The Shipwreck Hunter

by David L. Mearns

  As the rest of the world reeled from the day’s declarations of war (France had also declared war on Germany), the Athenia was moving closer and closer to U-30’s position. The ship was now well beyond the coastal waters of Ireland, possibly giving some on board a false sense of security. As passengers dined in the saloons, with the war with Germany the topic of discussion at every table, they hardly noticed the periodic changes of course as the ship zigzagged one way, then the other. Twilight had already fallen and the ship was operating under blacked-out conditions. Unbeknownst to Captain Cook, however, the Athenia had already been spotted hours before by Lemp, who was waiting patiently for the opportunity to intercept its course.

  Lemp had submerged his boat and was slowly closing on Athenia’s port side, still unsure exactly what type of vessel he had in his sights. Through the periscope he studied the vessel’s profile and noted it was a large blacked-out ship zigzagging on a defensive course. With the war less than nine hours old, what ship other than a British merchant cruiser would be operating this way so far north of the normal shipping lanes? Under the Prize Regulations no warning was necessary to an armed cruiser, so Lemp attacked, firing a spread of two torpedoes from his bow tubes at the mid-ships of the enemy vessel. As the fish left his boat, he was unable to hide the feeling of excitement that coursed through his veins while waiting for the explosions to confirm his first kill. U-boat commanders in war were rated on one set of statistics only: the number and tonnage of ships they sank, and Lemp believed he was about to get his career off to a flyer.

  Although German torpedoes were failing at an alarming rate early in the war because the magnetic pistols were causing premature firing, the pair that Lemp unleashed at Athenia showed no signs of any defect. He watched and waited, stopwatch in his hand, counting down the seventy seconds he calculated the torpedoes would run before striking their target. At that precise moment a single bright flash leapt up just aft of the ship’s central superstructure on its port side. The time was 19.38, and Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp had made history by firing the first shots of World War II.

  In total Lemp fired four torpedoes, the initial pair and then a second pair, although only one of the four found its target. Nevertheless, the powerful warhead of that torpedo caused enough damage to fatally wound Athenia. The realization that the ship was in a sinking condition was almost immediate. The General Alarm signal was sounded and the crew began readying the lifeboats to be lowered. Captain Cook, who was in the dining saloon, made his way to the bridge through the chaos caused by the explosion that followed the torpedo strike. The lights had gone out, plunging everything into total darkness, and the ship had taken on a six-degree list to port. When he reached the bridge, Cook confirmed that the watertight doors were closed and instructed the radio officer, David Don, to send out coded and uncoded SOS messages. The clear, uncoded message, ‘SSSS SSSS SSSS ATHENIA GFDM torpedoed position 56 42N 14 05W’, was an international SOS that was picked up by radio stations on land and all nearby ships, including U-30, whose radio officer, Georg Högel, recognized Athenia’s name and call sign and immediately knew this was a civilian passenger liner and not a military troopship.

  By now Lemp himself suspected that his identification of the ship as an armed cruiser might have been wrong. He asked for the copy of Lloyd’s Register to check the details of Athenia. Next to her name was a capital P enclosed by a circle, which meant she was a merchant ship certified for carrying passengers. The owner was listed as the Atlantic Donaldson Line, well known for running civilian passenger liners between Great Britain and Canada. Lemp was shocked. He had made an enormous blunder that violated the express orders sent by Dönitz just hours before. Now he was faced with another critical decision: whether he should assist in rescuing the survivors at the risk of exposing his submarine to counterattack, or do nothing. He chose the latter.

  According to Athenian’s chief officer Barnet Copland, the seat of the explosion occurred in the space between the no. 5 main hatches and the hatches of no. 5 hold. This space was in the vicinity of the bulkhead separating the engine room from the no. 5 hold, and unfortunately was an area used for passenger accommodation. One passenger, a marine engineer, described how the explosion of gases came right up the trunk of hatch no. 5, blowing it into the air along with the people who had been leisurely reclining on it moments before. When Copland investigated this passenger space he found many bodies lying about: ‘they were completely blackened – clothes, faces, everything. I made sure that they were all dead.’

  The engine room and the no. 5 hold were flooded very quickly, leading to a total loss of power and light throughout the ship. Of the five crew manning the engine room, two were killed outright by the explosion. Copland saw that the watertight bulkhead between the engine room and no. 5 hold was destroyed, and that there was a lot of water rising on the low (port) side of the ship. He felt that the bulkheads were in a dangerous condition and would not hold much longer. It was up to Captain Cook to give the order to abandon ship, but Copland’s report of the damage would have left him in no doubt that Athenia was sinking and that rescue of the passengers was now a priority.

