SS Laurentic was a British transatlantic ocean liner built in Belfast, Ireland, and launched in 1908. She is an early example of a ship whose propulsion combined reciprocating steam engines with a low-pressure steam turbine.
Laurentic was ordered in 1907 with her sister ship Megantic by the Dominion Line but completed for the White Star Line. Her regular route was between Liverpool and Quebec City.
In 1914 Laurentic served briefly as a troop ship, and then served for more than two years as an armed merchant cruiser (AMC). As an AMC she saw service off West Africa, Singapore, the Bay of Bengal and the Far East.
In 1917 two German mines sank Laurentic off the northern coast of Ireland. Her crew successfully abandoned ship, but 354 of them died of hypothermia in her lifeboats. Laurentic was carrying about 43 tons of gold bars when she sank. Most of the 3,211 bars were salvaged by 1924; three more bars were found in the 1930s, while 22 remain unaccounted for. Laurentics wreck is in the territorial waters of the Republic of Ireland and protected by Irish law.
Background Dominion Line ran a transatlantic liner service between Liverpool, Quebec, Montreal and Boston. In 1902 the International Mercantile Marine Company (IMM) took over Dominion Line.
In 1905 the rival Allan Line introduced the world's first steam turbine ocean liners. and Virginian were two of the swiftest ships on the route between Britain and Canada, and at more than each they were also the largest. The pair made such an impression that Allan Line won a valuable Canadian Government mail contract before the ships were even launched.
Like all of the earliest turbine ships, Victorian and Virginian had direct drive from their turbines to their screws. Virginian also acquired a reputation for rolling excessively in heavy seas. In addition, the earliest steam turbines used more bunker fuel than triple- or quadruple-expansion steam engines.
In 1907 Dominion Line responded by ordering a pair of liners from Harland & Wolff. At almost each they would be larger than Victorian and Virginian, the largest ships in Dominion Line's fleet, and the largest ships on the route between Britain and Canada.
Dominion Line planned to call the ships Alberta and Albany. But before the pair were completed, IMM transferred them to another of its subsidiaries, White Star Line, and they were renamed to conform with White Star naming policy. Alberta was launched on 10 September 1908 as Laurentic, and Albany was launched three months later as . Despite the change of owner, Laurentic and Megantic were still to serve the route between Liverpool and Montreal. They were White Star Line's first ships on the route.
Combining reciprocating and turbine engines
Megantic and Laurentic were used as a kind of full-scale experiment to test out a new form of engine arrangement: Megantic was built with a conventional arrangement of twin propellers driven by quadruple-expansion engines. Laurentic on the other hand was built with three screws, with a steam turbine driving her middle screw, and four-cylinder triple-expansion engines driving her port and starboard screws, the exhaust steam from their low-pressure cylinders drove the turbine.
Laurentic was not quite the first ship to have what came to be called "combination machinery". William Denny and Brothers launched the refrigerated cargo liner on 15 August 1908, less than a month before Laurentic, and completed her on 22 October, six months before Laurentic. However, Otaki lacked a sister ship for direct comparison. Laurentic and Megantic were identical sisters whose only significant difference was their engines. This enabled IMM and Harland & Wolff to compare the two systems directly.
Harland & Wolff built Laurentic on slipway number six of its South Yard in Belfast. She was completed on 15 April 1909 and Megantic followed on 3 June. When the performance of the two ships was evaluated, Laurentic was found to produce 20 percent more power than her sister for the same coal consumption. For the same power output, Laurentics coal consumption was 12 to 15 percent less than Megantics. This led IMM to specify a similar three-screw combination of two triple-expansion engines and one low-pressure turbine for the s that Harland & Wolff launched in 1910 and 1911.
Passenger service
The White Star and Dominion Lines provided two ships each to run a weekly joint service between Liverpool and Canada. The White Star ships were Laurentic and Megantic. The Dominion Line ships were the Canada and Dominion.
Laurentic carried 387 crew and had berths for 1,660 passengers: 230 first class, 430 second class and 1,000 third class. On her maiden voyage Laurentic left Liverpool on 29 April 1909 and reached both Quebec and Montreal on 7 May. In her five years of civilian service, Laurentic took thousands of emigrants from the UK to Canada.
In winter Laurentic also served New York City. On a westbound crossing to New York on 22 January 1910 a storm hit Laurentic that broke portholes on her upper deck, flooded her bridge and officers' quarters and disabled her engine order telegraphs.
Laurentic also made winter cruises to the Mediterranean Sea and the West Indies.
In July 1910 Metropolitan Police DCI Walter Dew used Laurentics speed to reach Rimouski, Quebec ahead of murder suspect Hawley Harvey Crippen and his lover Ethel Le Neve, who were travelling aboard the Canadian Pacific liner . Dew boarded Montrose, arrested Crippen and Le Neve, and repatriated them aboard Megantic.
In 1911 Laurentic set a westbound record time for the route of 13 days and four hours from Liverpool to Montreal.
By 1912 Laurentic was equipped for wireless telegraphy, operating on the 300 and 600 metre wavelengths. Her call sign was MIC. On a westbound crossing that year she passed where RMS Titanic had sunk on 15 April. Laurentics Master, John Mathias, reported by wireless on 21 April "that he had kept a careful lookout while passing over the Grand Banks, and had seen neither bodies nor wreckage".
