Vestris (ship)
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The Vestris was a passenger ship operated by the British shipping company Lamport & Holt , which carried passengers , freight and mail from Great Britain to New York and South America between 1912 and 1928 . On November 12, 1928, the ship got into a severe storm in the North Atlantic and sank. 112 people were killed.
The ship
The 10,494 GRT steamship Vestris was built in Belfast, Northern Ireland at Workman, Clark & Co. Ltd. built and ran on 16 May 1912, the hull number 303, stack . The Vestris was built for the British shipping company Lamport & Holt Line, founded in 1845 , whose liner ships transported passengers, cargo and mail from Liverpool via New York to various South American countries such as Brazil , Argentina and Uruguay .
The shipping company was based in London , but the home port of their ships was Liverpool. The Vestris was the third in a new series of sister ships that Lamport & Holt Line had built for its transatlantic passenger and cargo traffic between New York and South America. Her sister ships were the Vandyck (1911) and the Vauban (1912). On September 19, 1912, the Vestris made her maiden voyage from Liverpool to the Río de la Plata . The destinations were Rio de Janeiro , Montevideo and Buenos Aires . On October 26, 1912, she made her first trip from Liverpool to New York. The ship was used on this route until 1914. After the First World War , the Vestris called at South American ports and became a very popular ship on her route.
The steamer was powered by two four-cylinder quadruple expansion steam engines and two propellers, which 614 nominal horsepower and accelerated it to 15 knots . The steel- built hull Vestris was 151.2 meters long and 18.3 meters wide. The ship had three decks, the protective deck, the main deck and the upper deck. It was equipped with 14 wooden lifeboats for a total of 800 people and Martin brand davits . The Vestris was also equipped with wireless radio , electric lights and a ventilation system. The lounges were held in light colors and luxuriously furnished. Lloyd's Register of Shipping classified the Vestris in the highest possible category, 1A.
During World War I , Vestris transported medical nurses such as doctors and nurses from the United States to France. On January 16, 1918, she narrowly escaped being torpedoed by a German submarine in the English Channel . In 1919 she was chartered by the Cunard Line for a total of six trips between Buenos Aires , Liverpool and New York. In August 1919, fire broke out in one of their coal bunkers and the Vestris had to be towed to St. Lucia ( Lesser Antilles ). There was no personal injury. In 1922 she was temporarily employed by Royal Mail .
Since the Vestris regularly transported gold worth several million US dollars from US and Argentine banks, the press gave it the nickname "Gold Ship". In November 1928, the ocean liner was in a dry dock in Brooklyn to have the hull cleaned and repainted. When she left the dock in a strong wind, she was pushed against another ship, which again damaged the paint.
Downfall
Departure from New York
On Saturday, November 10, 1928, the Vestris left Pier 14 in Hoboken (New Jersey) at 3:45 p.m. under the command of 59-year-old Captain William John Carey for her next voyage. She was on her way to Brazil with a stopover in Barbados . There were 325 people on board (128 passengers and 197 crew members). Carey was the shipping company's commodore . After this voyage, he was to take command of the newer and larger Voltaire .
The passengers on this trip included:
- The two American automobile athletes Norman K. Batten from Dayton (Ohio) and Earl F. Devore from Los Angeles (both perished)
- her wives Marion Batten and Anne Devore (both survived)
- Wyatt A. Brownfield, chief engineer of the Kentucky Rock and Asphalt Company (died)
- William W. Davies, New York correspondent for the Argentine newspaper La Nación (survived)
- Sidney S. Koppe from New York, President of the SS Koppe Advertising Company (died)
- Herbert CW Johnston, Managing Director of Trinidad Leaseholds Ltd. (survived)
- Major Yoshio Inouye, Japanese Consul in Argentina (died) with his wife Teruko (survived)
- James Forbes Twomey, Quality Manager, Electric Bond and Share Company (survived)
- Carlos Quiros, Argentine Consul in New York (survived)
- William Phipps Adams, millionaire and former president of the First National Bank of Odebolt (survived)
The load consisted mainly of heavy equipment such as several dozen boxes with typewriters , tractor components and motorcycles , three Chevrolets , but also numerous tons of fruit. Shortly after sailing, some crew members noticed that a hatch on the starboard side for loading coal was defective and could not be closed properly. Easy it developed list to starboard , as sea water began to run in the fuselage. At first no one took any notice of this list.
