SS Glitra
- Saxon Prince ( 1884)
Company registration number: 79247
The Glitra was the first sunk in World War I merchant ship. She was sunk on 20 October 1914, the Norwegian Coast by the German submarine U 17.
History
The 866 -ton, built of iron steamship was built by Swan Hunter in Wallsend and launched on March 3, 1881 from the stack. It was christened the Saxon Prince, and in 1884 as a cargo ship for the British Prince Steam Shipping Company Ltd.. ( Prince Line ) put into service. She was the first steamship of the Prince Line, which had been founded in 1884 by the shipping magnate James Knott. Knott has worked since 1875 in the shipping industry, its fleet, however, had, up until then only from sailing ships.
The 65.53 meters long and 9.14 meters wide Saxon Prince was eleven years in the service of the Prince Line until 1895 she was sold to the in Leith near Edinburgh sedentary transport company Christian Salvesen & Co.. It was renamed in Glitra and drove 19 years for Salvesen.
On 18 October 1914, the Glitra ran under Captain L. Johnston with a cargo of coal, iron and oil in the small town of Grangemouth in Falkirk with target Stavanger. Two days later, at noon on October 20, the ship was 14 nautical miles off the Norwegian coast, and was about to take the pilot on board, as the German submarine U-17 under Captain Lieutenant John Feldkirchner appeared on the starboard side, the stop the steamer left. An armed officer and two more U-boat men put then on a boat to Glitra. The Germans ordered the collection of the British flag and ransacked the ship then. Feldkirchner kept thereby exactly to the Cruiser Rules.
After the Glitra had been searched, the 17- member crew was given ten minutes to leave the ship. Once this was done and everyone was safely off the vessel, the Germans opened the sea valves in the engine room of the Glitra and put the ship under attack. The Norwegian torpedo boat Hai observed stopping and sinking the Glitra, but it did nothing, because the incident happened outside Norwegian territorial waters and Norway was a neutral country.
U 17 dragged the two lifeboats for about a quarter of an hour towards the coast. After the submarine was weggetaucht, the shark approached, took the crew of Glitra of the lifeboats on board and brought them to Skudeneshavn on the southwest coast of Norway. There were no fatalities. According to the New York Times, the ship was not insured.