History | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Name | SS Doricstar (1921 - 1929): SS Doric Star (1929 - 1939) |
Owner | Eastman's Ltd, London 1921–1939: Managed by the Blue Star Line. Union Cold Storage Company, Liverpool 1939 - 1939: Managed by the Blue Star Line |
Operator | 1921–1939: Blue Star Line |
Port of registry | ![]() |
Route | New Zealand - Australia - United Kingdom |
Builder | Lithgows, Port Glasgow, Scotland |
Yard number | 731 |
Launched | 24 February 1921 |
Completed | October 1921 |
In service | 1922 |
Out of service | 1939 |
Identification | Official Number 146193 |
Fate | Sunk by Panzershiff Admiral Graf Spee |
General characteristics | |
Type | Refrigerated Cargo |
Tonnage | 10,441 gross register tons (GRT) |
Length | 499 ft (152.1 m) as built increased to 530 ft (161.5 m) following (1934) alterations and refit |
Beam | 64 ft (19.5 m) |
Depth | 37 ft (11.3 m) |
Ice class | N/A |
Installed power | 1398 N.H.P. |
Propulsion | Two Metropolitan Vickers double reduction geared steam turbines driving twin screws |
Speed | 13 knots (24 km/h) |
Crew | 64 |
SS Doric Star was a British cargo liner operated by the Blue Star Line from 1922 to 1939, when she was intercepted and sunk by the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee off the coast of South West Africa, becoming the seventh victim of the commerce raiding sortie of Graf Spee. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Designed and built in the Port Glasgow yards of Lithgows, the vessel entered service under the name Doricstar before her name was changed to Doric Star in 1929. She was owned by Eastman's of London and managed by the Blue Star Line. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
In 1934, Doric Star underwent significant alterations which were carried out by Palmers Shipbuilding & Iron Company, Jarrow-on-Tyne. The refit saw her receive a new Maierform bow, which increased her overall length to 530 ft (161.5 m).
Her registered ownership changed in 1939, when she was acquired by the Union Cold Storage Company of Liverpool but continued to be managed by the Blue Star Line. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Following the outbreak of war between Germany and the Allies in September 1939, Adolf Hitler ordered the German Navy to begin commerce raiding against Allied merchant traffic. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Under the command of Kapitän zur See Hans Langsdorff, Admiral Graf Spee sailed from Wilhelmshaven on 21 August 1939, bound for the South Atlantic. She rendezvoused with her supply ship Altmark on September 1 at a position southwest of the Canary Islands following which she received her orders to commence commerce raiding on September 26. [1] [2] [3] [4]
The Graf Spee was under strict instructions to adhere prize rules, which required her to stop and search all intercepted vessels for contraband before she sank them and to ensure that the crews of such vessels were safely evacuated before any action took place. [1] [2] [3] [4] Initially the sortie was successful, with Graf Spee intercepting and sinking ships across the South Atlantic before making her way into the southern Indian Ocean.
Employed on the Blue Star Line's New Zealand - Australia - United Kingdom route (via Cape Town), the Doric Star departed Auckland in November 1939, under the command of Captain William Stubbs with a crew of 64. Carrying 8,000 tons of cargo, primarily meat and dairy produce, Doric Star was armed with a 4-inch gun mounted aft to provide a limited self-defence. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
On 2 December, having departed Table Bay, Doric Star was sighted by the Graf Spee's Arado Ar 196 floatplane. At the time, the standard operating procedure of Kapitän Langsdorff was to approach his quarry head on, at maximum speed and to fly the French Ensign. On this particular occasion, Langsdorff was aided by the additional disguise of an extra funnel and main turret, which had been added during the previous rendezvous with the Altmark.
