'', summer 1937. On 1 September 1939
Athenia, commanded by
Captain James Cook, left Glasgow for Montreal via Liverpool and
Belfast. She carried 1,103 passengers, including about 500 Jewish refugees, 469 Canadians, 311 US citizens, 72 British subjects, and 315 crew. Despite clear indications that war would break out any day, the vessel departed Liverpool at 13:00 hrs on 2 September without recall, and on the evening of the 3rd — the day of the
British declaration of war on Germany — was south of
Rockall and northwest of
Inishtrahull, Ireland, when she was sighted by the commanded by
Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp around 16:30. Although Lemp later claimed the ship was darkened, zigzagging, and off the normal shipping routes, the claims did not become public until years later when eyewitnesses denied them. He mistakenly concluded she was either a
troopship, a
Q-ship, or an
armed merchant cruiser.
U-30 tracked
Athenia for three hours until eventually, at 19:40, when both vessels were between Rockall and
Tory Island, Lemp ordered two torpedoes to be fired. One exploded on
Athenias port side in her engine room, and she began to settle by the stern. Within minutes, Lemp learned of his error by listening to radio reports, but failed to report what he had done to U-boat Headquarters until he returned to port 23 days later. Unaware of the truth, Admiral Raeder denied any U-boats were in the vicinity and Joseph Goebbels developed a false narrative. When Lemp revealed the truth to him, Karl Doenitz sent him to Berlin where he spoke to Raeder. Both he and Hitler agreed the truth about the
Athenia should remain secret. Lemp's KTB (war diary) was altered by inserting a counterfeit page, which was not discovered until the time of the Nuremberg War Trials. In the interim, myths developed, the media made much of them, and rage ensued. Civilians had become early victims within hours after war was declared. Several ships, including the , responded to
Athenias
distress signal.
Electras commander, Lt. Cdr. Sammy A. Buss, was senior officer present and took charge. He sent the
F-class destroyer on an anti-submarine sweep of the area, while
Electra, another E-class destroyer, , the Swedish
yacht Southern Cross, the Norwegian dry cargo ship MS
Knute Nelson, and the US
cargo ship , rescued survivors. Between them they saved about 981 passengers and crew. The German liner , en route from New York to
Murmansk, also received
Athenias distress signal, but ignored it as it was trying to evade capture by the British as a prize of war.
City of Flint took 223 survivors to Pier 21 at Halifax, and
Knute Nelson landed 450 at
Galway.
Athenia remained afloat for more than 14 hours, until she finally sank stern first at 10:40 the next morning. Of the 1,418 aboard, 98 passengers and 19 crew members were killed. Many died in the engine room and aft stairwell, where the torpedo hit. About 50 people died when one of the lifeboats was crushed in the propeller of
Knute Nelson. No. 5A lifeboat came alongside the empty tanker and tied up, against advice, astern of No 12 lifeboat. Only separated the lifeboat from the tanker's exposed propeller. Once No. 12 lifeboat was emptied, it was cast adrift and began to sink. This fact was reported to the bridge of
Knute Nelson. For some reason the ship's
engine order telegraph was then set to full ahead. 5A lifeboat's mooring line or "warp" parted under the stress, causing the lifeboat to be pulled back into the revolving propeller. There was a second accident at about 05:00 hrs when No. 8 lifeboat capsized in a heavy sea below the stern of the yacht
Southern Cross, killing ten people. Three passengers were crushed to death while trying to transfer from lifeboats to the
Royal Navy destroyers. Other deaths were due to falling overboard from
Athenia and her lifeboats, or to injuries and exposure. 54 dead were Canadian and 28 were US citizens, which led to German fears that the incident would bring the US into the war. and was one of the first Canadians to be killed by enemy action. Newspapers widely publicised the story, proclaiming "Ten-Year-Old Victim of Torpedo" as "Canadians Rallying Point", and set the tone for their coverage of the rest of the war. One thousand people met the train that brought the child's body back to
Hamilton, Ontario, and there was a public funeral attended by the mayor of Hamilton, the city council, the Lieutenant-Governor,
Albert Edward Matthews, Premier
Mitchell Hepburn, and the entire Ontario cabinet. The German Navy was blindsided by Lemp's failure to report that he was in the vicinity where the "Athenia" was struck, had tracked the ship for hours, and sank her. Shy of public criticism, Hitler insisted on silence. Prompted by Lemp's false assertions that the ship had been darkened, located in a war zone, and zigzagging, Raeder decided against
court-martialling Lemp for what sounded like an understandable error. However, he ordered the log (KTB) of
U-30 to be altered to sustain the falsehood, a decision that helped incriminate him when it was discovered at the end of the war. By then Lemp had been killed in action (1941) and Adolf Schmidt, a surviving witness, came forth to testify that he had been on the bridge after the torpedo hit the "Athenia", he had seen the ship foundering, and he had been sworn to secrecy. The prosecutor testified to the falsification of the war diary (KTB). The claims were unfounded.
Cargo A cargo of 888 tons was taken on in Glasgow, 472 tons of which were building bricks. Other items included granite
curling rocks from Scotland, textbooks for the
Toronto school system, a number of sealed steel boxes containing new clothes purchased in Europe by tourists, and
watercolour paintings by passenger and English illustrator Winifred Walker, intended for her planned book, ''Shakespeare's Flowers''. Excavations of
Urartu antiquities by the American scholars Kirsopp and Silva Lake during 1938–1939 and most of their finds and field records were lost in the sinking of the ship. On 4 September 1939, curling stone manufacturer Andrew Kay & Co. sent a cablegram to its sales representative in Toronto stating, "We now learn that the Athenia was this morning sunk off the coast of Scotland, and we regret that the finest consignment of curling stones that have ever yet left our factory has gone with it." According to James Wyllie, secretary and director of
Kays of Scotland (as the company is now known) in 2018, three bills of lading for this shipment included 48 pairs of
Blue Hone Ailsa curling stones for the London, Ontario Curling Club, 41 pairs of Blue Hone Ailsa curling stones for the
Toronto High Park Curling Club, and 50 pairs of Red Hone Ailsa curling stones for the Lindsay Curling Club. This is a total of 278 Andrew Kay & Co. Excelsior Ailsa curling stones with handles and cases weighing nearly six tons with a 1939 value of (equivalent to £ in ).
Wreck discovery In 2017, the
oceanographer and marine archaeologist
David Mearns found a wreck he believes to be
Athenia. Mearns located the wreck on
Rockall Bank using
sonar imagery that was scanned by the
Geological Survey of Ireland to map the sea floor. He stated "Can I go into a court of law and say, '100%, that's Athenia?' No. But barring a photograph I can say in my expert opinion there's a very, very high probability that that's
Athenia. Everything fits."
Legality of sinking As
Athenia was an unarmed passenger ship, the attack violated the
Hague conventions and the
London Naval Treaty of 1930 that allowed all warships, including submarines, to stop and search merchant vessels, but forbade capture as
prize or sinking unless the ship was carrying contraband or engaged in military activity. Even if this was the case, and if it was decided to sink their ship, it was required that passengers and crew must be transferred to a "place of safety" as a priority. Although Germany had not signed the 1930 treaty, the German 1936 Prize Rules (
Prisenordnung) binding their naval commanders copied most of its restrictions. Lemp of
U-30 did none of these things, choosing instead to fire without warning. ==Memorials==