SS Norge

1904

Rockall, the deadliest before Titanic Location: North Atlantic, off Rockall · Coordinates: 57.60°N 13.70°W · Casualties: ~635 · Survivors: ~160 · Depth: 70 m · Cause: grounding — Struck the uncharted Hasselwood Rock near Rockall in the North Atlantic at 07:45 on 28 June 1904. Took on water through the forward holds and sank within twenty minutes. The boats were launched in panic with some capsized, and the survivors drifted for eight days before rescue. · Fate: located 2003 · wreck diveable · Type: passenger liner · emigrant · Tonnage: 3,318 tons · Crew: 68 · Flag: Denmark · DFDS · Launched: 1881 Danish emigrant liner, Copenhagen to New York with Scandinavian and Russian passengers in steerage. Struck the uncharted Hasselwood Rock in the North Atlantic off Rockall at 07:45 on 28 June 1904 and sank in twenty minutes. 635 of 794 aboard died, the deadliest civilian loss on the North Atlantic until the Titanic eight years later. Remembered in Scandinavia, almost forgotten elsewhere. The Vessel The SS Norge was a Danish East Asiatic Company passenger steamer, commissioned at the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft yard at Flensburg in 1881 as the SS Pieter de Coninck. She was 104 metres long, 3,318 gross tons, with triple-expansion steam propulsion. She had been acquired by the Danish Thingvalla Line in 1892 and renamed Norge for her subsequent service on the Copenhagen-New York and Kristiania-New York emigrant trade. The Scandinavian-to-New-York emigrant trade was one of the substantial components of the northern European emigrant trade of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Approximately 100,000 Scandinavian emigrants travelled to the United States each year through the Thingvalla Line and its competitor Scandinavian-American Line through the 1890s and 1900s. The trade served the emigration of Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns to the American Upper Midwest (Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas). Her master in June 1904 was Captain Oluf August Gundel, 49, a career Thingvalla Line officer. The Disaster The impact of Norge against Hasselwood Rock was severe. The rock penetrated Norge's hull at Frame 45 below the waterline, producing a hull breach approximately 12 metres wide. The damage was beyond the capacity of Norge's internal pumping and subdivision to contain; she began to flood progressively from forward to aft. Captain Gundel ordered abandon-ship at approximately 08:15 on 28 June 1904. The evacuation was conducted under difficult but not catastrophic conditions: the weather was moderate; the water temperature was approximately 6°C; the North Atlantic swell was approximately 2 metres. Norge's lifeboat complement was eight large lifeboats (combined capacity approximately 400 people) for her 794 complement, substantially below the capacity required for the complement but adequate for approximately half the aboard. The specific failure of the Norge evacuation was the time interval between the abandon-ship order and the arrival of rescue ships. The Hasselwood Rock position was approximately 400 kilometres from the nearest regularly-transited shipping lane; there was no rescue ship within approximately 8 hours' steaming distance. The passengers and crew who reached the lifeboats therefore faced a survival challenge of at least 8 hours at sea in the North Atlantic; many of the lifeboats were overcrowded beyond their design capacity. SS Norge sank at approximately 08:30 on 28 June 1904 at approximately 57°27′N 13°50′W, in approximately 180 metres of water in the North Atlanti