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WW1 - 1914-1918
" Looks of War photographers "
" Regards de photographes de Guerre"
9000 photos
438 pages
THE COMMERCE RIDER
WOLF
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SHIPS SUNK by MINES
from WOLF
6.2.17. The British troopship HMT Tyndareus was badly damaged by one of Wolf's mines off Cape Town and was only saved from sinking by skillful seamanship.
10.8.17 The British liner SS City of Athens, 5,604 tons, was sunk on August 10, 1917, by two mines laid by the German raider SMS Wolf, 18 miles N54°W from Green Point, between Dassen Island and Table Bay. 19 lives were lost, when one of the lifeboats capsized.
SS Matheran
The British stearmer S/S Matheran of 7,654 tons, was sunk by a mine
from the German raider SMS Wolf,
January 26th, 1917,
9 miles West from Dassen Island, South Africa.
1 crew member was lost.
SS Cilicia
SS Cilicia was a british steamer owned by Marwood Chr., Grimsby of 3750 tons.
On February 12th, 1917, she was mined, 5 miles South from Dasseneiland, near Cape of Good Hope, while on a voyage from Cardiff to Simons Bay.
The mine was laid by the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Wolf.
Carlos de Eizagueirre
The Carlos de Eizaguirre left Barcelona SS on April 23rd, 1917, for Manila by way of the Cape.
She carried just over 150 passengers and crew.
Her voyage as far as the Cape was uneventful and on the night of May 25th she was steaming at reduced speed for Table Bay.
The weather was bad with torrents of rain and a heavy sea.
At about 3 a.m. on the next day when off Robben Island there was a terrific explosion.
The passengers were asleep below and there was hardly time for them to hurry on deck before the vessel broke her back, and with bow and stern pointing into the air plunged beneath the waves.
The whole disaster occupied only five minutes, during which time frantic efforts were made to launch the boats.
Only one, in which there were 23 persons, got away; later the chief engineer was picked up on a raft.
These 24 were all that remained of the liner´s company.
The cause of the disaster was found to be a mine sown by the German raider SMS Wolf weeks previously
Worcestershire
Perseus
SS Okhla
SS Wimmera
SS Wimmera
Ship Wimmera, Wellington Harbour
Photographer probably David James Aldersley
The Australian steamer Wimmera was sunk by a mine laid north of Cape Maria van Diemen in 1917 by the German raider Wolf.
Twenty-six of its 151 passengers and crew were killed.
Huddart Parker Ltd’s Wimmera (3021 tons) had left Auckland for Sydney on the morning of 25 June, carrying 76 passengers and 75 crew.
At 5.15 a.m. on the 26th the ship struck a moored mine, which exploded near its stern.
Fortunately the sea was smooth and several lifeboats were launched before the vessel sank.
Assistance was provided by nearby trawlers and the following day 125 survivors were landed in Tom Bowling Bay (near North Cape) and near Mangonui.
The Wolf had sown mines north of New Zealand in mid-1917.
Eleven had been discovered prior to the Wimmera’s sinking, but the British steamer Port Kembla had fallen victim to one in September 1917.
The Court of Inquiry found that Captain Kell had ignored confidential Admiralty instructions to steer further to the north around Cape Maria van Diemen.
The captain, in accordance with maritime tradition, had remained on board to the last and gone down with his ship.
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
SS Cumberland
Australian War Memorial
SS Cumberland’s place in maritime history
If you were compiling a list of maritime “firsts”, you might want to include the SS Cumberland: she has the distinction of being the first civilian ship to be lost in Australian waters due to an enemy mine.
The SS Cumberland was a four-masted steamer owned by the British Steam Navigation Company. Early in the First World War, she was being used to transport cargo around Australia and to England.
In July 1917 she was heading for England with a cargo of frozen meat, wool bales and Red Cross parcels.
In fact about 95 per cent of her cargo consisted of ingots of copper and lead, but this was kept secret at the time due to wartime censorship.
On the morning of the 6th July, the Cumberland was steaming near Gabo Island just off the north eastern coast of Victoria.
About 8.40am, two explosions rocked the steamship.
The captain and crew thought they had been torpedoed or struck a mine.
The explosion blew a hole in Hold No 1. While water poured into the hold and smoke billowed out of it, frozen beef was floating around the ship.
After a request from Garden Island, the Japanese Navy cruiser Chikuma proceeded to the area to provide assistance to the Cumberland.
A navy diver from Chikuma reported that the damage was caused by an internal explosion.
This report was accepted, despite Australian divers the next day reporting the explosion was external.
Two days later newspapers were claiming the Cumberland had been sabotaged.
The government allowed the story of sabotage to continue rather than admit there could be a minefield lying ten kilometres off the south coast of Australia.
At the end of September, the Naval Board decided to sweep the area using crews from the recently establish mine sweeping section of the Royal Australian Naval Brigade.
Operations commenced on 8 October.
The next day, the first mine was discovered.
Three days later another mine was found.
On 15 October the Minister for the Navy announced that there was a minefield near Gabo Island.
As the sweeping took place, residents in Mallacoota could hear the explosions.
