Among the 1,103 passengers were a number of German Jews and 72 British nationals, along with 315 crew, under the command of Captain James Cook. On 17 September 1940, a passenger ship called the City of Benares was sunk by a German U-boat while crossing the Atlantic. One family had lost five children; others two or three. We hope to have this fixed soon. The Titanic, right? Bodies were recovered for weeks after, some of them many miles from the crash site. Derek Bech, then aged nine, was on board with his mother and two sisters – they were travelling as private passengers, not as part of the Corb scheme. In the wake of the sinking, the Corb evacuation plan was abandoned. The Atlantic wasn't the fastest of its sister ships, but between 1871 and 1873 it made the crossing the most times (18) and ferried the most passengers (16,200) to the New World. Witnesses stated the bow was red hot from the intense fire until it sank. Click here to subscribe. But also the SS Atlantic, a steamship that sunk off the coast of Nova Scotia on April 1, 1873 and took more than 500 lives. RMS Titanic – Where did it Sink? Switch gears. We aim to create a safe and valuable space for discussion and debate. The Atlantic Conveyor was built on the Tyne by Swan Hunter and delivered to Cunard in 1970 as part of their contribution to the Atlantic Container Line consortium.. At just under 15,000 tonnes she was a hybrid container and RORO ship. But they didn't, and at 3:10 a.m. on April 1, the ship crashed into a granite shelf and ground to a halt. See also. It was one of the worst disasters at sea concerning children, and it should always be remembered. She was a beauty. On 14 October 1942, the German submarine U-69 sank the vessel, causing the worst loss of life in Canadian waters … It was the worst maritime disaster of the 19th century, just as the Titanic was the worst of the 20th, but the story of the SS Atlantic has rarely been told - thanks in part to the White Star Line's desire to have the disaster sink from memory. SS Atlantic Conveyor, requisitioned in the Falklands War and hit by Argentine missiles in 1982. Two of the lads on the lifeboat with us lost their five-year-old brothers. Non-subscribers can read and sort comments but will not be able to engage with them in any way. SS Atlantic, British, struck rocks and sank off Canada in 1873, killing at least 535 people. The sinking of SS Mohegan is one of the biggest tragedies and mysteries of the Atlantic Transport Line that have occurred to this day. What was the SS Central America - or 'Ship of Gold' - and why did it sink? Atlantic Conveyor before conversion Before. Just nine of those child survivors are now alive, and sadly they have no plans to mark the 70th anniversary of the sinking. Slowed by the storm, the ship began to run out coal, the fuel that powered its two steam engines. Toni Verdú Carbó/CC-BY-2.0. Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s comment community. On April 1, 1873, the SS Atlantic, a half sail, half steam ship of the White Star Line, sank off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, with 562 lives lost. Every anniversary you stop and think about it – all the kids we knew. © Copyright 2021 The Globe and Mail Inc. All rights reserved. "Some of the children were killed in the explosion," he recalls, "some were trapped in their cabins, and the rest died when the lifeboats were launched incorrectly and children were just tipped into the sea. Thank you for your patience. That means: If you do not see your comment posted immediately, it is being reviewed by the moderation team and may appear shortly, generally within an hour. 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SS Atlantic was the second liner commissioned by White Star (Oceanic being first) but carried the notoriety of being the first White Star Line steamer to sink. The 3,707 ton, four-masted steam ship RMS Atlantic sank on April 1, 1873 after hitting rocks off Nova Scotia, Canada. A ghostly silhouette looms in front of the camera. It was carrying 406 passengers and … It was erected in 1905, 32 years after the SS Atlantic went down. Comments that violate our community guidelines will not be posted. Mr. Rice addressing the survivors, and congratulating them on their safety. Aircraft reported flames extended 500 feet into the air with smoke reaching 6,000 feet into the air. "We were frightened, but we tried not to show it. The current list of names selected for the Webber class WPCs includes the names of Charles Walter David Jr. and most recently Forrest O. Rednour. The Atlantic sinking was so far from the public's mind that, when the Titanic sank, no one in the media linked it to the White Star Line's first disaster at sea. SS