On 13 September 1914 Laurentic was requisitioned at Montreal to be a troop ship. She loaded 15,000 sacks of flour and embarked the 1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Dragoons. On 3 October she left Gaspé Bay as one of a convoy of 32 ships bringing more than 30,000 members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force to Europe. She reached Plymouth on 14 October.
Armed Merchant Cruiser
The Admiralty then had Laurentic converted into an AMC. She was armed with eight QF 6-inch naval guns and two 6-pounder guns. On 25 November 1914 she was commissioned as HMS Laurentic, with the pennant number M 71.
In December 1914 Laurentic sailed from Liverpool via Sierra Leone and Lagos to Kamerun, where she assisted in the Kamerun campaign. In September the Royal Navy had captured several German merchant ships that had sought refuge in the Wouri estuary. On 26–30 December Laurentic discharged prize crews from five of the captured ships.
In January 1915 Laurentic returned via Lagos, Accra, Sekondi and Sierra Leone to Birkenhead. In Accra and Sekondi she embarked German civilian internees.
In February 1915 Laurentic sailed to Gibraltar. She then patrolled to São Vicente, Sierra Leone and Kamerun until at least April. By July she was in the Indian Ocean off Mozambique heading for Durban, where she called on 2–4 August. She then crossed the Indian Ocean, coaling at Colombo in Ceylon on 18–19 August and reached Singapore on 25 August.
From September 1915 to January 1916 Laurentic patrolled the Bay of Bengal, visiting Port Blair, the Hooghly River, the coast of Balasore and Rangoon. On 30–31 January she called at Singapore before sailing for Hong Kong.
On 5 February Laurentic stopped the Japanese merchant ship Tenyo Maru off the Philippines and sent a boarding party aboard. They arrested nine Indian nationals "travelling without bonafides of any description", who were suspected of being Hindu nationalists. Japanese newspapers claimed that the action violated international law. The Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ishii Kikujirō, said that the Japanese Government was investigating.
On 22 February Laurentic reached Hong Kong. She patrolled Chinese waters until 15 March, then spent a week in Hong Kong before returning to Singapore, where she arrived on 30 March.
In April 1916 Laurentic returned to Hong Kong, where she was refitted from 24 April to 2 June. She then returned to Singapore, made a brief patrol to Penang and back and on 28 June left Singapore for South Africa.
Two gold shipments to Canada Laurentic called at Simon's Town 17–19 July, bunkered in Cape Town on 20 July and then on 23–24 July loaded bullion to take to Canada.
Laurentic left Cape Town on 25 July 1916, reached Halifax, Nova Scotia on 15 August and discharged her cargo of bullion. She spent September and the first half of October patrolling the east coast of Canada and then south to Bermuda, where she spent 14–27 October in port and loaded specie. By 30 October she was back in Halifax, where she unloaded the specie and spent four weeks in port before leaving on 27 November for Liverpool.
On 1 December it was discovered that coal in Laurentics number two hold was on fire. Her crew started to remove coal from the bunker. A dislodged beam struck Commander Mathias, fracturing his skull. On 2 December the crew finished removing coal from the hold and threw 150 tons of charred coal overboard. On 4 December Cdr Mathias died of his injury. Laurentic reached Birkenhead on 6 December.
Loss Laurentics logbook records that on 23 December in Birkenhead she again loaded specie. This may refer to the 3,211 gold bars that she was secretly to carry to buy munitions from Canada and the USA. At the time they were worth £5 million.
On 23 January 1917 she left Birkenhead. On the morning of 25 January she called at Buncrana in Lough Swilly to disembark four ratings with symptoms of yellow fever.
At 1700 hrs Laurentic left Buncrana in a bitterly cold blizzard. There were reports that a U-boat had been sighted near the mouth of Lough Swilly. Laurentic was due to rendezvous with a destroyer escort off Fanad Head, but her commander, Captain Reginald Norton, chose to proceed without it.
At 1755 hrs, just north of the lough, Laurentic struck a mine that had been laid by . It exploded abreast of Laurentics foremast. 20 seconds later a second mine exploded abreast of her engine room, which disabled her dynamo and pumps. The crew was unable to transmit a wireless distress message, but fired a distress rocket. Both explosions were on her port side, to which she soon listed 20 degrees, making it hard to launch her lifeboats.
Abandoning ship Despite the difficult conditions Laurentics crew launched lifeboats and tried to row ashore, guided by Fanad Head Lighthouse. But the temperature dropped as low as , and many men in the lifeboats died of hypothermia before reaching the shore. Local fishing boats rescued the exhausted and very cold survivors.
About 45 minutes after the explosion Captain Norton, using an electric torch, searched the ship for survivors. He then boarded a lifeboat, and was the last to leave his ship. He stated: To the best of my knowledge, all the men got safely into the boats. The best of order prevailed after the explosion. The officers and men lived up to the best traditions of the navy...The deaths were all due to exposure, owing to the coldness of the night. My own boat was almost full of water when we were picked up by a trawler the next morning, but all the men in the boat survived. Another boat, picked up at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, contained five survivors and fifteen frozen bodies. They had been exposed to the bitter cold for over twenty hours.