History You Didn't Know You Needed: SS Laurentic
If the Olympic and Britannic were Titanic’s sister ships, then the SS Laurentic was like her cool older cousin. In 1908, the White Star Line of Titanic-fame launched a brand new ocean liner into their fleet of passenger ships.??
The Laurentic was just over 550 feet long and could accommodate 1230 passengers across three classes, though 650 of those spaces were for third class passengers. She was also outfitted with six massive insulated holds used for carrying frozen beef across the Atlantic. Laurentic was not as luxurious as some of the other White Star Line vessels, but what she liked in glamor she made up for with speed. In fact, she was the first passenger liner to be equipped with twin reciprocating engines and a low pressure turbine which means little to me as a mechanical novice but evidently it was very innovative at the time.?
Before World War I, Laurentic was one of the most popular means of travel between Liverpool and Montreal and Quebec. She was a crowd favorite by passengers for her speed and was even used by law enforcement to catch an infamous killer.
In 1908, Dr. Crippen, an American physician living in London, killed his wife by drugging and butchering her before burying her remains in the cellar. He moved on quickly and publicly took up with his mistress Ethel. The absence of his wife and his gusto for this new woman who wasn’t his wife, promoted a lot of questions in their neighborhood. Crippen concocted a story that his wife left him and went to America, but the police weren’t buying it. Crippen got nervous and ran with Ethel in tow. He decided to head to America by boarding a boat to Canada in Belgium and crossing the border into the US from there. Crippen and Ethel thought they were sitting pretty as they enjoyed the voyage from Europe to North America aboard the SS Montrose, but the law and the Laurentic had other plans.?
Crippen and Ethel had a three day head start when the detectives realized they fled. Knowing her tremendous speed (up to 17 knots or about 20 miles per hour which doesn’t seem fast, but is - modern cruise ships only go 18-22 knots or 20-25 miles per hour), the detectives hopped on board Laurentic and headed for Quebec. True to her reputation, the ship got the detectives to Canada three days ahead of Crippen. They waited for him patiently as the Montrose made landfall and quickly took him into custody. He was returned to London and hanged for his crimes in 1910 while Ethel was let off as a helpless observer.?
In 1914, the first World War officially kicked off and Laurentic was needed for a new purpose. She converted to an armed merchant cruiser (AMC) and was fitted with eight 6-inch and two 6-pounder naval guns. For the next few years, she patrolled parts of Africa and Asia, specifically Singapore and Hong Kong. Having fulfilled her duty in Asia, Laurentic headed back to the UK to support the war efforts closer to home.?
On January 24, 1917, Laurentic was loaded up with naval officers, sailors (called ratings) and volunteer reserves when she left Liverpool enroute to Canada. The next day, she made an unscheduled stop at a naval base in Buncrana, Ireland to allow four sailors with yellow fever to disembark and receive proper medical treatment. With the sick sailors safely onshore, Laurentic was back on course until tragedy struck less than an hour later.?
Around 6:00 p.m., Laurentic collided with two German floating mines. One of the mines took out the ship’s engine room which, in turn, cut the power to the entire vessel. It was chaos aboard amid complete darkness, utter confusion and freezing temperatures outside as passengers tried to escape to lifeboats.?
The captain was the last to leave the ship as the final lifeboat was lowered into the icy water. Less than an hour after the explosions, the Laurentic had sunk.?
The passengers huddled closely together in the lifeboats, but their horrors were far from over. The outside temperatures were -13 degrees C or 9 degrees F, and as they passengers waited for rescue, several died of exposure and hypothermia.?
When rescue finally came, only 121 people managed to survive and 354 souls found their ends alongside the ship.
In the days following the disaster, the remaining passengers and the world reeled from the tragedy, but one secret was still with the ship. Unbeknownst to the majority of the passengers and crew, the Laurentic was carrying 3200 solid gold ingots weighing 44 tons to Canada to pay for the war effort at the time of her sinking. So along with the souls of 354 passengers, a huge cache of gold was sunk at the bottom of the sea. The gold was the equivalent of $550,000,000 in today’s money, so it was imperative that it be salvaged. From 1917 to 1924, the British Royal Navy made more than? 5,000 dives to the wreck to recover the majority of the gold. Since then there have been more efforts to recover the remaining gold, but all attempts have failed. It is rumored that there are still 22 gold bars hidden somewhere in the ship. The wreckage of the ship was purchased privately in the 1960s, so don't get any ideas about treasure hunting.
Believe it or not, the story of the SS Laurentic doesn’t end there. Just a few years after the sinking, the White Star Line commissioned the building of another ship that would bear the same name as its fallen sister. The newly built SS Laurentic (I’ll call her Laurentic II), was launched in 1927. Laurentic II was slightly bigger than her predecessor, most notably boasting two funnels compared to one, and could accommodate 1500 people across three classes. From her maiden voyage until 1936, she was a standard passenger liner like most of the White Star Line fleet, making dozens of crossings between the UK, the US and Canada. Her time as a passenger liner wasn’t without drama however. Throughout her run, she was involved in two collisions with other vessels that didn’t result in sinking.
In 1939, as tensions in Europe began to intensify again, she was requisitioned by the British Royal Navy and turned into an auxiliary war cruiser. Sadly, her time in aid of the war effort would be short lived. On November 3, 1940, the Laurentic II was sailing off the coast of northwest Ireland when she was hit with a torpedo shot from a German U-boat called U-99. She remained afloat as the crew scrambled to assess the damage, but amid the chaos, Laurentic II was hit with two more torpedoes and sank into the depths below. Of the 416 people onboard 49 died. On that day, Laurentic experienced an eerily similar fate to her sister but she ushered in the end of an era for ocean liners as the last White Star Liner to sink.
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