The Record
Anchor Line transatlantic liner converted to a troop transport, carrying American Expeditionary Force reinforcements to France. Torpedoed by UB-77 in the North Channel off Rathlin Island at 17:40 on 5 February 1918. The first American troopship torpedoed in the war. 210 dead, including 166 American soldiers, and the Islay crofters who buried the bodies of the American dead became local heroes.
The Vessel
The SS Tuscania was an Anchor Line passenger ship, commissioned at the Alexander Stephen and Sons yard at Linthouse, Glasgow, on 15 November 1914. She was 168 metres long, 14,348 gross tons, with triple-expansion steam propulsion on twin screws and a service speed of 17 knots. She was designed for the Anchor Line's Glasgow-New York route, carrying primarily Scottish and Irish emigrants to America in tourist and third-class accommodations.
At the outbreak of the First World War she had been requisitioned only briefly by the Admiralty before being returned to commercial service. By late 1917 she had been requisitioned again as an Allied troop transport, specifically for the movement of American Expeditionary Forces to France as part of the United States' late entry into the war on 6 April 1917.
Her master in January 1918 was Captain Peter McLean, 54, a career Anchor Line mariner. Her crew was 215 officers and ratings. Her operational role from late 1917 forward was exclusively as a troop transport for the AEF.
The Voyage
On 24 January 1918 SS Tuscania departed Halifax, Nova Scotia, on her final voyage, carrying 2,179 American Expeditionary Force officers and men of the 20th Engineer Regiment (Forestry Regiment), along with 9 U.S. Army nurses of the Base Hospital No. 50. Her destination was Liverpool, via the standard convoy route that had been established for American troop transports through late 1917. She sailed in company with approximately seven other troop transports forming convoy HX-20 under the escort of British destroyers.
The convoy approached the coast of Ireland on 5 February 1918. Captain McLean's specific routing at this point in the voyage had taken the Tuscania into the North Channel approaches to the Irish Sea, a route that had been known for several months to be vulnerable to German submarine operations. The convoy was escorted through this stretch by two Royal Navy destroyers: HMS Grasshopper and HMS Pigeon.
At 17:45 on 5 February 1918, approximately 12 kilometres off Rathlin Island in the North Channel, the German submarine UB-77, commanded by Oberleutnant zur See Wilhelm Meyer, fired a single G6 torpedo at the Tuscania at a range of approximately 800 metres. The torpedo struck her starboard side amidships, below the waterline at Frame 85.
The Disaster
The torpedo detonation breached Tuscania's engine room and ruptured her steam system. Her main engines stopped within 30 seconds of the strike; her electrical power was lost; her pumps were inoperable. She began listing immediately to starboard. Captain McLean ordered the abandon-ship signal at 18:00 on 5 February 1918.
The evacuation of the 2,400 troops and crew aboard was conducted in conditions of increasing darkness and deteriorating weather. The specific difficulty was the distribution of lifeboat spaces: the Tuscania had been designed for approximately 1,000 passengers and her lifeboat capacity (sufficient for 1,200) was substantially below her actual troop complement of 2,400. Many of the AEF troops had to enter the freezing water of the North Channel to reach the arriving British destroyers.
SS Tuscania sank at approximately 21:20 on 5 February 1918 at approximately 55°30′N 5°58′W in approximately 120 metres of water. Over the following three hours, approximately 2,100 survivors were pulled from the water by HMS Grasshopper, HMS Pigeon, HMS Mosquito, and other British destroyers responding to the sinking.
Of 2,397 aboard, 210 died: 166 American soldiers, 44 British ship's crew. The majority of the 166 American dead had died of exposure in the water rather than in the initial torpedo explosion; the water temperature in the North Channel that night was approximately 6°C, and many troops had been in the water for more than 30 minutes before being rescued.
The Legacy
The SS Tuscania was the first American troop transport to be torpedoed in the First World War. The loss produced a significant public reaction in the United States, which had only joined the war 10 months earlier and had only begun to ship substantial troop numbers to France in late 1917. The specific casualty count of 166 American dead was, at the time of the loss, the largest single incident of American military casualties since the landings in France had begun. The Tuscania disaster marked the beginning of American awareness that the war in Europe would be fought and died in at scale by American servicemen.
The bodies of the American dead recovered from the sea were buried initially on the shores of Islay (the Scottish island nearest to the sinking position) by the civilian population of the island over the following weeks. The American dead buried on Islay in February 1918 were subsequently re-interred, between 1919 and 1921, at the Islay War Cemetery and at the American Military Cemetery at Brookwood in Surrey, England. A small number of the dead, whose families had specifically requested, were returned to the United States for burial.
The Islay War Cemetery has subsequently been maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission with specific attention to the American graves of the Tuscania disaster. An annual memorial service has been held on Islay since 1920 on the anniversary of the sinking; the service is attended by representatives of the American Embassy in London and by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
The wreck of SS Tuscania lies at 120 metres depth in the North Channel, approximately 12 kilometres off Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland. She was surveyed in 2003 by Royal Navy hydrographic research vessels and found to be upright on the seabed, substantially intact, with her hull number and name-plate still visible. She is a protected war grave under UK Ministry of Defence designation.
The 166 American dead of SS Tuscania are commemorated at the Islay War Memorial on the Isle of Islay and on the Tablets of the Missing at the American Battle Monuments Commission's Somme American Cemetery. Their names include the specific tragedy of the Forestry Regiment's dead: the regiment had been recruited specifically from American lumber-industry workers in the Pacific Northwest and the American South, and its 166 dead on the Tuscania included whole family groups from Oregon, Washington, and North Carolina who had enlisted together in mid-1917.