Empress of Britain (1930)
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The Empress of Britain was an ocean liner owned by Canadian Pacific Steamship Company. In her time, she was the largest, fastest, and most luxurious ship to sail between England and Canada. She was torpedoed on 28 October 1940 by U-32 and sank. At 42,348 gross tons, she was the largest ship sunk by a U-boat and the largest liner lost during the Second World War.
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[edit] Career
The Empress of Britain was launched on June 11, 1930, started sea trials on April 13, 1931, and started her maiden voyage on May 27, 1931. [1]
She was designed for two purposes: to entice passengers to sail from England to Quebec instead of the more popular Southampton to New York route, and to serve as a luxury cruise ship during the winter. For the latter role her size was kept small enough to use the Panama and Suez canals, though at 760.6 feet (231.84 m) and 42,348 gross tons, she was still impressively large. Empress of Britain was powered by four steam turbine engines. For cruising two of her engines where shut down, and two of her propellers were removed, since speed was not important on a cruise. With all four engines, her speed was 24 knots, making her the fastest ship sailing from England to Canada.
The goal of Canadian Pacific was to attract North American Midwesterners from both Canada and the United States to travel by train to Quebec City as opposed to New York City. This was to give them an extra day of smooth sailing. While initially successful, the novelty wore off; potential passengers still preferred to depart from NYC, regardless of where they started from. The Empress was never able to earn her keep. According to William H. Miller from his book The Great Luxury Liners: 1927-1954, the Empress was one of the least profitable liners from the 1930's. Her most eventful crossing was when she carried the Royal Family from England to North America.
Upon Britain's entry into World War II, the Empress of Britain was requisitioned for use as a troop transport. She ended up transporting troops between England and Suez, traveling around the Cape of Good Hope to make the trip.
[edit] Sinking
At around 9:20 AM on October 26, 1940, while traveling along the west coast of Ireland, the Empress of Britain was spotted by a German Focke-Wulf C 200 Condor long-range bomber, commanded by Oberleutnant Bernhard Jope. Jope’s bomber strafed the Empress 3 times and hit her twice with 250 kg bombs.
The bombs started a raging fire that could not be contained, and began to over take the whole ship. By 9:50 AM, Captain Sapworth gave the order to abandon ship. The fire was concentrated in the midsection of the ship, causing the passengers to head for the bow and stern and hampering launching of the lifeboats. Later that afternoon, the destroyers Echo and Empress arrived. By then, the ship had been evacuated.
The fire had left the ship severely damaged and unable to move under her own power, but she was not sinking. At 9:30 AM on 27 October, a boarding party arrived and prepared the ship for towing. Hearing of the crippled liner by radio, U-32 caught up with the convoy towing the Empress of Britain later that day, and followed them for some time. Around 2:00 AM the next morning, October 28, U-32 fired three torpedoes, one of which hit. The Empress of Britain sank in nine minutes.
[edit] Gold and salvage
It was suspected that the Empress of Britain had been carrying gold when she sank. At the time, Great Britain was trying to ship gold to North America to improve its credit. South Africa was a major gold producer, and the Empress had stopped in Cape Town, South Africa before heading to England. Most of the gold went from Cape Town to Sydney, Australia, and then to America, but there were not enough suitable ships to move that gold, and it was getting stuck in Sydney. Therefore, it was theorized that the Empress may have been used to take gold from South Africa to England were it could then be moved to America.
On January 8, 1949, the Daily Mail published a story about a salvage attempt that was going to be made that summer. There were no follow-ups, and the story contained several errors. In 1985, a potential salvager got a letter From the Department of Transport Shipping Policy Unit saying that there was gold on board, but that it had been recovered.
In 1995, a groups of salvagers found the Empress of Britain lying upside-down in 500 feet of water. Using saturation diving, they entered the wreck and found that the fire had destroyed most of the decks, leaving a largely empty shell rising from the sea floor. The ship’s bullion room, however, was still intact. Inside was a skeleton, but no gold.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Pickford, Nigel Lost Treasure Ships of the Twentieth Century, National Geographic Society, 1999 ISBN 0-7922-7472-5
- TGOL - Empress of Britain
[edit] Further reading
- Seamer, Robert "The Floating Inferno", Patrick Stephens Limited (1990) ISBN 1-85260-324-0
- Harvey, Clive RMS Empress Of Britain: Britain's Finest Liner, Tempus Publishing, Limited (February, 2005) ISBN 0-7524-3169-2
