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Unit / Ship / Establishment:
RMS Leinster
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Detail : |
| "Mike: John Hartley http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t54961.html Dublin/Holyhead ferry. The 3000 ton ship was owned by the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company and made the passage between the two ports twice a day. The owners of the ship had been warned that she might be target for German submarines and the Company had made several unsuccessful requests to the Ministry of Shipping for a naval escort. On this day, she left Ireland with 687 passengers and 70 crew. The Manchester Guardian, the next day, reported ?Leinster was torpedoed and sunk this morning on the voyage from Kingstown to Holyhead. There were some 700 people on board and over 400 are missing. The boats were got out and some of the passengers were taken off then. Others were picked up from rafts. Some of them were on rafts an hour before they were rescued. Destroyers and other naval craft went to the help of the Leinster?s people. Men, women and children were struggling in the water, others clinging to the rafts and bodies and wreckage were floating about.? Mr Jones, the ship?s fourth engineer had recounted to the newspaper that two torpedoes had struck the vessel. The first, forward near the mail sorting office and the second had hit the vessel amidships, two or three minutes later. The ship had been about an hour out of port and still lies about 12 miles off the coast. U-Boat-123 never made it home safely. She hit a mine in the North sea and sank. there were a lot of soldiers on board going to / from leave Seems to be some confusion regarding numbers lost. Hocking (Disasters at Sea) states the ship left port with ""with 680 passengers and crew under command of Capt. W. Birch. When only a few hours out she was torpedoed by a German submarine and sank with the loss of 480 lives."" These numbers seem 'round,' a technique used when exact numbers are not known. British Vessels Lost at Sea (which usually only gives crew losses) states 176 lost including the master. This number seems high for a 2,646 grt vessel, but being a ferry it would probably have required lots of additional staff to deal with the pasengers. Also, according to Hocking, it carried 22 Post Office staff to deal with mail. I suspect the loss figure for passengers (which includes the troops) is something like 687 total on board (using JH's passenger number) less the 176 crew lost (from BVLAS), which gives 511. See also http://www.rmsleinster.com/home.htm" |
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