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PERSIA (1900)
Service dates: 1900-1915
Official number: 109258
Shipping lines: P&O STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY
Ship type:
Passenger Liner.
Career
- 13.08.1900
- Launched.
- 10.10.1900
- Registered.
- 20.10.1900
- Delivered as Persia for The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. She was the fifth and last of P&O’s ‘Egypt’ class, and the company’s largest ship to date; at £260,290 she was also the most expensive.
- 1904
- Stopped by a Russian warship in the Red Sea during the Russo-Japanese War and had her mails searched.
- 1907
- Carried the Princess Royal and her family home from the Mediterranean.
- 11.07.1912
- Went aground on soft mud near Marseilles. After some lightening she was got off undamaged on 14th July by tugs Vulcan and Goliath from the French Naval base at Toulon and the Marseilles tug Marius Chambon.
- 22.12.1911
- Coroner’s inquest held on board in Bombay when the strangled body of an unidentified Indian, not a member of the crew, was found on board. Verdict: murder by unidentified person(s).
- 30.12.1915
- Torpedoed without warning by the German submarine U38, 115km (71 miles) south east by south from Cape Martello, Crete, whilst on a voyage from London and Marseilles to Bombay with 184 passengers and 3,166 tons (by measure not weight) of general cargo - 549 tons of cement, 100 tons of railway ‘chairs’, 39 tons of iron bars and paint, 750 tons of provisions, draperies and fine goods, books and medicines, 160 tons of baggage and 1,577 tons of mails. Her port boiler blew up five minutes after the attack and she sank rapidly taking with her 334 of the 501 persons aboard. The 167 survivors - 65 of the 184 passengers, 32 of the 81 European crew and 70 of the 236 Asian crew - were picked up by a trawler and the Blue Funnel liner Ningchow up to 30 hours later and landed at Alexandria. As a result of this loss P&O laid down substantially improved on-board procedures to deal with emergencies.