Sinking of the troopship Aragon

On Sunday 30 December 1917, in the roads off Alexandria, the German submarine UC-34 of Oberleutnant zur See Horst Obermüller torpedoed the British troopship Aragon, which was carrying reinforcements from France for the army fighting in Palestine. The ship sank in less than twenty minutes. Moments later a torpedo struck the destroyer Attack, which had come alongside Aragon and was taking off survivors. About 610 people from the troopship and 10 sailors from the destroyer were killed. It was one of the worst disasters to British troopships in the Mediterranean in this war.

Aragon, a 9,588 GRT passenger ship of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company built in 1905 by Harland and Wolff in Belfast, had before the war carried passengers and frozen meat between Southampton and South America. In 1913 she became the first British merchant ship to have two guns mounted aft for defence against raiders. During the war she served as a troopship. In the spring of 1915 she carried soldiers for the expedition to Gallipoli, and later evacuated wounded from there. In December 1917 she sailed from Marseille with about 2,200 soldiers, about 150 officers and a group of volunteer nurses, as well as thousands of bags of Christmas mail. She was carrying replacements for the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, which had just taken Jerusalem. Together with the troopship Nile she arrived under escort at Malta on 23 December and spent Christmas there. The two ships covered the last leg under the protection of the destroyer Attack and two Japanese destroyers, stationed at Malta since the spring. At dawn on 30 December, after passing through a storm, the convoy split up. The Japanese led Nile to Port Said, while Attack escorted Aragon to Alexandria.

Off the port there was confusion. An armed trawler signalled Aragon to follow it, but Attack countermanded the order and told the troopship to turn back out to sea. According to some accounts the destroyer’s commander had received a warning of mines in the channel. Aragon therefore waited in the roads, a dozen or so kilometres from the port, for permission to enter, with no protection against submarines. At about 11 a.m. a torpedo from UC-34 struck her on the port side aft. The nurses left in the first lifeboats, although according to a press account some asked to be allowed to “take their chance with the soldiers”. The list made it difficult to lower some of the boats, so the crew threw rafts overboard. Attack came right alongside the sinking ship and took several hundred people on board. Survivors recalled that the soldiers waiting on deck were singing. After a quarter of an hour or so Captain Bateman gave the order “every man for himself”, and Aragon went down stern first.

Then a second torpedo struck Attack, crowded with the rescued, amidships. The destroyer broke in two and sank within minutes. Fuel poured out of her ruptured tanks, and many men in the water choked on the oil. Trawlers picked up the survivors and the wounded were also taken aboard them. The nurses tended them on deck. Among the dead was Aragon’s captain, who according to the second officer jumped overboard from the bridge and was lost, as well as 19 members of his crew. Also killed was Battery Sergeant-Major Ernest Horlock, awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in France in 1914. The New Zealand trooper James Magnusson jumped into the water, pulled out a drowning wounded soldier and put him in a boat, then returned to the ship to his unit and died with it. He was posthumously awarded the Albert Medal for lifesaving.

The disaster raised questions about why the troopship had been sent away from the harbour entrance and left in the open roads. According to survivors, Captain Bateman announced from the bridge of the sinking ship that he would demand an inquiry into the matter. UC-34 did not stop there. The next day the British fleet messenger Osmanieh sank on a mine laid by her off Alexandria, taking nearly 200 people with her. The dead of Aragon are commemorated by a memorial in the Chatby district of Alexandria.