Rotorua (ship, 1910)
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The Rotorua (I) was a 1910 passenger ship of the New Zealand shipping company New Zealand Shipping Company , which was used in passenger and mail traffic between Great Britain and New Zealand . On March 22, 1917, the Rotorua was sunk in the English Channel east of Start Point by a German submarine . She was the largest ship that the New Zealand Shipping Company lost to enemy wine in the First World War.
The ship
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The 11,130 GRT steamship was built at the William Denny and Brothers shipyard in Dumbarton , Scotland . The Rotorua was the largest ship ever built there. The 147.61 meter long and 19.02 meter wide combined passenger and cargo ship was launched on July 9, 1910. The steel- built steamer had a chimney, five masts and a twin propeller and could reach a top speed of 14 knots.
The Rotorua was the sister ship of the Ruahine (II) (10,758 GRT) put into service in 1909 and the Remuera (I) (11,276 GRT) that followed in 1911 , which were built like them for passenger and mail traffic to New Zealand and occasionally Australia . However, she had more passenger capacity and different machines than the two sisters. It was able to accommodate 52 travelers in the first, 72 in the second, 156 in the third class and 280 more in the "emigrant class". The crew consisted of 116 people. The ship also had storage space for 17,000 boxes of frozen lamb and space for 2030 tons of coal .
The ship was propelled by two sets of three-cylinder, triple expansion steam engines that ran on three propellers , the middle of which was powered by a Parsons turbine . The total output was 5350 PSi . During the test drives on October 5, 1910, a maximum speed of 15.767 knots was measured, which means that the ship exceeded the requirements of the shipping company (the regular cruising speed was 14 knots).
On October 6, 1910, the Rotorua was registered and on October 27, 1910, she sailed from London on her maiden voyage via Cape Town to Auckland and Wellington . The ship stayed on this route until the First World War . Among the prominent passengers that the Rotorua had on board during her service time were Sir Joseph Ward and William Massey . In March 1912, the Rotorua tried unsuccessfully to take the P&O steamer Oceana in tow after it collided with the Pisagua at Beachy Head . In the spring of 1915, Rotorua brought the first contingent of New Zealand Army nurses to Europe. On September 7, 1916, the ship was transferred to the British P&O as part of the takeover.
Sinking
On Wednesday, March 21, 1917, the Rotorua landed its passengers in Plymouth and set off from there the next day under the command of Captain Sutcliffe for onward voyage to London. The ship had left Wellington for England on February 1, 1917. The cargo consisted mainly of groceries such as lamb and beef, cheese and butter, valued at a total of £ 400,000 . The ship making 13 knots was torpedoed 24 nautical miles east of Start Point on the coast of Devon by the German submarine UC 17 (Oberleutnant zur See Ralph Wenninger ) on the same day at around 5.45 p.m. The Rotorua sank within 35 minutes (position 50.17N, 03.07W) with the loss of a team member, 39-year-old steward Daniel Henry Williams.
The Rotorua was the largest ship sunk by UC 17 and the largest ship lost by the New Zealand Shipping Company in World War I. After the war, a ship bought by the Federal Line, the Shropshire , was renamed Rotorua (II) in reference to the lost ship .
Web links
- Description of the Rotorua in The Ships List (below)
- Technical key data in the wreck database
- Entry in the submarine database
- Entry in the Clydebuilt Ships Database
- Postcard and information about the sinking
- LOSS OF THE ROTORUA (Article about the sinking of the ship in a New Zealand newspaper of March 27, 1917)
- Rotorua Ship Fact Sheet (I) in P&O Heritage (PDF; 43 kB)