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SS Suevic
58°09′30″N 11°11′40″E / 58.15833°N 11.19444°E
SS Suevic was a steamship built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast for the White Star Line. Suevic was the fifth and last of the Jubilee-class ocean liners, built specifically to service the Liverpool-Cape Town-Sydney route, along with her sister ship Runic. In 1907 she was wrecked off the south coast of England, but in the largest rescue of its kind, all passengers and crew were saved. The ship herself was deliberately broken in two, and a new bow was attached to the salvaged stern portion. Later serving as a Norwegian whaling factory ship carrying the name Skytteren, she was scuttled off the Swedish coast in 1942 to prevent her capture by ships of Nazi Germany.
When White Star inaugurated service from Liverpool to Sydney in the late 1890s, they commissioned five steamships to be built for that route: the first three all entered service in 1899: Afric, Medic and Persic. All three were single-funnel ocean liners which measured just under 12,000 gross register tons (GRT) and were configured to carry 320 third class passengers. Because the commissioning of these ships coincided with the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, they were referred to as the Jubilee class. The next two ships of the class would be slightly larger than the first three. The first of these was Runic at 12,482 GRT, launched on 25 October 1900. The second, and largest of the class, was Suevic, at 12,531 GRT launched on 8 December 1900. Runic and Suevic had several minor design changes, the most noticeable of which were the lengthening of the poop deck, and the moving of the bridge closer to the bow. These ships could carry 400 passengers in third class on three decks. They also had substantial cargo capacity with seven cargo holds, most of which were refrigerated with the capacity for the stowage of 100,000 carcasses of mutton. There was also a hold designed for the transport of up to 20,000 bales of wool.
Suevic was launched on 8 December 1900, and set sail on her maiden voyage to Sydney on 23 March 1901. Shortly thereafter, Suevic and her four sisters were pressed into service carrying troops to fight in the Boer War in South Africa. In August 1901 she made her one and only voyage from Liverpool to New York City. Once the Boer War was over, White Star was finally able to institute regular monthly service to Australia using the Jubilee-class ships.
On one 1903 voyage, a young officer named Charles Lightoller was assigned to crew Suevic as a punishment. During the voyage, he met an 18-year-old woman who was returning to her home in Sydney, and after a shipboard courtship, the two were married in Sydney on 15 December 1903. Lightoller would later become the second officer on board the Titanic and the most senior of her crew to survive the disaster.
Suevic's first six years of service were uneventful. On 2 February 1907 she left Melbourne under the command of Captain Thomas Johnson Jones with scheduled stops at Cape Town, Tenerife, Plymouth, London and finally Liverpool. On 17 March 1907, she was inbound to Plymouth with 382 passengers, 141 crew members and a nearly-full cargo, including thousands of sheep carcasses worth £400,000.
By noon, she was off the southwest coast of England on the approach to Plymouth. This section of the English coast was hazardous, due to shallow waters, sharp rocks, and often-dense fog. By 10 pm, Suevic was encountering a strong south-westerly winds and severely reduced visibility due to showers of drizzling rain, the ship's officers were not able to fix their position using stellar navigation, so they intended to use instead the Lizard lighthouse on Lizard Point, Cornwall (known simply as "The Lizard"). At 10:15 pm the lighthouse was sighted through the gloom: at the ship's estimated position it should have been more than 10 miles (16 km) away, however unbeknown to the crew, due to miscalculations Suevic was 16 miles (26 km) ahead of her estimated position.
Not realising the error, the captain wrongly estimated that the lighthouse was several miles away; this was in part due to fog over the lighthouse which threw its beam down low on the horizon, and made it appear further away than it actually was. The ship pressed ahead at full speed, without using the sounding line to ensure they were not approaching the shore. Soon afterwards, at 10:25 pm the lookout sighted breaking waves ahead, the Captain ordered hard a-port, but it was too late, and the ship ran aground violently at full speed on the Stag Rock on Maenheere Reef - a belt of half-submerged rocks a mile off Lizard Point.
