The Baralongincidents were two incidents during the First World War in August and September 1915, involving the Royal Navy Q-ship HMS Baralong and two German U-boats. Baralong sank U-27, which had been preparing to attack a nearby merchant ship, the Nicosian. About a dozen of the crewmen managed to escape from the sinking submarine and Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert, commanding officer of Baralong, ordered the survivors to be executed after they boarded the Nicosian. All the survivors of U-27's sinking, including several who had reached the Nicosian, were shot by Baralong's crew. Later, Baralong sank U-41 in an incident which has also been described as a British war crime.
Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger was a U-boat commander in the Imperial German Navy during First World War. In 1915, he sank the passenger liner RMS Lusitania with the loss of 1,198 lives.
HMS Hythe was a Bangor-class minesweeper built for the Royal Navy during the Second World War.
RMS Carmania was a Cunard Line transatlantic steam turbine ocean liner. She was launched in 1905 and scrapped in 1932. In World War I she was first an armed merchant cruiser (AMC) and then a troop ship.
HMS Affleck was a Captain-class frigate which served during World War II. The ship was named after Sir Edmund Affleck, commander of HMS Bedford at the Moonlight Battle in 1780 during the American Revolutionary War.
HMS Forfar (F30) was a British ocean liner that was commissioned into the Royal Navy as an armed merchant cruiser in 1939 and sunk by enemy action in 1940. She was launched in Scotland in 1920 as a transatlantic liner for the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company as Montrose. She was one of three sister ships. The others were Montcalm, also launched in 1920, and Montclare, launched in 1921.
SS Calgarian was an Allan Line steam turbine ocean liner that was built in 1914 and converted into a Royal Navy armed merchant cruiser. Until 1916 she served with the 9th Cruiser Squadron, patrolling off West Africa and then off the east coast of the United States. She spent the remainder of her career making transatlantic crossings between Canada and Britain.
SS Patroclus was a UK steam turbine passenger and refrigerated cargo liner launched in 1923. She was the third of five ships to bear the name.
SS Dundee was a British steamship that was built in Scotland in 1911 and sunk by enemy action in the Celtic Sea in 1917. She was designed as a coastal passenger and cargo liner for the Dundee, Perth & London Shipping Company Ltd, but in 1915 she was converted into an armed boarding steamer for the Royal Navy. She took part in the Action of 16 March 1917, was sunk by a U-boat six months later, and lost members of her crew in both actions.
Dieppe was a steam passenger ferry that was built in 1905 for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. She was requisitioned during the First World War for use as a troopship and later as a hospital ship HMS Dieppe, returning to her owners postwar. She passed to the Southern Railway on 1 January 1923. In 1933 she was sold to W E Guinness and converted to a private diesel yacht, Rosaura. She was requisitioned in the Second World War for use as an armed boarding vessel, HMS Rosaura. She struck a mine and sank off Tobruk, Libya on 18 March 1941.
Regie voor Maritiem Transport (RMT) was the Belgian state-owned ferry service and operated ferries on the Ostend-Dover route under the name Oostende Lines. For the last few years until its demise in February 1997, the ferries from Ostend went to Ramsgate instead of Dover in partnership with Sally Line.
An armed boarding steamer was a merchantman that the British Royal Navy converted to a warship during the First World War. AB steamers or vessels had the role of enforcing wartime blockades by intercepting and boarding foreign vessels. The boarding party would inspect the foreign ship to determine whether to detain the ship and send it into port or permit it to go on its way.
The SS Dresden was a British passenger ship which operated, as such, from 1897 to 1915. She is known as the place of the 1913 disappearance of German engineer Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the Diesel engine. The ship was built in 1897 by the Earle Company at Hull for the Great Eastern Railway. She operated on the North Sea route between Harwich and the Hook of Holland. She was renamed HMS Louvain in 1915 and was used by the Royal Navy in World War I. until her loss in 1918.
TSS Duke of Albany was a passenger vessel operated by the London and North Western Railway and the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway from 1907 to 1914. and also as HMS Duke of Albany from 1914 to 1916.
TSS (RMS) Manx Maid (I) No. 131765 - the first ship in the Company's history to be so named - was a packet steamer which was bought by the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company from the London and Southwestern Railway Company, and commenced service with the Steam Packet in 1923.
TSS (RMS) King Orry (III) – the third ship in the history of the Company to bear the name – was a passenger steamer which served with the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, until she was sunk in the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940.
TSS City of Belfast was a passenger steamship that was built in England in 1893, renamed Nicolaos Togias in 1925, renamed Kephallinia in 1933 and sank in 1941. She was owned and registered in Britain until 1925, when she passed to Greek owners.
TrSS St Petersburg was a passenger vessel built for the Great Eastern Railway in 1910.
HMS Crispin was a British cargo steamship that was launched in England in 1934 and operated by Alfred Booth and Company between Liverpool and the east coast of South America. In 1940 the British Admiralty requisitioned her and had her converted into an ocean boarding vessel. In 1941 a U-boat sank her in the Battle of the Atlantic, killing 20 of her crew.
HMS Stephen Furness was a Royal Navy armed boarding steamer of the First World War. She was built as a passenger vessel for the Tyne Tees Steam Shipping Company (TTSSC) by Irvine's Shipbuilding & Drydock Company of West Hartlepool. She was named after TTSSC chairman Sir Stephen Furness, 1st Baronet and launched in 1910. She served on the Newcastle–London route until the First World War when she was acquired by the navy. She served on the route to Murmansk, Russia, but was sunk by a U-boat in 1917 while traversing the North Channel west of the Isle of Man. More than 100 men died in her sinking.
