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Author: Mark ‘Crowley’ Russell
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The wreck of the SS Arcadian, a British ocean liner sunk by a German torpedo during the First World War with the loss of 279 men, has been located off the coast of the Greek island of Sifnos.
The wreckage of the 152m-long (500ft) steamship was discovered by Greek explorer and commercial diver, Kostas Thoctarides, southeast of Sifnos lying at a depth of 163m
SS Arcadian was launched in 1899 by Vickers, Sons & Maxim Ltd – the British engineering firm better known by its later name as simply ‘Vickers’ – under her original name Ortona.
Fitted to carry 140 first-class, 180 second-class and 300 third-class passengers, Ortona plied the London-to-Australia route for the Pacific Steam Navigation Company until 1906 when she was bought by the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company.
During that time, Ortona briefly saw service as a troop ship, returning troops from South Africa to the UK in December 1902 following the end of the Second Boer War.
Ortona continued to provide services to Australia in a joint operation with the Orient Line, before being transferred to the Royal Mail’s West Indies service in 1909. She was refitted as a 320-person cruise ship in 1910 and renamed RMS Arcadian – the largest cruise ship in the world at that time.
Arcadian was requisitioned by the British Admiralty in 1915 and converted into an armed troop ship serving in the Mediterranean, with the new designation ‘HMT’, a now defunct ship’s prefix for ‘Hired Military Transport’.
On 15 April 1917, under the command of Captain Charles Lane Willats, HMT Arcadian was en route to the Egyptian port of Alexandria from Thessaloniki in Greece, (known as Salonika at the time) carrying 1,335 soldiers and crew, accompanied by the scout cruiser HMS Sentinel.
At 1744hrs, Arcadian‘s engine room was struck without warning by a torpedo fired from the German U-boat UC-74. The ship heeled to port before righting itself, but several lifeboats were smashed during the explosion.
The damage to Arcadian’s hull was so great that she sank in just six minutes. Many of the troops, who had been on deck following a drill were able to throw themselves into the water, but 279 men were either killed in the initial explosion or taken down with the ship. Others were reportedly killed at the surface by wooden spars that broke off the ship at depth, then floated violently to the surface.
Some of the survivors were rescued by HMS Sentinel; others were picked up by French warships despatched from Milos; and the remainder retrieved close to midnight by the Q-ship HMS Redbreast, after spending nearly 5 hours afloat in the Mediterranean.
Thoctarides’ search for Arcadian began with a search of primary sources in the British and German Archives, and the gathering of important information that led to the identification of the Ocean liner on the Aegean seabed.
The wreck was located and identified by remote operated vehicle (ROV) and appears to be well preserved, which Thoctarides puts down to the quality of the materials and the ship’s construction.
‘The quality of the metallic alloys used in the shipbuilding of the Arcadian is a major factor in the preservation of the wreck up to this day,’ said Thoctarides.
‘It appears that the bow of the Arcadian initially landed at the bottom of the Aegean, with the result that the deformations of the hull plates are visible,’ he said, ‘Due to the length of the ship and the depth of the sea area, which is only 163 meters, since the bow crashed first while the stern was still sinking, this helped the wreckage to stay aligned and upright till today.’
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