Atlantic, American passenger liner, in 1971 purchased by Chinese magnate C.Y. Now a … Some information in it may no longer be current. One sister made it into a lifeboat; Bech, his other sister and their mother survived by clinging to a tiny raft in rough seas. It was a steamer which hit the Manacles on her second voyage, on 14th October 1898. The Titanic began its journey from Southampton on the afternoon of Wednesday, 10 April, 1912. It was carrying 406 passengers and crew, of whom 100 were children being evacuated to Canada and the US, most of them as part of a government scheme organised by the Children's Overseas Reception Board (Corb). Atomic submarine USS Thresher sinks in the Atlantic, killing all on board On April 10, 1963, the USS Thresher, an atomic submarine, sinks in the Atlantic Ocean, killing the entire crew. When I got out of the cabin there was a huge hole in the deck, and a dirty great seaman grabbed me and another boy and threw us into a lifeboat." A state-of-the-art White Star Line passenger ship boasting the latest in luxury accommodations and its steerage filled with emigrants bound for New York City sinks to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, taking hundreds with her. How Did Atlantis Sink? Give your brain a workout and do today’s Daily Cryptic Crossword. This is a space where subscribers can engage with each other and Globe staff. She held the world record for crossing the Atlantic in a little over 3 days. The Maria was a popular emigrant ship, which had made numerous voyages across the Atlantic, until it arrived on the fateful day of May 10, 1949, when it encountered severe weather and ran into an iceberg, 50 miles off St. Paul’s Island. Only 19 of the children survived. On 17 September 1940 a German U-boat sank the City of Benares. Eighty-one child evacuees died. We aim to have all comments reviewed in a timely manner. The following is based on Samuel Eliot Morison's History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume I, The Battle of the Atlantic, 1939-1943, pp 330-334 and information from Uboat.net. If you would like to write a letter to the editor, please forward it to letters@globeandmail.com. The sinking of the steamship Arctic in 1854 stunned the public on both sides of the Atlantic, as the loss of 350 lives was staggering for the time. They were among the fortunate few: the fact that the children were already in bed below deck and that most were travelling without their parents meant that a far higher proportion of children than adults were lost. The ship was on its way to Quebec from Limerick with 121 people on board. Only one child from any part of the ship made it out alive; the majority of the survivors were men. A metal-hulled, steam-powered vessel fitted with a propeller instead of paddle wheels, its lack of a bowsprit, its metal railing and its many other design innovations made it one of the most advanced ships on the sea; it was, in effect, the prototype of the modern ocean liner. Close to 300 were buried in mass graves nearby; a few were taken to Halifax to be claimed by family; and many were lost forever. On 17 September 1940, a passenger ship called the City of Benares was sunk by a German U-boat while crossing the Atlantic. There will be a poignant wartime anniversary tomorrow, but amid all the services commemorating the Battle of Britain and the Blitz this one has crept under the radar. The White Star Line helped pay for it. You bet! On the second day of September 1939, a 13,000-ton liner, SS Athenia, of the Donaldson Atlantic Line, set sail from Liverpool for Montreal, across the Atlantic Ocean. They look like giant shoeboxes. The SS Caribou was a passenger and train ferry that operated in the Cabot Strait between Port aux Basques, Newfoundland and North Sydney, Nova Scotia. "He realised [once he'd decoded the Mayday call] that there were women and children on board, and went as fast as he could. Tung and converted into a university at sea under the name SS Universe. The conditions deteriorated for four more days, and a week later the storm was still raging. He reached the estimated position at 2.30 in the afternoon, in a force eight gale and in mountainous seas, and saw the scattered remains of all these lifeboats, nearly every one of which had dead children in them. In SS Atlantic: The White Star Line's First Disaster at Sea, two Nova Scotia authors have salvaged the memory of that horrible night. And what made the disaster a shocking outrage was that not a single woman or child aboard the ship survived. Kick back with the Daily Universal Crossword. The Atlantic left Liverpool on March 20, 1873 with more than 1,000 passengers and crew aboard, and had good weather until the 24th, when