Taormina (ship)
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The Taormina was an Italian transatlantic passenger steamer put into service in 1908 , which belonged to three shipping companies and operated between Italy and the United States . The ship was decommissioned in 1923 and scrapped six years later.
The ship
The 8,298 GRT steamship Taormina was built in the Meadowside Dock of the D. & W. Henderson & Company shipyard in Glasgow for the Italian shipping company Italia Società di Navigazione a Vapore (known as Italian Line ) and was launched on February 15, 1908. The 147-meter-long passenger and cargo ship, named after the city of Taormina in Sicily , was built for passenger traffic from Italy to the USA. The Taormina had two masts, a single ship chimney, a steel hull and two propellers and was designed for a cruising speed of 16 knots. The passenger accommodation was intended for 60 passengers in first, 120 in second and 2,500 in third class.
She had two sister ships , which were also put into service in 1908 and which were both sunk by German submarines in the Mediterranean during the First World War : the Verona (8,261 GRT), which was sunk in service as a troop transport on May 11, 1918 (880 dead ) and the Ancona (8,188 GRT), which was sunk on November 8, 1915 with the loss of 208 civilian passengers and crew members.
After completion in May 1908, the Taormina ran from Genoa on September 3, 1908 on her maiden voyage via Naples to New York and Philadelphia . From 1909, 120 passengers could be carried in first class and from 1910 there were 60 in first and 120 in second class. On December 16, 1911, the steamer cast off on its last voyage to New York and Philadelphia. In the following year, the Taormina was taken over by the Lloyd Italiano shipping company, founded in 1904, and set on the route from Genoa via Naples to New York. When Lloyd Italiano was taken over by Navigazione Generale Italiana in 1918 , Taormina changed its operator a third time. For this shipping company she steamed from Genoa via Marseille to New York from 1919 .
In the summer of 1918, she was chartered by the USA for a one-time crossing as a troop transport . On July 26, 1918, the Taormina ran to France with 2680 soldiers and officers on board accompanied by the US transport ships Finland and Kroonland . The convoy joined forces with Navy transporters Pocahontas and Susquehanna and the Italian steamers Duca d'Aosta and Caserta , which came from Newport News . The American cruisers Colorado and Huntington and the destroyers Rathburne and Colhoun escort the convoy. He arrived in Brest on August 7, 1918, and Taormina was back in New York City on August 20 .
On August 8, 1923, she ran for her last voyage from Genoa to New York via Naples. Then it was launched and only reactivated again in 1927 for a single crossing. On July 27, 1929, the Taormina arrived in Savona for scrapping.