Comparing the Titanic Sinking
By Mark
Weber
Source: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v17/v17n2p22_Weber.html
Many of those who view "Titanic," the
new blockbuster motion picture, may leave the movie theater believing that the
April 15, 1912, sinking of the great British liner, with the loss of 1,523 men,
women and children, was history's greatest maritime disaster.
Others may perhaps think of
the British passenger liner Lusitania, which sank on May 7, 1915, after being
hit by a German submarine torpedo, taking 1,198 lives.
But these disasters are
dwarfed by the sinkings of the Wilhelm Gustloff, the General Steuben and the
Goya, three German ships crowded with evacuated refugees and wounded soldiers
that were struck by Soviet submarines during the final months of the Second
World War.
As John Ries points out in his
essay in the Fall 1992 Journal, "History's Greatest Naval Disasters,"
more lives were lost in the case of each of these vessels than in the sinkings
of either the Lusitania or the Titanic.
The first of these German
ships to go down was the Wilhelm Gustloff, a 25,000-ton converted luxury liner
that had been serving as a hospital ship. When it left the Baltic harbor of
Gydnia (Gotenhafen) on January 30, 1945, it was jammed with nearly 5,000
refugees, mostly women and children, and 1,600 military servicemen. At shortly
after nine o'clock in the evening, it was struck by three torpedoes from Soviet
submarine S-13. Convoy vessels were able to rescue only about 900 from the
sub-freezing Baltic waters. At least 5,400 perished.
Eleven days later, shortly
after midnight on February 10, the General Steuben sank with a loss of 3,500
lives, making this the third worst maritime disaster in history. The same
Soviet submarine that had attacked the Gustloff, and in almost the same
location, sank the Steuben with two torpedoes. Crammed with as many as 5,000
wounded soldiers and refugees, the converted passenger liner sank in just seven
minutes.
The sinking of the Goya on
April 16, 1945, just three weeks before the end of the war in Europe, is
acknowledged as almost certainly the greatest maritime disaster, in terms of
lives lost, of all time. The converted 5,230-ton transport ship had set out
from Hela near Danzig (Gdansk) with its human cargo of some 7,000 refugees and
wounded soldiers.
Just a few minutes before
midnight, the Soviet submarine L-3 fired two torpedoes at the Goya, which found
their marks amidship and stern. Almost immediately the ship broke in half, her
masts crashing down upon the passengers crowding the decks. Before anyone could
escape from the holds, the onrushing sea quickly drowned out the anguished
screams of the refugees below. The vessel sank in just four minutes, resulting
in the loss of nearly 7,000 lives. There were only 183 survivors.
Concluding his essay on this
chapter of history, Ries wrote:
Although little known, the
sinkings of the Wilhelm Gustloff and the Goya -- with a combined loss of more
than 12,000 lives -- remain the greatest maritime catastrophes of all time.
Moreover, the deliberate and unnecessary killing of thousands of innocent
civilian refugees and helpless wounded men aboard the Gustloff, the Steuben and
the Goya -- as well as many other smaller and lesser known vessels -- is
unquestionably one of the great atrocities of the Second World War.
Lesser known but also worthy
of note is the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck on May 27, 1941.
Following intense attack in the Atlantic from British planes and four major
British warships, it went under with the loss of some 2,200 men.
Even more tragic is the case
of the Cap Arcona, a 27,650-ton converted German passenger ship packed with
evacuated concentration camp inmates. On May 3, 1945, just a week before the
end of the war, it was sunk by fire from a British fighter-bomber as it was
moored in Lübeck harbor. Some 5,000 persons, nearly all of them inmates, lost
their lives. Only about 500 could be rescued.
A similar fate befell the
Thielbek, a German ship likewise packed with 2,800 inmates who were being
evacuated from the Neuengamme concentration camp. Succumbing to intense fire
from British war planes, it sank on May 3, 1945, with the loss of all on board.
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