Ltd. , 2008, archived from the original onJanuary 13, 2015; accessed on February 9, 2016(English, original website no longer available).