SS ''Transylvania'' was a British passenger liner of the Anchor Line, a subsidiary of the

Cunard Line Cunard () is a British shipping and cruise line based at Carnival House at Southampton, England, operated by Carnival UK and owned by Carnival Corporation & plc. Since 2011, Cunard and its three ships have been registered in Hamilton, Berm ...

and a sister ship to . She was torpedoed and sunk on 4 May 1917 by the German U-boat at while carrying Allied troops to Egypt and sank with a loss of 412 lives.

History

Career

Completed just after the outbreak of World War I, The 14,348 GRT ''Transylvania'' was built in 1914 at the Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company shipyard in the Scottish city of

Greenock Greenock (; sco, Greenock; gd, Grianaig, ) is a town and administrative centre in the Inverclyde council areas of Scotland, council area in Scotland, United Kingdom and a former burgh of barony, burgh within the Counties of Scotland, historic ...

. The owner was the Anchor Line, which had been part of the Cunard Line since 1911. The 167.11 m long steamer was powered by two Parsons turbines and six Scotch steam boilers, which acted on two propellers and enabled a speed of 17.5 knots (35.2 km / h). She was taken over for service as a troopship from May 1915 the Admiralty fixed her capacity at 200 officers and 2,860 men, plus crew compared to the 1,379 passengers she was designed to carry. Her sister ship was .

Loss

On 3 May 1917, ''Transylvania'' sailed from Marseille to Alexandria with a full complement of troops, escorted by the Japanese destroyers '' Matsu'' and . At 10 am on 4 May ''Transylvania'' was struck in the port engine room by a torpedo fired by the German U-boat under the command of Otto Schultze. At the time the ship was about south of Cape Vado near Savona, in the Gulf of Genoa. ''Matsu'' came alongside ''Transylvania'' and began to take on board troops while ''Sakaki'' circled to force the submarine to remain submerged. Twenty minutes later a second torpedo was seen coming straight for ''Matsu'', which saved herself by going astern at full speed. The torpedo hit ''Transylvania'' instead, which sank immediately. Ten crew members, 29 army officers and 373 soldiers lost their lives. Many bodies of victims were recovered at Savona and buried two days later, in a special plot in the town cemetery. Others are buried elsewhere in Italy, France, Monaco and Spain
Savona Town Cemetery
contains 85 Commonwealth burials from the First World War, all but two of them casualties from ''Transylvania''. Within the cemetery is the Savona Memorial which commemorates a further 275 casualties who died when ''Transylvania'' sank, but whose graves are unknown. Amongst those killed was the cricketer Major Richard Worsley (cricketer), Richard Worsley . ''Transylvania'' was discovered by the Italian Carabinieri on 7 October 2011 off the coast of the island of Bergeggi at an approximate depth of .

Notes

External links

IWM Interview with survivor Walter Williams
{{DEFAULTSORT:Transylvania Ships built on the River Clyde Ocean liners Passenger ships of the United Kingdom Steamships Maritime incidents in 1917 Ships sunk by German submarines in World War I World War I shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea 1914 ships