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SS Suevic
58°09′30″N 11°11′40″E / 58.15833°N 11.19444°E
SS Suevic was a steamship built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast for the White Star Line. Suevic was the fifth and last of the Jubilee-class ocean liners, built specifically to service the Liverpool-Cape Town-Sydney route, along with her sister ship Runic. In 1907 she was wrecked off the south coast of England, but in the largest rescue of its kind, all passengers and crew were saved. The ship herself was deliberately broken in two, and a new bow was attached to the salvaged stern portion. Later serving as a Norwegian whaling factory ship carrying the name Skytteren, she was scuttled off the Swedish coast in 1942 to prevent her capture by ships of Nazi Germany.
When White Star inaugurated service from Liverpool to Sydney in the late 1890s, they commissioned five steamships to be built for that route: the first three all entered service in 1899: Afric, Medic and Persic. All three were single-funnel ocean liners which measured just under 12,000 gross register tons (GRT) and were configured to carry 320 third class passengers. Because the commissioning of these ships coincided with the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, they were referred to as the Jubilee class. The next two ships of the class would be slightly larger than the first three. The first of these was Runic at 12,482 GRT, launched on 25 October 1900. The second, and largest of the class, was Suevic, at 12,531 GRT launched on 8 December 1900. Runic and Suevic had several minor design changes, the most noticeable of which were the lengthening of the poop deck, and the moving of the bridge closer to the bow. These ships could carry 400 passengers in third class on three decks. They also had substantial cargo capacity with seven cargo holds, most of which were refrigerated with the capacity for the stowage of 100,000 carcasses of mutton. There was also a hold designed for the transport of up to 20,000 bales of wool.
Suevic was launched on 8 December 1900, and set sail on her maiden voyage to Sydney on 23 March 1901. Shortly thereafter, Suevic and her four sisters were pressed into service carrying troops to fight in the Boer War in South Africa. In August 1901 she made her one and only voyage from Liverpool to New York City. Once the Boer War was over, White Star was finally able to institute regular monthly service to Australia using the Jubilee-class ships.
On one 1903 voyage, a young officer named Charles Lightoller was assigned to crew Suevic as a punishment. During the voyage, he met an 18-year-old woman who was returning to her home in Sydney, and after a shipboard courtship, the two were married in Sydney on 15 December 1903. Lightoller would later become the second officer on board the Titanic and the most senior of her crew to survive the disaster.
Suevic's first six years of service were uneventful. On 2 February 1907 she left Melbourne under the command of Captain Thomas Johnson Jones with scheduled stops at Cape Town, Tenerife, Plymouth, London and finally Liverpool. On 17 March 1907, she was inbound to Plymouth with 382 passengers, 141 crew members and a nearly-full cargo, including thousands of sheep carcasses worth £400,000.
By noon, she was off the southwest coast of England on the approach to Plymouth. This section of the English coast was hazardous, due to shallow waters, sharp rocks, and often-dense fog. By 10 pm, Suevic was encountering a strong south-westerly winds and severely reduced visibility due to showers of drizzling rain, the ship's officers were not able to fix their position using stellar navigation, so they intended to use instead the Lizard lighthouse on Lizard Point, Cornwall (known simply as "The Lizard"). At 10:15 pm the lighthouse was sighted through the gloom: at the ship's estimated position it should have been more than 10 miles (16 km) away, however unbeknown to the crew, due to miscalculations Suevic was 16 miles (26 km) ahead of her estimated position.
Not realising the error, the captain wrongly estimated that the lighthouse was several miles away; this was in part due to fog over the lighthouse which threw its beam down low on the horizon, and made it appear further away than it actually was. The ship pressed ahead at full speed, without using the sounding line to ensure they were not approaching the shore. Soon afterwards, at 10:25 pm the lookout sighted breaking waves ahead, the Captain ordered hard a-port, but it was too late, and the ship ran aground violently at full speed on the Stag Rock on Maenheere Reef - a belt of half-submerged rocks a mile off Lizard Point.
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