  Athenia was equipped with 26 lifeboats, including one motorboat on each side of the ship with its own wireless set, providing for a capacity of 1,828 persons. The ship also carried 1,600 life jackets, 18 lifebuoys and 21 other buoyancy apparatus that could support an additional 462 persons. Captain Cook and his crew were not about to let the Athenia become another Titanic. In fact, the evacuation of the ship was a model of preparedness and seamanship. During the afternoon of 3 September, CO Copland made sure all the lifeboats were fully provisioned and ready for use; the falls were uncovered; the painters were stretched and the plugs installed. After donning their own lifejackets, the officers and senior crew responsible for each lifeboat went to their designated station and began loading the passengers. The upper boats were loaded first, swung out and lowered into the water, and then the falls were retrieved to repeat the process for the lower boats. Fortunately the chief engineer was able to get the emergency dynamo running to provide lighting at the lifeboat stations. By the time the last boats got away, the port list had increased to twelve degrees and the ship was settling by the stern. At about 9 p.m., Copland reported to Captain Cook that all living passengers, bar four men waiting with the officers, were off the sinking ship and in the lifeboats. Athenian’s crew had managed to safely evacuate approximately 1,350 people in about eighty minutes.

  Cook, his officers and the four passengers (seventeen persons in total) had gathered on the officers’ deck when they suddenly realized they had allowed every lifeboat to leave without holding one back for themselves. They had been so preoccupied with tending to the passengers that they’d forgotten about their own safety. Cook hailed the motorboat manned by the second wireless operator and instructed him to offload his passengers into the other boats before coming back for the four passengers still on board Athenia. While waiting for the motorboat to return after these four passengers were found places in the other boats, wireless messages were received from the Norwegian cargo ship Knute Nelson, the Swedish yacht Southern Cross and the American tanker City of Flint that they were en route to assist with the rescue. The Knute Nelson would arrive at about midnight, but the City of Flint was ten hours away from their location. At 11.30 p.m., having thrown his confidential books overboard and been assured that no one alive was left on board, Captain Cook disembarked Athenia for the last time.

  For the occupants of the twenty-six lifeboats scattered on the ocean the reality of their situation was now starkly different. They were no longer passengers or crew on a large, comfortable ship safe from the elements of the North Atlantic. They had survived a ruthless torpedo attack but their ordeal was far from over. Although the sea conditions were not bad at the moment, the temperature had dropped as nightfall descended and many people had been unable to change into warm clothes before leaving Athenia. Most of the children, in particular, were dressed in only
thin pyjamas or nighties. They huddled together for warmth and hid under coats and blankets passed to them by adults. Throughout the night the wind and waves increased and it started to rain, adding to everyone’s general discomfort. Several boats had filled with water because the plugs had jarred loose, and it took hours to bail them out. The men took turns rowing and did their best to keep the boats riding safely with the assistance of sea anchors, but the lively motion caused many to be wretchedly seasick. They were living through a horribly traumatic experience and the time spent waiting for the rescue ships seemed an eternity. For the unlucky ones in boat no. 5A, however, the worst was still to come.

  Once on the water in the motorboat, Captain Cook was able to distribute his senior officers to the lifeboats that had none. He did this for the starboard-side boats by placing ‘the Chief Officer on one, the 1st Officer in another, and the 2nd Officer in another and so on’. The third officer remained with Cook and together they used the motorboat to distribute passengers more evenly between the drifting boats, but in general they were all full to capacity and thus riding low in the water. Before leaving Athenia, Cook had spotted the lights of the Knute Nelson, which was the first ship to arrive, just after midnight. His motorboat was the second boat to reach the Knute Nelson, its engine cutting out just before it arrived. It was the job of the men manning the oars to row their boats over to the lee of the rescue ships so that lines could be thrown down to secure them. Manoeuvring the heavily laden boats into position alongside the large ships was proving extremely difficult for the rowers, especially as some were already exhausted by their previous exertions. For the most part everyone had been able to safely board the lifeboats from Athenia without incident, bar a few people who fell in the water and had to be pulled out. Now they were facing a more dangerous manoeuvre: getting on board the rescue ships without anyone being injured or lost.

  Because of the freshening wind, the waves had grown to ten feet in height by the time the rescue started, making the rowers’ job even more difficult. Another problem for those trying to board the Knute Nelson was that the ship was in ballast and thus riding high out of the water. Rope ladders and cargo nets were hung over the side for those strong enough to climb the fifteen feet or so to the safety of the deck. For women and the youngest children a boatswain’s chair was used, which Captain Cook thought a quicker and safer method. The yacht Southern Cross arrived not long after the Knute Nelson and started taking people out of the boats at 2.30 a.m. It was a miracle of sorts that two civilian ships were able to reach the scene so quickly. Given the large number of boats and vulnerable passengers involved, and the worsening conditions, it would be a greater miracle if no further lives were lost.

  At one point there were six boats precariously lined up along the side of the Knute Nelson jockeying for the best position. The calamity everyone had feared happened so suddenly there was nothing those watching could do to stop it. The unlucky boat was no. 5A, carrying about seventy people. Able Seaman H. Dillon was in charge and already had his boat secured by a line to the deck of the Knute Nelson. At the worst possible time, however, the captain kicked his engine into gear, moving the ship forward and causing the line to Dillon’s boat to be carried away. The boat then drifted down the side of the ship towards the stern and the spinning propeller that was half out of the water due to the ship’s light condition. People screamed up to the deck for the engines to be stopped, but it was too late. The huge propeller blades were already smashing down on the wooden boat, causing it to shatter and settle rapidly in the water. Those that were not thrown into the water jumped before they too were struck by the heavy blades. Except for those strong enough to swim to the rope ladders, or the few who clung to the wreckage until they were rescued by other boats, none of the passengers from this boat could be saved, which significantly added to the total number killed.