a storm struck. Over 560 lives were lost. On the eve of the 70th anniversary, some of the survivors talk about this forgotten tragedy, Benares survivors rescued by HMS Hurricane. Photo gallery See the images from the book. Within 10 minutes it was flooded and rolled over on its port side. She was powered by a steam engine producing 600 horsepower (450 kW) driving a single propeller, along with four masts rigged for sail. Atlanticwas built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast in 1870, and was the second ship built for the newly born White Star Line. But also the SS Atlantic, a steamship that sunk off the coast of Nova Scotia on April 1, 1873 and took more than 500 lives. Well, yes. I sailed on the SS United States and she could really move. SS Atlantic sank, taking with her about 300 of her 500 passengers, mainly immigrants on their way to the US. Its scheduled departure was delayed by an hour as a result of near-collision with SS City of New York; the two vessels missed each other by a distance of 4 feet. It is, we believe, the only Canadian disaster - they produced many US ones - that Currier & Ives ever memorialized. Other White Star Line ships lost in the North Atlantic include Naronic in 1893, Republic in 1909, and Titanic in 1912. 351 King Street East, Suite 1600, Toronto, ON Canada, M5A 0N1, Just $1.99 per week for the first 24 weeks, var select={root:".js-sub-pencil",control:".js-sub-pencil-control",open:"o-sub-pencil--open",closed:"o-sub-pencil--closed"},dom={},allowExpand=!0;function pencilInit(o){var e=arguments.length>1&&void 0!==arguments[1]&&arguments[1];select.root=o,dom.root=document.querySelector(select.root),dom.root&&(dom.control=document.querySelector(select.control),dom.control.addEventListener("click",onToggleClicked),setPanelState(e),window.addEventListener("scroll",onWindowScroll),dom.root.removeAttribute("hidden"))}function isPanelOpen(){return dom.root.classList.contains(select.open)}function setPanelState(o){dom.root.classList[o?"add":"remove"](select.open),dom.root.classList[o? SS Great Eastern was an iron sailing steamship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and built by J. Scott Russell & Co. at Millwall Iron Works on the River Thames, London.She was by far the largest ship ever built at the time of her 1858 launch, and had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers from England to Australia without refuelling. Today’s cruise ships don’t have the grace and beauty of the old ocean liners. "We went through three storms, great Atlantic gales, before we were picked up," says Steels. Together they have pieced together the history of the SS Atlantic, from its construction in a Belfast shipyard to the moment it struck ground off Meagher's Island and sank quickly, and then beyond to the aftermath: the inquiry into the cause of the disaster; the mass burial of the dead; the building of a small memorial to the victims; the pillaging and salvaging of the wreck site; the lessons learned. She was also the worst disaster of the White Star Line until the sinking of Titanic on April 15, 1912. By Staff Writer Last Updated Mar 31, 2020 4:29:41 PM ET. She sailed for New York on her maiden voyage on 8 June 1871. According to the Greek philosopher Plato, Atlantis sank into the Atlantic ocean after the gods sent fire and earthquakes to the island. The SS Atlantic was, for its time, a state of the art ocean liner. The authors write that the White Star Line did its best to forget the disaster, striking the name SS Atlantic from all its public records. For 25 years, the MS Estonia and hundreds of people who went down with it have lain undisturbed in the icy depths of the Baltic. Long and narrow, it was among the first passenger ships to include hotel-class accommodations, thanks mostly to the space created on the deck by the absence of a sail rigging and paddle wheels. ", HMS Hurricane was captained by Lt Commander Hugh Crofton Simms, and his son Blake Simms says the experience affected him deeply. Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s comment community. (The company had previously lost the clipper Tayleur in Dublin Bay in 1854.) The tragedy of the Atlantic replayed itself 33 years later. If you are looking to give feedback on our new site, please send it along to, To view this site properly, enable cookies in your browser. Unspeakable tragedies which, amid so much wartime suffering, went unspoken. Not a single woman or child from the quarters segregated for married couple survived the sinking. On July 25, the Doria entered the heavily trafficked sea-lanes off the Northeast coast of the United States. "Those are challenging conditions to survive." Read our, I'm a print subscriber, link to my