The storm
The next day, Sunday, November 11, 1928, the ship got caught in a storm that pressed even more water into the coal bunker and made the list worse. After the chief engineer had informed the captain of the state of the bunkers and boiler rooms , he gave the order to flood the ballast tanks and to pump out the water from the flooded compartments in order to straighten the ship. Captain Carey notified his superiors at Lamport & Holt in London and informed them of the situation, but did not send an emergency call . Many passengers inquired about the reason for the list, but received no satisfactory statement. As the night progressed, the storm became more violent and the list increased.
Downfall and salvation
It was not until Monday, November 12, at 8:37 a.m., that Captain Carey radioed for help. At around 10 a.m., when the list was already 30 degrees, the evacuation of the steamer began. Due to the inclination to starboard, it was not possible to lower the lifeboats on the port side and many of the boats on the starboard side were damaged due to the heavy seas. After a lifeboat full of women and children overturned and the passengers inside were thrown out, most of the passengers refused to enter a lifeboat. Many held on to the railing on the port side, which protruded high out of the water, and went down with the ship. At least three other boats capsized and threw their occupants into the sea.
At 1 p.m., the watertight bulkhead that separated the Vestris coal bunkers from the engine room broke. Before all lifeboats could be deployed, the Vestris capsized at about 2:30 p.m. local time about 250 miles east of Hampton Roads off the coast of Virginia . The ship sank in mild Gulf Stream waters where there are sharks . Many of the passengers floating in the water were attacked and killed by sharks; later several corpses severely damaged by sharks were recovered.
Of the 325 people on board, 112 were killed (67 passengers and 45 crew members, including Captain Carey). None of the 13 children and only eight of the 36 women on board survived the disaster. The survivors were taken from the small passenger and cargo ship American Shipper of the United States Lines (Captain Schuyler Forbes Cumings), the ocean liner Berlin of North German Lloyd (Captain Eric von Thulen), the battleship Wyoming of the United States Navy (Captain Luther Martin Overstreet) and rescued the French oil tanker Myriam (Captain Fernandez Forey). Some were brought to New York and some to Norfolk, Virginia. The wreck the Vestris lies on coordinates 37 ° 25 ' N , 70 ° 33' W .
Consequences
The sinking of the Vestris in connection with the resulting criticism of the safety of the ship and the reliability of its crew as well as the bad press caused considerable damage to the image of the shipping company and a decline in bookings. The Lamport & Holt Line suffered another low blow from the subsequent global economic crisis , from which it did not recover. She had to reduce her passenger traffic significantly and pull many of her ships out of service. In the early 1930s, the parent company, run by ship magnate Owen Phillips, 1st Lord Kylsant, collapsed and all of its shares were liquidated .
The condition of the life jackets was particularly criticized . After the accident, many of the rescue workers testified that they had found numerous dead people drifting face down, even though they were wearing the cork life jackets customary at the time . As a result, at a meeting of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) in 1929, it was decided to introduce more modern life jackets made of more reliable material such as kapok on merchant ships .
Books
- Olivier, Clint: Last Dance of the Vestris , 2013. With a foreword by Ronald Warwick , former Queen Elizabeth captain 2 .
Web links
- The Vestris in the Miramar Ship Index
- Construction dates, history and photos of the Vestris
- Information about the Lamport & Holt Line
- Final report of the commission of inquiry into the sinking of the Vestris
- The Jackson Papers - compilation of sources on the passenger Rev. Ernest A. Jackson, compiled by his bereaved relatives