Elterwater, Princess Olga, Vaaren - 16th December 1914
The First Victim, SS Elterwater
As the streets of Scarborough were cleared of rubble and the dead counted, out at sea a hidden danger began to reveal itself. The collier Elterwater had left the Tyne on the morning of the bombardment of Scarborough. The 1,228 ton ship was conveying a cargo of coal from Newcastle to London. She was about three miles off Scarborough at 6.13pm when she struck one of the Kolberg’s mines. The explosion ripped a hole in the ship’s port side near the engine room. The ship heeled over and went down by the stern in three minutes. Such was the rapidity of the sinking that there was no time to launch the lifeboats. The crew threw anything that could float overboard. The Elterwater’s captain, David Gillan, ordered the crew to hand out lifebelts and cast adrift the ship’s ladder and gangways. About half the crew managed to get their lifebelts, but such was the rapidity of the sinking that Captain Gillan was washed off the bridge.
Fortunately, another collier, the City of Newcastle was abreast of the Elterwater, so she was able to quickly launch two lifeboats. The crew of the City of Newcastle reported hearing a double explosion and that the darkness was illuminated by a flash of flame that shot out from the funnel of the Elterwater. They rescued twelve crewmen from the cold waters, including the chief engineer who was found sat on top of the mess room table he had thrown overboard. The chief engineer of the City of Newcastle spotted a man clinging to an upturned boat. Several times a line was thrown to him, on the fourth attempt the badly injured man managed to put the noosed rope under his armpits and he was hauled aboard. By then he was unconscious and bleeding severely from the head. For more than an hour the crew of the City of Newcastle attempted artificial respiration on the man, but ultimately he succumbed to his injuries and died on the deck of the City of Newcastle. He was later identified as the Elterwater's second mate John Lapping.
The City of Newcastle’s chief officer in charge of the lifeboats struggled to get near to floating hatches to which six of the Elterwater’s crew were clinging. The amount of wreckage and heavy swell meant that it took nearly forty-five minutes to get the men into the lifeboat, by that time they were so numb with the cold that they were virtually unable to help themselves. Several other crewmen were still in the freezing water, the steward of the Elterwater held a torch above his head to attract the attention of a second lifeboat from the City of Newcastle. As the rescue was underway, they saw and heard two other ships strike mines, one of those ships was almost certainly the Princess Olga and the other may have been the Vaaren. Sadly, five men went down with the Elterwater. The majority of those lost were stationed in the engine room, close to where the mine exploded.
Given the uncertainty of the waters ahead of them, the decision was taken to return The City of Newcastle to the Tyne with the survivors of the Elterwater. Two days after the loss an inquest was opened at South Shields into the death of John Lapping. Some newspaper reports stated that Lapping was a Russian, but on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database he is shown as being born in Switzerland. Lapping was buried at Harton Cemetery, South Shields. At the time of writing his grave does not have a headstone. However, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission are in the process of having one made.
The World and the Red Duster
The crew of the Elterwater offers an insight into elements of internationality within the British merchant fleet. Although the majority of the British-flagged ships that would be lost to the mines of the Kolberg were engaged in carrying coal between British ports, the men who made up the crews of the ships were often international in their composition. In part that might not be so surprising, as Britain’s Empire was built on maritime power and trade. But it is worth restating, as the Elterwater, a collier carrying coal from the Tyne to the Thames, might be viewed as representative of a mundane daily trade, taking place within British waters, yet whilst two of the sailors killed aboard the Elterwater were British, another possibly Swiss, the remaining three were classed as members of the Indian Merchant Marine. Of the survivors three were British, three Swedish, two Russian, one Danish and ‘two Arabs’.
The vast majority of the sailors who were to perish as a result of the Kolberg’s mines went down with their ships. As they have no known grave, they are commemorated on a number of memorials around the world. In death the crews are remembered, not as one, but on three separate memorials; in London, Mumbai (Bombay) and Hong Kong. The separation of the ships crews was decided by the Imperial War Graves Commission in the 1920s when the memorialisation was being planned. Thus, whilst the two British sailors who died on the Elterwater are commemorated on the Tower Hill Memorial to the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets, the three Indian members of the crew are listed thousands of miles from the waters of the North Sea on the Bombay 1914-1918 Memorial. The latter commemorates more than 2,000 ‘Indian’ sailors who died in the First World War and have no grave. The sailors listed on the memorial are a mix of Indian, Adenese and East African; Chinese sailors who also served in the British merchant fleet are remembered on the Hong Kong Memorial.
It is thought that during the Great War around 30% of sailors in the British Mercantile Marine were not British and 17.5% were ‘Lascars’ (seamen often of Asian and Arab origin); nearly 1 in 6, or 51,000 men. These 51,000 sailors were, among others, Yemeni, Indian, Malay, Somali, West African, Egyptian, Chinese, Burmese, Siamese, Indonesian and West Indian seamen. They were often recruited from colonial ports, such as Aden, Lagos, Kingston, Cape Town, Calcutta, Bombay, Hong Kong and Singapore.
A recurring theme in the losses is the high number of ‘Indian’ sailors serving in engine rooms. The nature of the work in confined spaces, deep within the ship, was dangerous enough in peacetime. But given the nature of warfare in the North Sea, where the vast majority of merchant shipping losses were the result of mines and torpedoes, those working in the engine rooms were especially vulnerable. Even if the denotation wasn’t directly on the engine room, the danger of fractured high-pressure steam pipes and red-hot boilers are obvious. Additionally, in the case of a rapid sinking, the engine room crew could easily become entombed below decks.
