Sontay (ship, 1908)
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The Sontay (I) was a 1908 posed in service passenger ship of the French shipping company Messageries Maritimes which the passenger and postal traffic from Marseille to the Far East was used. On April 16, 1917, the ship was sunk in the Mediterranean by a German submarine , killing 49 passengers and crew.
The ship
The 7,247 GRT, steel- built steamship Sontay was built at the Chantiers Navals de La Ciotat shipyard in the southern French port city of La Ciotat and was launched on December 1, 1907 in the presence of the shipping company president André Lebon. The 141.35 meter long and 16 meter wide ship was built for passenger and mail traffic from Dunkirk and Marseille to Saigon and Hải Phòng . 45 passengers could be accommodated in first, 194 in second and 718 in third class.
The Sontay had a chimney, two masts and two propellers and was powered by two triple expansion steam engines that developed 3300 hp and allowed a top speed of 13 knots. The ship had a deadweight capacity of 8,000 tons and a displacement of 13,500 tons. In June 1908 the Sontay made her maiden voyage . In 1912, the exterior design of the Sontay served as a template for the modernization of the older passenger ships Tourane and Tonkin .
After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the Sontay was put into military service and from then on also carried troops. For example, in April 1915 she brought soldiers to New Caledonia . On instructions from the Armement Militaire des Bâtiments de Commerce (AMBC), it was equipped with a 90 mm cannon. In March 1916, she brought 2,500 Russian soldiers from Dalian to Marseille together with the former passenger ship Himalaya and the French cruiser Latouche-Tréville . On December 24, 1916, Sontay, traveling in a convoy to Thessaloniki, was torpedoed in the Ionian Sea by the German submarine UB 47 (Kapitänleutnant zur See Wolfgang Steinbauer), but not hit.
Sinking
On Monday, April 16, 1917, the Sontay was under the command of Captain Alexandre Baptiste Joseph Mages with 435 passengers and crew on a crossing from Milo in Sicily to Marseille. Among the passengers were soldiers from the army and navy .
About 100 nautical miles southeast of Malta (position 35 ° 2 ' N , 16 ° 28' E ) the Sontay was sighted and torpedoed by U 33 . U 33 was a German submarine of the two-hull ocean-going class that was under the command of 33-year-old captain lieutenant Gustav Sieß on patrol . The ship sank in six minutes, killing seven crew members and 42 passengers, including Captain Mages and the second Captain Pierre Bergerot.
The two gunboats Moqueuse and Capricieuse took in 317 and 69 survivors respectively.