  A second deadly accident occurred at about 5 a.m. when a boat attempting to cross over to the leeward side of the Southern Cross got caught underneath its counter stern. As the boat rose on a wave it smashed into the overhanging stern, which was rolling in the opposite direction, and was flipped over, plunging the fifty or sixty people on board into the frigid ocean. Fast action by the other boats and sailors from the Southern Cross prevented the death toll from being much worse; nevertheless, it was estimated that eight more lives were cruelly lost when they were so close to being saved.

  At 4.45 a.m., the British destroyers HMS Electra and Escort arrived to join the rescue effort, and together with the Knute Nelson and Southern Cross they continued to unload boats until all twenty-six were emptied. CO Copland finally got his boat alongside HMS Electra at 10 a.m. and later learned that he had been carrying 105 people. Boatswain William Harvey, in control of lifeboat 12A, had made it to Electra earlier in the morning at 6 a.m. His boat also had a full complement, which included thirty to forty children aged between ten and fourteen, and eight mothers with babes in their arms. The make-up of these two boats alone underscores the scale of the potential disaster that was averted by the quick arrival of the rescue ships, and the professionalism of Captain Cook and Athenia’s crew. When the final list of survivors was tallied, the total was 1,306. Of the 112 who died, 69 were women and only 16 children. The saddest reality, however, is that more died during the rescue effort than from the initial torpedo explosion.

  Before he was able to get settled on board HMS Electra, CO Copland was faced with another crisis. From Athenia’s doctor he learned that a female passenger who was being cared for in the ship’s hospital might not have been evacuated, although his earlier understanding had been that she was. He wasted no time, and with two crewmen got back in one of the lifeboats and rowed over to the ship, which by now was very low in the water. They found the woman lying unconscious in the hospital and brought her out. While the crewmen got her into the boat, Copland had one last look at the after bulkhead of the deep tank to see whether there was any chance the ship could be saved, as she had stayed afloat longer than anyone had expected. The amount of water flooding this space, however, convinced him that she wasn’t going to last much longer. During this final examination ‘he saw about 50 bodies, and they were all black’. As he reported his observations to the commander at 11 a.m., he saw Athenia go down: ‘She heeled over to port on her beam ends, and sank stern first, the bow coming right out of the water.’

  Once she had digested my feasibility report, the BBC producer Jane Merkin asked to meet me. I took this as a good sign, as too often in the world of television the first flush of excitement and enthusiasm for a project evaporates before a second round of discussions can occur. At this meeting, Jane explained that not only were they still excited, but that their vision for the project had expanded. Instead of presenting the Athenia search within the existing Coast format, they believed the story was strong enough to be filmed for a two-part series of special hour-long documentaries, with the first hour covering the search for the wreck and the second hour constituting a live dive to film it.

  The live aspect was what would make the films special, but also challenging in terms of managing the filming and broadcast off a ship operating in the North Atlantic. Although we had proved on the Hood project that it was technically possible to broadcast live from a ship, we’d only managed to pull off a couple of short interviews, and one attempt had to be aborted at the last second when the satellite link dropped out. What Jane wanted – relatively long choreographed dive sequences of an ROV or manned submersible filming the wreck — was a much bigger ask. To fill a one-hour documentary, billed as a live event, we’d need to provide at least twenty minutes of truly live – not taped – underwater footage. Considering all the things that could go wrong, including equipment failure, sudden rough weather or Murphy’s Law, the live programme would carry a high degree of risk that would have to be very carefully managed.

  Jane had the approval to develop this idea further, which she would have to do in my absence while I was in Antarctica. For the rest of the meeting I
took her and her research assistant through a long list of documents they’d need to find and information that needed checking. Among other things I wanted them to locate the logbooks for the Southern Cross and Knute Nelson and to order a full set of plans and drawings for Athenia. We also had to find out some basic information about the ship, such as who was the legal owner of the wreck based on the hull and machinery insurance, and what cover was in place for any loss due to war risks. As this was going to be a high-profile and highly publicized project, I felt we should seek out the owner and make sure they weren’t going to object to us filming their property.

  I returned from Antarctica at the end of January with some potentially exciting news for Jane. A surveyor from the UK Hydrographic Office who was on the trip had told me that the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) had been conducting seabed surveys in the general area where Athenia was reported to have sunk, specifically the Rockall Bank and Trough. The surveys had been conducted using a rapidly improving technology called Multi-Beam Echo Sounding, MBES for short, which at depths below 500 metres had a reasonable chance of detecting a target the size of Athenian’s wreck. As these surveys were publicly funded, the data could be made available to researchers like me on application. From the GSI website I could see that Athenia’s reported sinking position was literally right on the border between the waters of the UK and Ireland. If the wreck was within the surveyed area it might actually show up in the MBES imagery and save us the trouble and cost of finding it ourselves. That was a very big if, however, so I made no promises to Jane other than that I would look into it further.