Ville de La Ciotat
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The Ville de La Ciotat was a passenger ship of the French shipping company Messageries Maritimes put into service in 1892 , which carried passengers and cargo from Marseille to Australia , New Caledonia and later China . On December 24, 1915, the ship was sunk in the Mediterranean by a German submarine , with 81 civilian passengers and crew members were killed.
The ship
The 6,461 GRT steamship Ville de La Ciotat was built in 1892 at the Chantiers Navals de La Ciotat shipyard in the southern French port city of La Ciotat . The iron passenger and cargo ship was 148 meters long, 15.2 meters wide and had a side height of 11.2 meters. The triple expansion steam engine, which powered a single screw, developed 7,500 hp and allowed a speed of 17.5 knots (32.4 km / h). The ship had a deadweight capacity of 4,200 tons and a displacement of 10,790 tons.
The ship was launched on April 10, 1892 and was completed the following November. Originally the steamer was to be christened Malaisia , but was then named after the city of La Ciotat . On December 3, 1892, the Ville de La Ciotat ran out on her maiden voyage to Australia and Nouméa . On board there was space for 172 passengers in the first, 71 passengers in the second and 109 passengers in the third class. A further 239 deck passengers could be carried on short routes. In 1903 the hull , which had been black until then , was painted white. In June 1915, the Ville de La Ciotat was requested as a troop transport to bring Russian soldiers from Vladivostok to Shanghai . The requisition was lifted as early as July 1915. The ship remained on the route to the Far East .
The Ville de La Ciotat was the last to be completed in a series of four identical sister ships that were built for passenger and freight traffic to Australia. The others were the Polynésia (1890), the Australia (1890) and the Armand Béhic (1892). The three predecessors had already established themselves on the route. All four ships were around 6,400 GRT in size, had two funnels, a four-bladed propeller and three masts with the rigging of a barque .
The four ships were in direct competition with four new liners of the British Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company on the same route, the Victoria (1887), Britannia (1887), Arcadia (1888) and Oceania (1888). The Armand Béhic was the only one of the group of four to survive the naval war in World War I and was scrapped in 1924. The Polynésia was sunk by UC 22 on August 10, 1918 off Valletta (19 dead) and Australia by UC 54 on July 19, 1918 off Cap Bon (20 dead).
Sinking
On Friday, December 24, 1915, the steamer was sighted in the Mediterranean by U 34 . U 34 was a German submarine type U 31 , which is under the command of 32-year-old master Lt. Claus Rücker on patrol was. The Ville de La Ciotat was with 181 crew members and 135 passengers on board under the command of Captain Jules Levêque on the way from Shanghai to Marseille. Among the cargo were medicine and clothing for Italian soldiers. Around 10.15 p.m. on Christmas Eve, the submarine torpedoed the passenger ship 105 nautical miles southwest of Cape Tenaro on the southern tip of the Greek peninsula of Mani without warning.
The steamer went down within a few minutes. 35 passengers and 46 crew members were killed or drowned in the explosion, including several women and children. The British cargo ship Meroe of the shipping company James Moss & Company searched for survivors at the scene of the accident for an hour and a half and brought a total of 208 people to Malta. The remaining survivors were recovered from other ships.
Web links
- Entry in the Miramar Ship Index
- Some technical and historical details of the Ville de La Ciotat in the wreck database
- The sinking of the Ville de La Ciotat in the submarine database
- Details about the Ville de La Ciotat on the Messageries Maritimes website
- The history of the Ville de La Ciotat on the French Lines side
- Report in the New York Times of December 28, 1915
- Report in the New York Times of December 29, 1915