Sinking of the Tuscania

Early in the evening of 5 February 1918 a German submarine torpedoed the British troopship Tuscania, which was sailing in convoy from America to Liverpool with more than two thousand American soldiers on board. The ship sank after several hours in the North Channel, between the Scottish island of Islay and the island of Rathlin off the coast of Ireland. Most of those aboard were rescued by British destroyers, but, according to various sources, between about 170 and more than 200 people were killed. It was the first troopship carrying American soldiers to Europe to be sunk by a German submarine.

A liner in military service

Tuscania was a new liner of the Anchor Line, which was linked to the Cunard Line. She was built at Alexander Stephen’s yard in Glasgow and launched in September 1914. She was of more than 14,000 gross register tons and was intended for the Glasgow–New York service. From 1916 she carried troops, first Canadian soldiers and from 1917 American ones as well, shipped to Europe for the American Expeditionary Forces. Since the first American soldiers had reached France, transports across the Atlantic had sailed in convoys and none had been sunk.

On 24 January 1918 Tuscania left Hoboken, near New York, and at Halifax (PL) joined convoy (PL) HX 20, which numbered a dozen or so ships and was led by the cruiser Cochrane. On board, according to American figures, were about 2,000 soldiers of the United States Army and 384 men of the British crew. Among the troops were sappers of the 20th Engineer Regiment, destined for lumbering in France, men of several aero squadrons and replacements for the 32nd Division. On 4 February, off the coast of Ireland, eight destroyers from the base at Buncrana on Lough Swilly joined the convoy.

The attack of UB-77

Meanwhile, on 29 January, the new German submarine UB-77, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Wilhelm Meyer, had left Borkum. She went round the north of Scotland and on 5 February took up position at the entrance to the North Channel. The British official history of the war at sea points out that in the winter of 1918 more and more German submarines chose this long route round Scotland, because the passage through the Strait of Dover had become too dangerous, and their targets were precisely the convoys approaching the ports on the Irish Sea. In the afternoon Meyer sighted convoy HX 20 through his periscope. As dusk fell, at about six in the evening (the times given vary between 5.40 and 6.40 p.m.), he fired two torpedoes. One missed; the other struck Tuscania on the starboard side, in the area of the boiler room. All the stokers then working below deck were killed.

The ship listed to starboard but stayed afloat for about four hours. Despite the darkness and the rising sea, the soldiers assembled at the boats in good order. The list made lowering them difficult. Some lifeboats were smashed against the side or fell onto others, and some, cracked and leaking, drifted away empty. Most of the men were taken off by the destroyers Mosquito, Pigeon and Grasshopper, which came alongside the sinking ship despite warnings that the submarine might still be nearby. Pigeon is said to have taken off more than 800 soldiers. According to British accounts Meyer later returned to the spot and fired another torpedo, which passed under Mosquito’s stern. The survivors were landed at Buncrana and Larne. At about 10 p.m. Tuscania sank.

Islay

The most tragic fate befell the men in the boats that the sea carried during the night under the rocky cliffs of the southern headland of Islay. Many of them were dashed against the rocks. For the following days the islanders pulled survivors and bodies out of the water. The survivors were taken in by the small town of Port Ellen, and new cemeteries were laid out on the island for the dead. The figures for the dead differ between sources. The uboat.net website, German studies and the local history of Islay give 166 killed, while other studies, including Robert Massie’s history of the war at sea, give about 210, partly because they count the crew members differently. After the war the soldiers’ bodies were moved to the American cemetery at Brookwood or to the United States. In 1919 the Americans erected a memorial in the shape of a lighthouse on the Mull of Oa.

The British chronology of the war published in 1922 calls the sinking of Tuscania the only loss among American transports sailing under the protection of the Royal Navy. This is not quite accurate, because in May 1918 the British armed merchant cruiser Moldavia was torpedoed and sunk in the English Channel, with the loss of several dozen American soldiers. Tuscania nevertheless remained the largest such loss. The news of her sinking made the front pages of newspapers in the United States, but it did not slow the movement of troops. In 1918 the convoys carried more than a million American soldiers across the Atlantic, and very few troopships were sunk.