Peninsula and Oriental line steamer Maloja | |
History | |
---|---|
United Kingdom | |
Name | SS Maloja |
Owner | P&O Steam Navigation Co [1] |
Port of registry | Belfast [1] |
Route | Tilbury – Bombay [1] |
Builder | Harland and Wolff Ltd, Belfast [1] |
Yard number | 414 [2] |
Launched | 17 December 1910 |
Completed | 7 September 1911 |
Fate | Mined off Dover, 27 February 1916 [1] |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | P&O M-class passenger liner [2] |
Tonnage | 12,431 GRT [1] |
Length | 550.4 ft (167.8 m) [2] |
Beam | 62.9 ft (19.2 m) [2] |
Depth | 34.4 ft (10.5 m) [2] |
Installed power | 1,164 NHP [2] |
Propulsion |
|
Speed | 19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph) [2] |
Capacity | 670 passengers [3] |
Crew | 301 (British officers & Lascar crew) [3] |
Armament | Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship |
SS Maloja was an M-class passenger steamship of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. She was completed in 1911 and worked a regular route between Great Britain and India. In 1916 in the First World War she was sunk by a mine in the English Channel off Dover with the loss of 155 lives.
Maloja was one of P&O's ten M-class passenger liners, [2] [4] the first of which had been RMS Moldavia which was completed in 1903. Harland and Wolff Ltd built Maloja, completing her in 1911. [2] She had twin screws driven by twin quadruple expansion engines that were rated at 1,164 NHP and gave her a speed of 19 knots (35 km/h). [2] She had capacity for 670 passengers [3] plus a quantity of cargo. Decorative plaster work and panelling in the dining room was carried out by H.H. Martyn & Co. [5]
At 1500 hrs Saturday 26 February 1916 [6] Maloja sailed from Tilbury for Bombay carrying 122 passengers (less than a fifth of her capacity) and a general cargo. [3] Her passengers were a mixture of military and government personnel, and civilians including women and children. [6] Following normal P&O practice, her complement of 301 comprised British officers and Lascar crew. [7]
On the morning of Sunday 27 February Maloja approached the Strait of Dover at full speed and overtook a Canadian collier, Empress of Fort William. [3] Under wartime conditions each ship would have to be examined by a patrol boat before being allowed to proceed. [6]
The German Type UC I submarine SM UC-6 had recently mined the strait. [1] At about 1030 hrs Maloja was about 2 nautical miles (3.7 km) off Dover [1] when her starboard quarter [6] struck one of UC-6's mines. There was a large explosion, and the bulkheads of the second saloon were blown in. Empress of Fort William was still in sight and immediately went full ahead to assist, but while still 1 nautical mile (1.9 km) astern the collier also struck one of UC-6's mines and began to sink. [6]
As a precaution against enemy attack, Maloja was steaming with her lifeboats already swung out on their davits so that they could be lowered more quickly. [6] Her Master, Captain C.D. Irving, RNR, immediately had her engines stopped and then put astern to stop her so that her boats could be lowered. [6] She also sounded her whistle as a signal to prepare to abandon ship. [6]
Irving then tried to order her engines be stopped again for the ship to be evacuated, but flooding in her engine room prevented the engines from being stopped and she started to make way astern [6] at about 8 to 9 knots (15 to 17 km/h). [2] She also developed a list to starboard [6] which steepened to 75 degrees. [2] Passengers started to board the starboard lifeboats [6] but the ship's speed and list prevented all but three or four of them from being launched. [8]
Small vessels headed to assist her including the Port of Dover tugs Lady Brassey and Lady Crundall, trawlers, dredgers [8] and a destroyer. [6] As Maloja steamed astern and unable to stop, the rescue vessels were unable to get alongside to take off survivors. A heavy sea was running and the hundreds who crowded her decks could only don a cork lifejacket, jump overboard and try to swim clear. [8] A number of her rafts either were launched or floated clear, and some of her survivors managed to board them. [8] Maloja sank 24 minutes after being mined, [8] followed by Empress of Fort William which sank about 40 minutes after being mined.
Many of the deaths were from hypothermia, either in the water or after being rescued. [6] Most of the people who survived were recovered from the water. [8] Several survivors, including Captain Irving, [9] [10] had been immersed for half an hour. [6] The Second Officer, Lieutenant C Vincent, was in the water for an hour but survived. [6] The small vessels taking part in the rescue took many of the survivors to the hospital ships Dieppe and St David. [8] Others were brought ashore and Royal Navy ambulances took them to the Lord Warden Hotel. [8] Survivors were later taken by special train to London Victoria. [9] [10]
At about 1130 hrs vessels started to bring bodies ashore. [8] The chief constable of Kent took charge of the dead and designated the Market Hall below Dover Museum as a temporary mortuary. [8] 45 bodies were recovered [8] but about another 100 people were unaccounted for.
13 of the dead are buried in the St Mary the Virgin New Cemetery, Dover. [7] They include three servicemen, four women, and four children aged 3, 5, 6 and 8. [7]
The servicemen were given Commonwealth war graves. As well as the three buried at Dover, one is buried at Horsham and another at Portsmouth. [7]
Many of the 155 dead [2] were Lascars. [9] [10] P&O erected a monument to 22 of them in St Mary's Cemetery. [7]
In 1923 P&O replaced the ship with a new, larger RMS Maloja. She survived the Second World War and was scrapped in 1954.
