SS ''Empire Brigade'' was a cargo ship that was built in 1912 as SS ''Hannington Court''. She served through the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

and was sold in 1936 to Achille Lauro, who renamed her ''Elios''. In 1940 when

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

declared war on France and the United Kingdom she was interned by the UK as a

war prize A prize of war is a piece of enemy property or land seized by a belligerent party during or after a war or battle, typically at sea. This term was used nearly exclusively in terms of captured ships during the 18th and 19th centuries. Basis in inte ...

and taken over by the

Ministry of War Transport The Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) was a department of the British Government formed early in the Second World War to control transportation policy and resources. It was formed by merging the Ministry of Shipping and the Ministry of Transport ...

(MoWT), which renamed her ''Empire Brigade''. Four months later she was

torpedo A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, s ...

ed and sunk by .

Building

The shipyards of Sir John Priestman & Co Ltd, Southwick, Sunderland built the ship in 1912. She was launched as ''Hannington Court'' on 10 October 1902 and completed in November 1912. She was long, with a beam of and a depth of . She had nine corrugated furnaces with a combined grate area of that heated three 180 lb_f/in² single-ended boilers with a combined heating surface of . These fed a single three-cylinder

triple-expansion steam engine A compound steam engine unit is a type of steam engine where steam is expanded in two or more stages. A typical arrangement for a compound engine is that the steam is first expanded in a high-pressure ''(HP)'' cylinder, then having given up ...

built by Blair and Co Ltd of Stockton-on-Tees. The engine had cylinders of , and bore by stroke, was rated at 440

NHP Horsepower (hp) is a unit of measurement of power, or the rate at which work is done, usually in reference to the output of engines or motors. There are many different standards and types of horsepower. Two common definitions used today are the ...

and gave the ship a speed of

Peacetime career

''Hannington Court'' was built for Philip Haldinstein (later Haldin), who registered her in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. Haldinstein gave all his ships names that ended in "Court", and his company was known as

Court Line Court Line was a 20th-century British tramp shipping company that was founded in 1905. In the 1960s it diversified into shipbuilding and charter aviation. Its merchant shipping interests were based in London. Its shipyards were at Appledore in ...

. In 1936 Haldinstein set up a new company, the United British Steamship Co, and sold ''Hannington Court'' to Achille Lauro's ''Flota Lauro'', which renamed her ''Elios'' and registered her in

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

. On 10 June 1940 Italy declared war on France and the UK and invaded France. ''Elios'' was in port in

Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to: *Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England *Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England *Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area in Australia, named after Newcastle ...

, where the UK authorities seized her as a war prize. The

, renamed her ''Empire Brigade'', registered her in Newcastle and appointed Cairns, Noble & Co Ltd to manage her.

Wartime career and loss

In October 1940 ''Empire Brigade'', with Sydney Parks as her

master Master or masters may refer to: Ranks or titles * Ascended master, a term used in the Theosophical religious tradition to refer to spiritually enlightened beings who in past incarnations were ordinary humans *Grandmaster (chess), National Master ...

, loaded a cargo of 750 tons of copper, 129 tons of

ferrous In chemistry, the adjective Ferrous indicates a compound that contains iron(II), meaning iron in its +2 oxidation state, possibly as the divalent cation Fe2+. It is opposed to " ferric" or iron(III), meaning iron in its +3 oxidation state, suc ...

alloys An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which at least one is a metal. Unlike chemical compounds with metallic bases, an alloy will retain all the properties of a metal in the resulting material, such as electrical conductivity, ductility ...

and 980 tons of steel at

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple ...

in Canada and then sailed to Sydney, Nova Scotia where she joined

Convoy SC 7 SC 7 was the code name for a large Allied World War II convoy of 35 merchant ships and six escorts, which sailed eastbound from Sydney, Nova Scotia, for Liverpool and other United Kingdom ports on 5 October 1940. While crossing the Atlantic, ...

which was bound for

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

. ''Empire Brigade''s cargo was bound for

Leith Leith (; gd, Lìte) is a port area in the north of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, founded at the mouth of the Water of Leith. In 2021, it was ranked by ''Time Out'' as one of the top five neighbourhoods to live in the world. The earliest ...

''via'' the Tyne. The convoy left Sydney on 5 October 1940, initially with only one escort ship, the sloop . A wolf pack of

U-boat U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare ro ...

s found the convoy on 16 October and quickly overwhelmed it, sinking many ships over the next few days. ''Empire Brigade'' survived until 0138 hrs on 19 October, when torpedoed and sank her in the

Western Approaches The Western Approaches is an approximately rectangular area of the Atlantic Ocean lying immediately to the west of Ireland and parts of Great Britain. Its north and south boundaries are defined by the corresponding extremities of Britain. The c ...

about east-southeast of

Rockall Rockall () is an uninhabitable granite islet situated in the North Atlantic Ocean. The United Kingdom claims that Rockall lies within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and is part of its territory, but this claim is not recognised by Ireland. ...

. Out of a complement of 41, five crew members and one DEMS gunner were killed. The rescued her master and 34 crew members and landed them at Greenock. Those killed on ''Empire Brigade'' are commemorated at the Tower Hill Memorial in London.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Empire Brigade 1912 ships Empire ships Maritime incidents in October 1940 Merchant ships of Italy Ministry of War Transport ships Ships sunk by German submarines in World War II Steamships of Italy Steamships of the United Kingdom Ships built on the River Wear World War I merchant ships of the United Kingdom World War II shipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean