The Laconia incident was a series of events surrounding the sinking of a British passenger ship in the Atlantic Ocean on 12 September 1942, during World War II, and a subsequent aerial attack on German and Italian submarines involved in rescue attempts. RMS Laconia, carrying 2,732 crew, passengers, soldiers, and prisoners of war, was torpedoed and sunk by U-156, a German U-boat, off the West African coast. Operating partly under the dictates of the old prize rules, the U-boat's commander, Korvettenkapitän Werner Hartenstein, immediately commenced rescue operations. U-156 broadcast her position on open radio channels to all Allied powers nearby, and was joined by the crews of several other U-boats in the vicinity.
SS Elingamite was an Australian passenger steamer of 2,585 tons, built in 1887, and owned by Huddart Parker. The ship was wrecked on 9 November 1902 off the north coast of New Zealand carrying a large consignment of gold. Now the Elingamite wreck is a favourite site for adventurous divers because of the drama associated with it, and wild tales of lost treasure.
HMS Mallow was an Acacia-class sloop built for the Royal Navy, and later operated by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) as HMAS Mallow.
Laconia was a Cunard ocean liner, built by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson as a successor of the 1911–1917 Laconia. The new ship was launched on 9 April 1921, and made her maiden voyage on 25 May 1922 from Southampton to New York City. At the outbreak of the Second World War she was converted into an armed merchant cruiser, and later a troopship. She was sunk in the South Atlantic Ocean on 12 September 1942 by torpedoes. Like her predecessor, sunk during the First World War, this Laconia was also destroyed by a German submarine. Some estimates of the death toll have suggested that over 1,658 people were killed when the Laconia sank. The U-boat commander Werner Hartenstein then staged a dramatic effort to rescue the passengers and the crew of Laconia, which involved additional German U-boats and became known as the Laconia incident.
HMS Gurkha was a Tribal-class destroyer that saw active service in the Norway Campaign in 1940, where she was sunk.
SS Athenia was a steam turbine transatlantic passenger liner built in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1923 for the Anchor-Donaldson Line, which later became the Donaldson Atlantic Line. She worked between the United Kingdom and the east coast of Canada until 3 September 1939, when a torpedo from the German submarine U-30 sank her in the Western Approaches.
City of Benares was a British steam turbine ocean liner, built for Ellerman Lines by Barclay, Curle & Co of Glasgow in 1936. During the Second World War, City of Benares was used as an evacuee ship to transport 90 children from Britain to Canada. German submarine U-48 sank her by torpedoes in September 1940 with the loss of 260 people out of a complement of 408, including the death of 77 of the evacuated children. The sinking caused such public outrage in Britain that it led to Winston Churchill cancelling the Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB) plan to relocate British children abroad.
The SS Cameronia was a twin propeller triple-expansion 15,600 IHP passenger steamship owned by the Glasgow-based Anchor Line and built by D. and W. Henderson and Company at Glasgow in 1911. The ship provided a transatlantic service from Glasgow to various destinations.
German submarine U-48 was a Type VIIB U-boat of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II, and the most successful that was commissioned. During her two years of active service, U-48 sank 51 ships for a total of 299,477 GRT and 1,060 tons; she also damaged four more for a total of 27,877 GRT over twelve war patrols conducted during the opening stages of the Battle of the Atlantic.
SS City of Cairo was a British passenger steamship. She was sunk in the Second World War with heavy loss of life, most after the sinking, but before being rescued.
SS Robin Moor was a United States cargo steamship that was built in 1919 and sunk by a U-boat in May 1941, several months before the US entered World War II.
SS California was a twin-screw steamer that D. and W. Henderson and Company of Glasgow built for the Anchor Line in 1907 as a replacement for the aging ocean liner Astoria, which had been in continuous service since 1884. She worked the Glasgow to New York transatlantic route and was sunk by the German submarine SM U-85 on 7 February 1917.
SS Tubantia was a Dutch-owned ocean liner that was launched in Scotland in 1914. She and her sister ship Gelria were the largest and swiftest ships in the Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd (KHL) fleet. They were also the first KHL ships to have quadruple-expansion steam engines.
SM U-152 was a German Type U 151 submarine of the Imperial German Navy during World War I.
MV British Prudence was a tanker built by Sir James Laing & Sons Ltd. of Sunderland in 1939 and operated by the British Tanker Company. A U-boat sank her in 1942 off the coast of Newfoundland. She was a victim of the Second Happy Time: the Kriegsmarine's Operation Drumbeat to sink Allied merchant shipping in the Western Atlantic
The German ship Doggerbank was a UK cargo ship that was built in Scotland in 1926, captured by the German Navy in 1941, renamed Doggerbank and converted into an auxiliary minelayer and blockade runner. The German U-Boot U-43 (1939) sank her by mistake in 1943, leading to the deaths of all but one of her 257 passengers and 108 crew.
SS Mantola was a British India Steam Navigation Company (BI) steamship that was built in 1916 and sunk by a German U-boat in 1917. She belonged to BI's "M" class of cargo liners. She was carrying an estimated 600,000 ounces of silver bullion when she was sunk. In 2017, 526 bars of silver were salvaged from the wreck and taken to the United Kingdom, in circumstances that remain undisclosed.
Lifeboats played a crucial role during the sinking of the Titanic on 14–15 April 1912. The ship had 20 lifeboats that, in total, could accommodate 1,178 people, a little over half of the 2,209 on board the night it sank.
The SS Admiral Sampson was a U.S.-flagged cargo and passenger steamship that served three owners between 1898 and 1914, when it was rammed by a Canadian passenger liner and sank in Puget Sound. Following its sinking off Point No Point, the Admiral Sampson has become a notable scuba diving destination for advanced recreational divers certified to use rebreathing equipment.
Robert Ney McNeely was a State Representative in North Carolina, a member of the North Carolina Senate, and later the American Consul at Aden. He died while en route to the Colony of Aden when the ship he was traveling on was sunk by a German U-boat, near Crete, in 1915.
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