| Career | |
|---|---|
| Name: | SS Pensylvanie[1][2] |
| Namesake: | Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, USA |
| Owner: | Compagnie Générale Transatlantique[1] |
| Operator: | Compagnie Générale Transatlantique |
| Port of registry: | |
| Builder: | Richardson, Duck & Co, Thornaby-on-Tees, England[1][2] |
| Launched: | 1917[1] |
| Fate: | sold for £8,500[1] |
| Career | |
| Name: | SS Bury Hill[1] |
| Namesake: | Bury Hill, Hampshire, England |
| Owner: | Sussex Steamship Co.[1] |
| Operator: | Counties Ship Management, London[1] |
| Port of registry: | London |
| Out of service: | 1936[2] |
| Identification: | United Kingdom Official Number 139622[2] |
| Fate: | ran aground 7 December 1936[1][2] |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | cargo ship[2] |
| Tonnage: | 4,521 GRT; 2,767.05 NT[1][2] |
| Length: | 400 ft (120 m)[1] |
| Beam: | 52.05 ft (15.86 m)[1] |
| Draught: | 24.06 ft (7.33 m) laden[2] |
| Installed power: | 425 NHP compound steam engine[1][2] |
| Propulsion: | single screw[1] |
| Crew: | 31[2] |
SS Pensylvanie was a cargo ship built in England for the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique[1][2] (CGT) during the First World War. CGT sold her in 1934 and she was wrecked in 1936.[1][2]
Richardson, Duck and Company of Thornaby-on-Tees in northeast England built Pensylvanie for CGT in 1917.[1][2] CGT sold her in 1934 for £8,500 to Sussex Steamship Co,[1] a British company controlled by Counties Ship Management, who had her reconditioned at Newport, Monmouthshire for a gross cost of £13,007[1] and renamed her SS Bury Hill.[1][2]
Contents |
On 20 October 1936 Bury Hill sailed from Bunbury, Western Australia with a cargo of wheat.[1][2] On 13 November she bunkered (refuelled) at Durban, South Africa.[1][2] On 5 December she entered the port of Dakar, Senegal, and at 2127 hrs on 7 December she sailed from Dakar without a pilot.[1][2] At 1143 hrs she grounded on the Almadi reef, which was a known navigational hazard marked by a fixed white light with a range of 10 miles.[1][2] At the time of the incident the wrecks of four other ships already lay on the reef,[2] including SS Beryl whose position was found to have contributed to the Bury Hill's grounding.[1] Bury Hill was not refloated and became a total loss.[1][2]
Allowing for 10% per annum depreciation, her book value at the time of the loss was £10,828 0s 2d.[1] She was insured for £21,500 and her cargo was insured with both a time policy for £4,000 and a voyage policy for £5,400.[1] At the time of her loss, her owners valued Bury Hill at £29,000.[1]
On 4–7 May 1937 the UK's Board of Trade held an investigation hearing into the accident and on 17 June the Court published its report.[1] It found that Bury Hill's Master, Captain Walter V. Smith, had failed:
...to navigate his vessel with that degree of care which is to be expected from a prudent seaman in that he did not give the coast, of which he had no previous knowledge and for the navigation of which his aids were insufficient, a safe and proper offing; did not take proper steps to provide himself with sufficient aids to navigation for the voyage upon which he was engaged; failed to make proper use of such aids to navigation as he had on board his vessel; and assumed too readily that the Almadi light, of whose existence he was wholly unaware, was the light of another vessel.[1]
Bury Hill had no chart of the approaches to Dakar, so when in Durban, Captain Smith had tried without success to obtain one.[1] He was therefore limited to large-scale charts of the area and was completely unaware of the Almadi light.[1] The third officer, Mr. Walter, was on watch at the time of the grounding, and both Walter and Smith sighted the light.[1] However, the wreck of SS Beryl lay on the reef behind the light in their line of sight.[1] Smith and Walter saw Beryl, failed to realise she was a wreck and mistook the Almadi light to be one of her navigation lights.[1] They accordingly set the wrong course and struck the reef.[1]
The Court considered suspending Smith's Master's Certificate.[1] However, the Court made allowance for what it called Shith's "sheer ill fortune" that the necessary chart was out of stock when he sought to buy a copy in Durban.[1] The Court also made allowance for the conjunction of the Almadi light and Beryl's wreck in Smith and Walter's line of sight contributing to their error.[1] The Court therefore allowed Smith to retain his certificate but charged him £50 court costs.[1]
The Court found that a number of entries in Bury Hill's "scrap log" had been erased and rewritten, and observed that inquiries into incidents on other vessels had found similar cases of alteration.[1] The court therefore recommended:
that it should be a standing order on all British sea-going vessels that all entries in log books should be made either in ink or, if pencils are used, in indelible pencil; and that no erasure should be permitted, any alteration necessary being made by drawing a line through the original entry, the alteration being initialled by the officer making it.[1]