account, Avoid the use of toxic and offensive language. The Atlantic was the worst peacetime maritime disaster on the North Atlantic until July 4, 1898 when the French liner La Bourgogne sank. The sinking of SS Atlantic on Lake Erie 1852 At about 2 a.m. on August 20th 1852 the ships Atlantic and Ogdenburg collided on Lake Erie. Today there is a small monument at Sandy Cove, N.S., in honour of the victims. It was then, on March 31, that the captain decided to divert to Halifax to refuel. They had drifted toward land, a fact that could easily been determined had they sounded for depth. This is a space where subscribers can engage with each other and Globe staff. Greg Cochkanoff, who died suddenly last year, spent 25 years researching the ship's history and explored the wreckage hundreds of times in his scuba gear; Bob Chaulk, a fellow diver with a passion for the history of his province, is a well known local historian and writer. This article was published more than 10 years ago. On January 22, 1906, the American steamship Valencia bound ultimately for Seattle, Washington from San Francisco, California, strayed off course by fifty miles, striking rocks on the western coast of Vancouver Island in B… "If the vessel did sink on Thursday, and that crew was able to abandon ship they would have been abandoning ship in a Category 4 hurricane," Fedor said. The Atlantic Empress gradually became engulfed in flames as oil pooled around the tanker. Not that there was much resistance to this: The authors also point out that the incident occurred in a century when people accepted marine disasters as a fact of life; no one considered the Atlantic to be "unsinkable." Women and children trapped in the stern and midship were drowned, some of them agonizingly slowly as the tide rose and water filled their compartments. As Tommy Thompson, who found the greatest sunken treasure in American … ", Most of the survivors were picked up the following afternoon by HMS Hurricane, which had steamed 300 miles in answer to the Benares's Mayday call, but one lifeboat – containing Steels, five other boys and 40 adults – had drifted off, and was picked up by HMS Anthony eight days later. Readers can also interact with The Globe on Facebook and Twitter . Mauretania, transatlantic passenger liner of the Cunard Line, called the “Grand Old Lady of the Atlantic.” It was launched in 1906 and made its maiden voyage in 1907; thereafter, it held the Atlantic Blue Riband for speed until 1929, challenged only by its sister ship, the Lusitania (sunk by … Scoop a new vibe in the numbers and do today’s Daily Sudoku. In all, 562 people "were hurried to eternity" that night, as the inquiry put it. When the U-boat crew got back to their base in France and discovered that the Benares's cargo had been children, they wept. In the evening the men marched down to the Old Colony Depot, and took passage for New York, where they arrived on Sunday morning the 6th instant. For the first time, passengers in steerage - the emigrants who were the bread and butter of transatlantic passenger lines - could get fresh air on the main deck, instead of spending the entire crossing confined to the dank lower decks of the wooden sailing ships of the past. As well, there was not the same media scrutiny in 1873 that there was 39 years later when the Titanic went down, and the public moved on quickly. The tanker would partially sink with the bow still out of the water. The immigrant steamship SS Atlantic of the White Star Line, en route to Halifax, ran aground near Lower Prospect, Nova Scotia on April 1, 1873. "But at 9.45 [in the evening] on Friday, which is the time the ship was torpedoed, I'll be thinking about it – the water rushing in and a bunk coming down on top of me. All I can remember were the screams and cries for help. I also sailed on her sister ship the America, another beauty. All seemed well at first, but the crew and captain didn't realize they were off course and not miles out to sea as they thought. "We're all getting too old," says Fred Steels, who was 11 when the Benares sank. He dedicated the rest of his life to the destruction of the Hun.". The sinking of the White Star Liner SS Atlantic, April 1, 1873, off the village of Prospect, Nova Scotia, is Canada's second worst marine disaster of all time with the loss of some 562 people. As well, new government regulations saw to it that the emigrants were well fed and cared for properly during their trip, a move that winnowed out less scrupulous companies. And then it crashed on Canadian rocks, a disaster blamed in the ensuing inquiry on the captain's failure to take proper soundings and to have proper lookouts in place. 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