RMS Atrato

• Viking ( 1912)
• HMS Viknor (1914 )

The RMS Atrato (II ) was a 1889 put into service passenger ship in the British shipping company Royal Mail Line, which was used in passenger and mail transport from the UK to the West Indies. 1912, the ship was sold. During the First World War, she served as HMS Viknor as an armed merchant cruiser ( Armed Merchant Cruiser). On January 13, 1915, the ship disappeared with 295 people on board during a patrol in the Northern Irish coast. The HMS Viknor may have been run on a German naval mine. There were no survivors. The wreck was never found.

The ship

The 5386 -ton steamship Atrato was built at the shipyard Robert Napier & Sons in Govan in Glasgow and ran on 22 September 1888 by stack. The Atrato was a 128.3 meters long and 15.2 meters wide passenger and mail ship. She had two funnels, three masts and a single propeller and was powered by triple expansion steam engines, which could propel the ship to a speed of 15 knots. There were 221 passengers in First, 32 in the second and 26 are conveyed in the third class.

On January 17, 1889 put the Atrato in Southampton on her maiden voyage to Brazil, Montevideo and Buenos Aires from. In the following years, however, the ship sailed exclusively from England to the West Indies. 1912, the ship was sold to the Viking Cruising Company and renamed Viking.

After the outbreak of the First World War the ship on 12 December 1914 by the Admiralty was used for use as an armed merchant cruiser and assigned as the 10th Cruiser Squadron HMS Viknor. The ship was henceforth in the Northern Patrol, which served as the naval blockade against the German Empire between the Orkney Islands and the Faroe Islands.

On January 13, 1915 just one month after the commissioning, HMS Viknor was under the command of Commander Ernest Orford Ballantyne with 22 officers and 273 lower ranks of the Royal Navy on board on patrol against Northern Ireland. She stood with the radio station on Malin Head in conjunction and was last before Tory Iceland about 14 km off the coast of Donegal seen. After that lost every trace of the ship. There is no emergency calls were recorded.

In the days after the disappearance of many bodies were washed ashore. Survivors, however, were not found. The wreck of the HMS Viknor is undetected until today ( 2013). It is generally assumed that the ship ran into a by a German U - boat or auxiliary cruiser laid minefield and sank. However, the actual cause could never be clarified.