Warwick Castle (ship)
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The Warwick Castle (I) was a passenger and cargo ship put into service in 1931, which was used by the British shipping company Union-Castle Line for passenger and mail traffic between Great Britain and South Africa . She and her sister ship Winchester Castle were the shipping company's largest ships to date. The Warwick Castle was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Portugal in 1942 , killing 114 people.
The ship
The 20,107 GRT motor ship Warwick Castle was built at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and was launched there on April 29, 1930. The 198.6 meter long and 23.3 meter wide ship had a maximum draft of 11.4 meters and was equipped with two propellers , two masts and two funnels. Her sister ship was the RMMV Winchester Castle (20,109 GRT), which was also launched at Harland & Wolff on November 19, 1929. Both ships were powered by diesel engines that could deliver 3370 hp . The maximum speed was 20 knots. On board there was space for 189 passengers in first class and 389 passengers in tourist class. On January 30, 1931, the Warwick Castle ran out on her maiden voyage .
The Warwick Castle was after her sister ship Winchester Castle and in 1926 it entered service in Carnarvon Castle (20,063 GRT) only the third motor ship of the Union-Castle Line on the route Southampton -Südafrika and the third ship of the company, which cracked the 20,000 BRT brand .
In July 1935, the ship took part in the traditional Spithead Fleet Review . In 1937 the ship was fitted with new engines and in 1938 one of the two chimneys was removed. In September 1939 the ship was claimed by the British Admiralty and converted into a troop transport.
Sinking
On November 10, 1942, Warwick Castle brought soldiers ashore as part of convoy KMF-1 in Gibraltar for Operation Torch , which had started two days earlier. The next day, November 11th, she left Gibraltar for Glasgow under the command of Captain Henry Richard Leepman-Shaw . She drove in convoy MFK-1X. On board were 295 crew members and 133 soldiers, a total of 428 people.
On Saturday, November 14, 1942 at 8:44 a.m., Warwick Castle was hit by a torpedo about 200 nautical miles northeast of Cabo Espichel on the Portuguese Atlantic coast. The German submarine U 413, under the command of Kapitänleutnant Gustav Poel, shot down two torpedoes at the ship, one of which missed. At 8:57 a.m., U 413 fired a catch . 85 minutes later, the struck ship went down.
Captain Leepman-Shaw, 59 crew members and 54 soldiers were killed (114 people). The 314 survivors were picked up by the destroyers Achates (LtCdr Arthur HT Johns) and Vansittart (LtCdr Thomas Johnston), the corvette Louisburg (LtCdr William Franklin Campbell) and the motor ship Leinster and brought to Greenock . The Warwick Castle was the largest ship sunk by U 413 .