But it was not known how the mines got there until 15 January 1918 when the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Navy’s China Station in Singapore received
a message that a bottle had been found in the sea off Toli Toli, Celebes, by natives.
The bottle contained a message from a captured prisoner on the German raider SMS Wolf giving information about the Wolf’s operations and identifying
the raider as the former Wachtenfels.
It also contained a descriptive drawing of the vessel.
During its fifteen-month voyage, the crew of the Wolf captured or sunk fourteen vessels.
As well as a field of fifteen mines near Gabo Island and fifteen mines near Cape Everard, the Wolf laid mines off Cape Town, Bombay and New Zealand.
The SS Cumberland was one of thirteen ships which struck mines laid by the Wolf, but the only Australian vessel to become a casualty.
Despite the sweep in October 1917, more mines were found during November and December.
The Navy conducted another sweep of the area in September-October 1918.
It was not completely successful either, as eleven years later the crew of a fishing trawler received a shock to find a mine in their nets.
This is the mine now held in the Memorial’s collection.
The Wolf also laid mines in New Zealand waters around Farewell Spit on the north-west tip of the South Island and near the Three Kings Islands in Cape Reinga. One of these mines was found on a west coast beach as recently as December 2008.
After lying beached at Gabo Island for five weeks, an attempt was made to tow the Cumberland to Twofold Bay. However a rush of water into hold No 1 caused her to become unmanageable and she sank.
Fortunately there were no casualties during either the original explosion or the final sinking of the vessel.
In 1938 the Viking Queen hoped to salvage the cargo but was not able to locate the wreck.
The salvage vessel Foremost 17 successfully recovered approximately 1825 tons of ingots, which they believed to be 95% of that cargo, in 1951.
The wreck of the Cumberland lies in open water some five miles off the southeast coast of Green Cape, New South Wales, at a depth of over 94 metres.
She is now a protected Historic Shipwreck under the provisions of the Commonwealth Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976.
Port Kembla
The Regulus made headlines in 1917 when she picked up the crew of the Port Kembla, which had struck a mine off Cape Farewell that had been laid by the German Raider Wolf some weeks earlier.
The survivors were taken on board and fitted out with dry clothing, then with the boats in tow the Regulus headed back to Nelson.
The lighthouse keeper on the Boulder Bank seeing the Regulus returning with two life boats in tow, after just leaving the night before, thought something
was amiss and notified the authorities.
The news spread like wildfire and, on the ship's arrival, hundreds of people were on the wharf to welcome Capt. F.L. Vickerman and his crew
and to find out the situation.
Because of wartime censorship, little could be published at the time but it was impossible to conceal the truth in a place like Nelson where so much solicitous good will existed, and it was soon known that the ship in question was the Port Kembla, which had left Australia laden with food valued at a million pounds
for Britain a few days earlier, and was to call into Wellington for bunkers en route.
The explosion had taken place in the for’ard hold, with the vessel sinking in twenty minutes, just giving enough time for all hands to get into the boats,
but not enough to collect any personal effects.
The cause of the explosion was not fully known until after the war when information became available from the Log Books of the raider Wolf
and there it was found that she had laid mines off Cape Farewell.
The crew were fitted out by the people of Nelson and the Anchor Company took responsibility for transporting them to Wellington.
It was in this way that the “Regulus” had played her small part in the war effort.
The story of the Regulus was taken from Anchor Ships and Anchor Men by Allan A Kirk published in 1967
on behalf of the Company as a record of the Companies history
SS Tyndareus
Photograph by Walter E. Frost
SS Tyndareus
SS Tyndareus
SS Tyndareus
Tyndareus Paint
Oil on board by Stanley Llewellyn Wood (1866-1928), 1917 (c).
Copyright/Ownership
National Army Museum, London
Location
National Army Museum, Study collection
The evacuation of the troopship SS 'Tyndareus', which struck a mine off Cape Agulhas, South Africa, on 6 February 1917.
During its passage from Devonport to Hong Kong during World War One, the troopship SS 'Tyndareus' was due to put in at Table Bay, South Africa,
for fuel and fresh provisions.
However, on 6 February 1917 while rounding Cape Agulhas, some 108 miles (173 km) south-east of Cape Town, the 11,000-ton troopship struck
a mine laid by the German raider 'Wolf', with a terrific explosion.
The ship rapidly began to fill with water and started going down by the head.
The painting illustrates the moments on deck when, instead of panicking, all the men of 25th (Garrison) Battalion Middlesex Regiment
obeyed the command of the CO, Lieutenant-Colonel John Ward MP, to draw up on parade.
This orderly response enabled boats to be lowered without mishap and, with other assistance, all those on board were saved.
King George V sent a message of approval which read:
'Please express to the officers commanding the Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment my admiration of the conduct displayed by all ranks on the occasion of the accident to the Tyndareus.
In their discipline and courage they worthily upheld the splendid tradition of the Birkenhead, ever cherished in the annals of the British Army.'
City of Athens
The British liner SS City of Athens, 5,604 tons, was sunk on August 10, 1917,
by two mines laid by the German raider SMS Wolf, 18 miles N54°W from Green Point,
between Dassen Island and Table Bay.
19 lives were lost, when one of the lifeboats capsized.