Crew of SS Elterwater
Captain, David Gillan, North Shields
Chief Engineer, D. Scott, Sunderland
Second Engineer, Henry Digman, South Shields*
Second Mate, John Lapping, Switzerland*
Steward, Robert Upmal, Tyne Dock (born Riga, Latvia)
Mess Room Steward, Thomas Hooper, South Shields*
A.B. Jack Sakkar, Sweden
A.B. John Fenck, Sweden
A.B. Andrew Marcipu, Russia
A.B. Dan McMullon, South Shields
A.B. Jacob Balon, Denmark
Trimmer, Charles Carlsen, Sweden
Fireman Ahmet Abdulla, Aden, Yemen
Fireman, Husam Hamid, Indian Merchant Marine*
Fireman, Ahmad Hasan, Indian Merchant Marine*
Fireman, Bagash Norman, Aden, Yemen
Donkeyman, Naib Qaid, Indian Merchant Marine*
*killed in the sinking
SS Vaaren, the first neutral vessel lost.
A third ship succumbed to the Kolberg’s mines, she was the brand new 1,090 ton Norwegian collier Vaaren, she was carrying coal and coke from Newcastle to the Sicilian capital Palermo, via Naples. She had left the Tyne at 13.30 the same day and had kept up a speed of between nine to ten knots. She struck a mine at 20.30, around four miles N by NE of Filey. It was reported that several of the crew were killed instantly by the explosion. The ship sank within three minutes. The rapidity of a sinking prevented the launching of lifeboats. One lifeboat was hacked free of its davits by the crew, but it overturned when it hit the water. Seven sailors scrambled on top of the upturned hull, but the lifeboat drifted beneath the still turning propellor of the sinking ship, killing three. The four survivors, three Norwegians and a Scotsman, were rescued two hours after the sinking, they were founding clinging to the upturned lifeboat by the Grimsby trawler Cleon and landed at Grimsby.
Thirteen sailors, ten Norwegians, one Dane, one Greek and Tom Davison, a pilot from North Shields, were killed in the sinking. On 21 December 1914, a hearing into the loss of the Vaaren was held at the Norwegian vice-consulate at Grimsby. Peter Henrik Haagenson, the consul for Norway and Sweden, chaired the proceedings, assisted by Thorkild Johannesen, captain of the Norwegian vessel Asturias from Kristiania (Oslo), and Anton Engelbert Sandberg, captain of the Swedish vessel Nord from Stockholm. The loss of the Vaaren was detailed by her senior surviving officer, Magnus Kjelstup of Bergen.
The Men who died on the Vaaren
Captain, Alfred Valaas, Bergen
North Sea Pilot, Tom Davison (50), North Shields
First Mate, A.W Olsen, Bergen
Second Mate, Hans Simonsen, Eggesbønes
Chief Engineer, Alf Dalzel, Bergen
Second Engineer, Øivind Johannesen, Bergen
Sailor, Chr. Pedersen, Skagen, Denmark
Sailor, Askild Steffensen, Bergen
Sailor Olaf Chr. Larsen, Alstadhaug
Steward, O. Lund Thorsen, Bergen
Cook, Jan Ingolf Kleppe, Tysnes
Fireman, Elia, Greece
Fireman, Johs Iversen, Bergen
The wreck of the Vaaren was discovered by members of the Scarborough Sub Aqua Club. The ship’s starboard navigation lamp was recovered and resorted by diver Andy Jackson.
SS Elterwater, Newcastle
Henry Digman, second engineer, aged 29, South Shields
Husam Hamid, fireman, Indian Merchant Marine
Ahmad Hasan, fireman, Indian Merchant Marine
Thomas Hooper, mess room steward, aged 18, South Shields
John Lapping, second mate, aged 33
Naib Qaid, donkeyman, Indian Merchant Marine
SS Princess Olga
The 988 ton Glasgow registered steamer Princess Olga, en route from Liverpool to Aberdeen via Dundee with general cargo, had manned her lifeboats as her Captain Duncan MacLachlan saw another steamer in difficultly (the SS Elterwater). As they edged towards the Elterwater the Princess Olga herself struck a mine. The fact that the lifeboats were already manned, and that the ship remained afloat for around two and half hours, allowed all of her crew to escape to the lifeboats. A lifeboat with the ship’s chief and eight crewmen landed at Scarborough around midnight. They were in a what was described as a ‘distressed state’ following five hours of struggle to reach the shore, when they informed the coastguard that another boat of survivors was out at sea in the darkness, the Scarborough lifeboat was launched. She spent all night searching in vain for the second lifeboat containing the ship’s captain and eight more crewmen. Fortunately, they had been discovered by the Newcastle coaster the Glen Rosa and were towed into Scarborough.
Crew of SS Princess Olga
Captain, Duncan MacLachlan (35), Argyllshire
First Mate, Donald McColl (59), Renfrew
Chief Engineer, T.S. Nicholson (23), Liverpool
Second Engineer, John Fraser (30), Aberdeen
Third Engineer, Thomas R. Farrier (27), Aberdeen
Able Seaman, John Black (24), Lismore, Argyllshire
Able Seaman, D. Crawford (28), Argyllshire
Able Seaman, Bartholomew Downes (35), Wexford, Ireland
Able Seaman, James Downes (35), Wexford, Ireland
Able Seaman, David Griffiths (43), Portmadoc
Able Seaman, J.G. Shimmin (46), Douglas, Isle of Man
Able Seaman, Thomas Martin (50), Douglas, Isle of Man
Able Seaman, J.E. Tualsen (34), Sweden
Craneman, Samuel Wroe (54), Port Glasgow
Lamp Trimmer, William Gillies (49), Inverness
Steward, Donald Fraser (36), Troon
Donkeyman, Nicholas Gabrid (26), Greece
Fireman, Rob Whing (32), Fife