Maloja's wreck lies in 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 m) of water [11] but was a navigation hazard, so in 1964 she was blown up. [3] This left the wreck considerably dispersed and flattened, but what remains is substantial enough to have become a destination for wreck diving when underwater visibility is good enough. [11]
HMHSBritannic was the third and final vessel of the White Star Line's Olympic class of steamships and the second White Star ship to bear the name Britannic. She was the youngest sister of the RMS Olympic and the RMS Titanic and was intended to enter service as a transatlantic passenger liner. She was operated as a hospital ship from 1915 until her sinking near the Greek island of Kea, in the Aegean Sea, in November 1916. At the time she was the largest hospital ship in the world.
Empress of Ireland was a British-built ocean liner that sank near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River in Canada following a collision in thick fog with the Norwegian collier Storstad in the early hours of 29 May 1914. Although the ship was equipped with watertight compartments and, in the aftermath of the Titanic disaster two years earlier, carried more than enough lifeboats for all aboard, she foundered in only 14 minutes. Of the 1,477 people on board, 1,012 died, making it the worst peacetime maritime disaster in Canadian history.
Storstad was a steam cargo ship built in 1910 by Armstrong, Whitworth & Co Ltd of Newcastle for A. F. Klaveness & Co of Sandefjord, Norway. The ship was primarily employed as an ore and coal carrier doing tramp trade during her career. In May 1914 she accidentally rammed and sank the ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland, killing over 1,000 people.
RMS Maloja was a British ocean liner that saw service from 1923 to 1954.
RMS Arabia was a P&O ocean liner. She was sunk in the Mediterranean in 1916 by a German U-boat during World War I.
Laurentic was a British transatlantic ocean liner that was built in Belfast, Ireland, and launched in 1908. She is an early example of a ship whose propulsion combined reciprocating steam engines with a low-pressure steam turbine. Laurentic was one of a pair of sister ships that were ordered in 1907 by the Dominion Line but completed for the White Star Line. Her regular route was between Liverpool and Quebec City.
RMS Quetta was an iron-hulled steamship that was built in Scotland in 1881 and wrecked with great loss of life in the Torres Strait in 1890. She was operated by British India Associated Steamers (BIAS), which was controlled by the British India Steam Navigation Company (BISN). She was wrecked on a previously unknown rock, which has been called Quetta Rock ever since. The Underwater Cultural Heritage Act 2018 protects the wreck.
SS City of Venice was an intermediate ocean liner that was launched in 1924 in Northern Ireland for Ellerman Lines. In the Second World War she was a troop ship. In 1943 a U-boat sank her in the Mediterranean, killing 22 of the crew and troops aboard.
The SS Bokhara was a P&O steamship which sank in a typhoon on 10 October 1892, off the coast of Sand Island in the Pescadores, Formosa. Of the 150 people who perished, eleven were members of the Hong Kong cricket team.
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.
SS Norwich City was a British cargo steamship. She was built in 1911 as Normanby, and renamed Norwich City in 1919. She was wrecked in the Pacific Ocean in 1929. For many years her wreck was a sea mark on the atoll of Nikumaroro. The wreck is now largely broken up.
MV Dumana was a British cargo liner that was laid down as Melma, but launched in 1921 as Dumana. She British India Steam Navigation Company (BI) owned her, and ran her on routes between London and India.
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.
SS Monte Nevoso was a cargo steamship that was launched in 1920 in England, owned in Italy, and wrecked in 1932 in the North Sea off the coast of Norfolk.
SS Clan Ranald is a steamship wreck off the coast of South Australia that is of unique historic importance. She is the only example in Australian waters of a turret deck ship: a type of steel-hulled cargo ship with an unusual hull shape that was built in the 1890s and 1900s.
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.
MV C.O. Stillman was an oil tanker that was built by a German shipyard in 1928 for a Canadian-based shipping company. A Panamanian subsidiary of Esso bought her at the end of 1936 and she was sunk by the German submarine U-68 in the Caribbean on June 4, 1942 about 41 nautical miles (76 km) southwest of Isla de Mona, Puerto Rico.
SS Prinses Astrid was a Belgian cross-Channel ferry struck a naval mine 3 nautical miles (5.6 km) off the coast of Dunkirk, France and sank with the loss of five of her 65 crew. All 60 survivors and 218 passengers on board were rescued by SS Cap Hatid (France) and various tugs from Dunkirk.
SS Miowera was a passenger and refrigerated cargo liner that was launched in 1892 in England for Australian owners, and was later owned by two of New Zealand's foremost shipping companies. In 1908 her last owners renamed her Maitai. She was wrecked on a reef in the Cook Islands in 1916.
SS Aden was a P&O cargo ship that was built in England in 1892. She was wrecked in the Indian Ocean in 1897, with the loss of 78 lives. She was the second of three P&O steamships to be named after the British Aden Colony. The first was launched in 1856 as Delta, completed as Aden, and hulked in 1875. The third was launched in 1946 as Somerset, renamed Aden in 1954, and scrapped in 1967.