Carmania sinks Cap Trafalgar

On 14 September 1914, off the island of Trindade, more than 1,000 kilometres from the coast of Brazil, an extraordinary engagement took place. The British armed merchant cruiser HMS Carmania, after a fight of nearly two hours, sank the German armed merchant cruiser Cap Trafalgar. It was the first battle in history between two armed passenger liners.

Two liners

At the beginning of the war both sides armed fast passenger ships and sent them out onto the oceans. The Germans used them as raiders to destroy Allied merchant ships, the British to patrol the shipping lanes. A few weeks earlier a British cruiser had sunk one such German raider off the coast of Africa.

Carmania was a 1905 transatlantic liner of the Cunard line, armed with eight 120 mm guns. She was commanded by Captain Noel Grant. Cap Trafalgar, a Hamburg Süd liner launched in 1913, had until then sailed between Germany and South America. The outbreak of war found her in Buenos Aires. In August she took over the armament and part of the crew of the German gunboat Eber: two 105 mm guns and several lighter ones. Command was taken by Korvettenkapitän Julius Wirth.

To keep the German ship from attracting attention, one of her three funnels was removed and she was repainted to look like a British liner. Accounts of this disguise, however, are contradictory. According to the popular version, Cap Trafalgar was made to resemble Carmania herself; according to others, a Union-Castle liner. Some studies claim instead that it was Carmania that was made to resemble the German liner.

The fight off Trindade

The uninhabited island of Trindade served the Germans as a secret base where raiders took on coal from accompanying colliers. Cap Trafalgar arrived there on 13 September. The next morning, while she was taking on supplies, Carmania appeared on the horizon, checking whether German ships were hiding off the island. The Germans broke off coaling and steamed out to meet her.

The fight was fought at close range, at times at a distance of a few hundred metres, so that the sailors also fired at each other with machine guns. Carmania had heavier guns. Her shells hit Cap Trafalgar below the waterline. The German ship heeled over and, after nearly two hours of fighting, sank. Korvettenkapitän Wirth was killed.

Carmania too was badly damaged. She took several dozen hits, and a fire broke out on board which destroyed the bridge. When smoke appeared on the horizon, Grant concluded that a German warship was approaching and quickly made off. It was indeed another German armed merchant cruiser, Kronprinz Wilhelm, which, however, did not give chase. The damaged Carmania reached the Brazilian Pernambuco under escort.

Losses

On Carmania 9 men were killed and several dozen wounded. Sources give German losses variously, from a dozen or so to more than 50 killed. Nearly 280 survivors from Cap Trafalgar were picked up by German colliers, which took them to Argentina, where they were interned.

The engagement showed how defenceless the big liners were, without armour and full of flammable fittings. For the Germans it was yet another loss. Their armed liners, large and fuel-hungry, were hard to supply in distant waters, and by the spring of 1915 most of them had been sunk or interned in neutral ports.