The crew of the Doric Star learned of the proximity of the Graf Spee when a small piece of shell landed on her forward deck. The shell had exploded about 100 yards off her port quarter, the shot having been fired from a range of 15 miles. Captain Stubbs, having arrived on the bridge, sighted what he thought was the masthead of a warship in the distance and ordered the signal R-R-R (I am being attacked by a raider) to be sent by the ship's Wireless Officer, William Comber. As the Graf Spee closed to within 8 miles another shell landed approximately 200 yards off the starboard of Doric Star. That resulted in Doric Star amplifying her distress call and identifying the raider as the Graf Spee or possibly the Deutschland , which had been disguised to look roughly like the Repulse or Renown. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Graf Spee sent a signal by morse lamp to Doric Star informing her to discontinue transmitting, but that was ignored and Comber continued to transmit his signals, which were received and repeated by other ships in the area, notably the sister of Doric Star, Brisbane Star (also en-passage from New Zealand to the United Kingdom), and the Port Chalmers. The transmission was also acknowledged by an unidentified shore station at 14:17, but it was not until 00:07 the following morning that shore stations started to transmit the sighting report as given by Port Chalmers. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
As the Graf Spee closed to within a mile, Stubbs realised that his situation was hopeless and decided to stop his ship, and a boarding party was despatched from the Graf Spee, evacuated the crew of Doric Star and in the process retrieved 19 silver bars. However, a technical fault with the Arado Ar 196 forced Langsdorff to curtail the actions of the boarding party, which meant that it failed to discover the cargo of refrigerated meat. [1] [2] [3] [4]
With the crew of the Doric Star transferred to the Graf Spee, the boarding party proceeded to sink the Doric Star, but that proved to be more difficult than initially envisaged. Scuttling charges were placed within the ship but failed to have the desired effect. Graf Spee opened fire by using some of her secondary armament of 15 cm (5.9 in) SK C/28 guns and discharged seven rounds. With the aid of a torpedo, they finally sank the Doric Star. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Having sunk the Doric Star, Langsdorff transferred the majority of the crew to the Altmark when the Graf Spee rendez-voused with her on the evening of 6 December. Graf Spee retained five officers of Doric Star, including Captain Stubbs, who were onboard Graf Spee along with other Allied prisoners when she took part in the Battle of the River Plate on 13 December. After the battle, the damaged Graf Spee made passage to Montevideo, and upon arrival, all of the prisoners on board were released. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Altmark attempted to return to Germany by steaming around the north of Great Britain and then within the Norwegian littoral. On 14 February 1940, Altmark, proceeding south within Norwegian territorial waters, was discovered by three British Lockheed Hudsons from RAF Thornaby and pursued by several British destroyers led by HMS Cossack. Late on 16 February 1940 in Jøssingfjord, she was fired upon. During the skirmish, Altmark was run onto the rocks. After the action, the 58 members of the ship's company of Doric Star and all other prisoners held on board the Altmark were freed. [4] The prisoners were quick to condemn their treatment on the Altmark and particularly the conduct of the ship's master, Captain Heinrich Dau.
While she was under attack, the wireless transmissions of Doric Star wireless and of her sister ship Brisbane Star, were useful to the British authorities in their endeavours to track the Graf Spee and ultimately prompted Commodore Henry Harwood to take his three cruisers to the mouth of the River Plate, which he suspected might be Langsdorff's next target.
Having dealt with the Doric Star and knowing that the Brisbane Star was nearby, the Graf Spee set a course to intercept. However she encountered the Tairoa on 3 December, and the time spent sinking the Tairoa allowed the Brisbane Star to escape.
Two of the crew of Doric Star (Captain William Stubbs and Second Engineer George King) would receive the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct. [3]
Official numbers are issued by individual flag states. They should not be confused with IMO ship identification numbers. Doric Star had the UK Official Number 146193.
The Mozambique Channel is an arm of the Indian Ocean located between the Southeast African countries of Madagascar and Mozambique. The channel is about 1,700 km long and 419 km across at its narrowest point, and reaches a depth of 3,292 m (10,801 ft) about 230 km off the coast of Mozambique. A warm current, the Mozambique Current, flows in a southward direction in the channel, leading into the Agulhas Current off the east coast of Southern Africa.
The Battle of the River Plate was fought in the South Atlantic on 13 December 1939 as the first naval battle of the Second World War. The Kriegsmarine heavy cruiser Admiral Graf Spee, commanded by Captain Hans Langsdorff, engaged a Royal Navy squadron, commanded by Commodore Henry Harwood, comprising the light cruisers HMS Ajax, HMS Achilles and the heavy cruiser HMS Exeter.
HMNZS Achilles was a Leander-class light cruiser, the second of five in the class. She served in the Royal New Zealand Navy in the Second World War. She was launched in 1931 for the Royal Navy, loaned to New Zealand in 1936 and transferred to the new Royal New Zealand Navy in 1941. She became famous for her part in the Battle of the River Plate, alongside HMS Ajax and HMS Exeter and notable for being the first Royal Navy cruiser to have fire control radar, with the installation of the New Zealand-made SS1 fire-control radar in June 1940.
The Battle of the River Plate is a 1956 British war film in Technicolor and VistaVision by the writer-director-producer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The film stars John Gregson, Anthony Quayle, Bernard Lee and Peter Finch. It was distributed worldwide by Rank Film Distributors Ltd.
Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff was a German naval officer, most famous for his command of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee before and during the Battle of the River Plate off the coast of Uruguay in 1939. After the Panzerschiff was unable to escape a pursuing squadron of Royal Navy ships, Langsdorff scuttled his ship. Three days later he died by suicide in his hotel room in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The Altmark incident was a naval incident of World War II between British destroyers and the German tanker Altmark, which happened on 16–17 February 1940. It took place in what were neutral Norwegian waters. On board the Altmark were roughly 300 Allied prisoners, whose ships had been sunk by the pocket battleship Graf Spee in the Southern Atlantic Ocean.
