The Ulysses (IV) was a 1913 commissioned passenger ship of the British shipping company Blue Funnel Line , which carried passengers and cargo from Great Britain to Australia . On April 11, 1942, the ship was sunk by a German submarine south of Cape Hatteras . All 290 passengers and crew survived, but the Ulysses was the largest ship the Blue Funnel Line lost in its entirety.
The 14,499 GRT steamship Ulysses was built by Workman, Clark & Company in Belfast for the Blue Funnel Line's Australian service. She was the sister ship of the Nestor (III) (14,501 GRT), which was built at the same shipyard and launched on December 7, 1912. The launch of the Ulysses followed on July 5, 1913 and the following October the ship was completed. The 171.66 meter long and 20.84 meter wide passenger and cargo ship had a chimney, two masts and two propellers and was powered by a steam engine that allowed a speed of 13.5 knots. The Ulysses could carry 350 first class passengers.
The ship operated the route Glasgow - Liverpool - Cape Town - Brisbane . From 1915 the Ulysses was used to transport Australian troops from Australia to Suez . From 1917 she brought American troops on the North Atlantic route from the USA to Europe. In September 1920 she returned to Australia for civil passenger traffic. In 1926 the passenger capacity was reduced to 250 passengers and again to 175 in 1936. The Ulysses was one of the last ships to leave the city before the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in December 1941.
On April 11, 1942, the Ulysses was under the command of Captain James Appleton Russell on a voyage from Sydney via Panama to Halifax and Liverpool. On board were 190 crew members, five gunners, 95 passengers and 9,544 tons of cargo, including 4,000 tons of pig iron . She was not armed, drove without an escort and had no combat-capable troops on board. At 10:13 p.m. on the evening of April 11, the steamer was hit 45 nautical miles south of Cape Hatteras off the coast of North Carolina by a torpedo from U 160 (Kapitänleutnant Georg Lassen ). The torpedo came from a stern tube of the U 160 and hit the stern of the Ulysses .
To 22:53 one was finishing shot given. While passengers and crew left the ship, U 160 drove around the ship and fired a catch shot into the other side at 11:27 p.m. About 30 minutes later the Ulysses went down at position 34.23N / 75.35W. The submarine crew no longer saw the sinking because the U 160 turned off because of an approaching flying boat . There was no personal injury. The castaways were picked up by the American destroyer Manley and brought to Charleston . The Ulysses was the largest ship sunk by U 160 and the largest ship that the Blue Funnel Line lost in its entire history.
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