HMS Exeter was the second and last York-class heavy cruiser built for the Royal Navy during the late 1920s. Aside from a temporary deployment with the Mediterranean Fleet during the Abyssinia Crisis of 1935–1936, she spent the bulk of the 1930s assigned to the Atlantic Fleet or the North America and West Indies Station. When World War II began in September 1939, the cruiser was assigned to patrol South American waters against German commerce raiders. Exeter was one of three British cruisers that fought the German heavy cruiser Admiral Graf Spee, later that year in the Battle of the River Plate. She was severely damaged during the battle, and she was under repair for over a year.
Altmark was a German oil tanker and supply vessel, one of five of a class built between 1937 and 1939. She is best known for her support of the German commerce raider, the "pocket battleship" Admiral Graf Spee and her subsequent involvement in the "Altmark Incident". In 1940 she was renamed Uckermark and used as supply tanker for the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during Operation Berlin before sailing to Japan on September 1942 as a blockade breaker.
Thor was an auxiliary cruiser of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine in World War II, intended for service as a commerce raider. Also known to the Kriegsmarine as Schiff 10; to the Royal Navy she was Raider E. She was named after the Germanic deity Thor.
The Deutschland class was a series of three Panzerschiffe, a form of heavily armed cruiser, built by the Reichsmarine officially in accordance with restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. The ships of the class, Deutschland, Admiral Scheer, and Admiral Graf Spee, were all stated to displace 10,000 long tons (10,160 t) in accordance with the Treaty, though they actually displaced 10,600 to 12,340 long tons at standard displacement. The design for the ships incorporated several radical innovations, including the first major use of welding in a warship and all-diesel propulsion. Due to their heavy armament of six 28 cm (11 in) guns and lighter weight, the British began referring to the vessels as "pocket battleships". The Deutschland-class ships were initially classified as Panzerschiffe, but the Kriegsmarine reclassified them as heavy cruisers in February 1940.
MV Dunedin Star was a British refrigerated cargo liner. She was built by Cammell Laird and Co in 1935–36 as one of Blue Star Line's Imperial Star-class ships, designed to ship frozen meat from Australia and New Zealand to the UK. The ship served in the Second World War and is distinguished for her role in Operation Halberd to relieve the siege of Malta in September 1941.
SMS Möwe was a merchant raider of the Imperial German Navy which operated against Allied shipping during World War I.
SS Uhenfels was a German-built heavy-lift ship that was launched in 1931 for DDG Hansa. She was captured by the Royal Navy in 1939, two months after the start of the Second World War. The UK Ministry of Shipping renamed her Empire Ability and contracted Elder Dempster Lines to operate her. In 1941 a German U-boat sank her by torpedo.
Jürgen Wattenberg was a German naval officer and U-boat commander during the Second World War. In a successful career spanning just under a year, he sank 14 ships, a total of 82,027 gross register tons (GRT).
Admiral Graf Spee was a Deutschland-class "Panzerschiff", nicknamed a "pocket battleship" by the British, which served with the Kriegsmarine of Nazi Germany during World War II. The vessel was named after World War I Admiral Maximilian von Spee, commander of the East Asia Squadron who fought the battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands, where he was killed in action. She was laid down at the Reichsmarinewerft shipyard in Wilhelmshaven in October 1932 and completed by January 1936. The ship was nominally under the 10,000 long tons (10,160 t) limitation on warship size imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, though with a full load displacement of 16,020 long tons (16,280 t), she significantly exceeded it. Armed with six 28 cm (11 in) guns in two triple gun turrets, Admiral Graf Spee and her sisters were designed to outgun any cruiser fast enough to catch them. Their top speed of 28 knots left only a few capital ships in the Anglo-French navies fast enough and powerful enough to sink them.
SS Clement was a British turbine steamship operated by the Alfred Booth and Company from 1934 to 1939 until she was intercepted and sunk by the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee off the east coast of Brazil becoming the first victim of Graf Spee's commerce raiding sortie
MS Africa Shell, was a British coastal oil tanker operated by the Shell Company of East Africa Ltd. The ship's life was short, lasting only a matter of months from her introduction into service in 1939, until she was intercepted and sunk by the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee in the Mozambique Channel, off the coast of Portuguese East Africa, becoming the sixth victim of Graf Spee's commerce raiding sortie.
Patrick G.G. (Paddy) Dove (1896–1957) was a British merchant navy officer who served as commanding officer of the MV Africa Shell when she was intercepted and sunk by the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee in the Mozambique Channel, off the coast of Portuguese East Africa, becoming the sixth victim of Graf Spee's commerce raiding sortie.
SS Tairoa was a British cargo liner and refrigerated freight ship, operated by the Shaw, Savill & Albion Line from 1920 to 1939, until she was intercepted and sunk by the German pocket battleship, Admiral Graf Spee, off South West Africa, becoming the penultimate victim of Graf Spee's commerce raiding sortie.
SS Mopan was a British steam cargo liner operated by the Fyffes Line from 1929 to 1940 until she was intercepted in mid-Atlantic and sunk by the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer, becoming the first victim of Admiral Scheer's commerce raiding sortie.