SS Arandora Star

SS Arandora Star was a British passenger ship of the Blue Star Line. She was built in 1927 as an ocean liner and refrigerated cargo ship, converted in 1929 into a cruise ship and requisitioned as a troop ship in the Second World War. At the end of June 1940 she was assigned the task of transporting German and Italian internees and prisoners of war to Canada. On 2 July 1940 she was sunk in controversial circumstances by a German U-boat with a large loss of life.

Construction
She was built by Cammell Laird and Company in Birkenhead for Blue Star Line and launched as Arandora in 1927. As originally built she measured, was 512.2 ft long, had a beam of 68.3 ft and accommodated 164 first class passengers. She had a service speed of 16 kn. A major refit in 1929 reduced her cargo space and increased her passenger accommodation to turn her into a cruise ship.

Ship history
As Arandora she sailed from London to the east coast of South America from 1927 to 1928. In 1929 she was sent to Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company Limited of Glasgow for refitting. In the refit, her gross tonnage was increased to 14,694 and first class accommodation was increased to 354 passengers. A tennis court was also placed abaft the funnels on the boat deck and a swimming pool was installed in the after well deck. Upon completion, she returned to service as a full-time luxury cruise ship. At the time of this refit, she was also renamed Arandora Star. The renaming was done to avoid confusion with Royal Mail Ships which typically bore names beginning and ending in 'A'.

As a cruise ship, the Arandora Star was based mainly in Southampton, and voyaged to many different destinations. These included Norway, the Northern capitals, the Mediterranean, the West Indies, Panama, Cuba, and Florida. Arandora Star also had two unique nicknames because of her colour scheme of a white hull with scarlet ribbon. The nicknames most frequently used were "The Wedding Cake" or the "Chocolate Box".

At the onset of World War II, the Arandora Star was requisitioned and refitted as a transport ship. She evacuated troops from Norway and from France in June 1940 before undertaking what was to be her final voyage taking Axis nationals and prisoners of war to Canada.

Sinking
On 2 July 1940, having left Liverpool unescorted the day before, under the command of Edgar Wallace Moulton, she was bound for St John's, Newfoundland and Canadian internment camps with nearly 1,200 German and Italian internees, including 86 prisoners of war, being transported from Britain. There were also 374 British men, comprising both military guards and the ship's crew. The Italians numbered 712 men of all ages, most of whom had been living in Britain when Benito Mussolini declared war on 10 June.

At 6.58 am off the northwest coast of Ireland, she was struck by a torpedo from the GS U-47 (1938), commanded by U-Boat ace Günther Prien. U-47 fired its single faulty torpedo at Arandora Star. All power was lost at once, and 35 minutes after the torpedo impact, Arandora Star sank. More than eight hundred lives were lost.

At 0705 hours Malin Head radio received the distress call, which it retransmitted to Land's End and to Portpatrick. Throughout August bodies were washed up on the Irish shore. The first was 71-year-old Ernesto Moruzzi, who was found near Burtonport. Four others were found on the same day, 30 July. During August 1940, 213 bodies were washed up on the Irish coast, of which 35 were from Arandora Star and a further 92 unidentified, most probably from the Arandora Star.

Lifeboats
The modified cruise ship carried 14 lifeboats, of which one was immediately destroyed upon torpedo impact. Another could not be lowered off its winches, and two were damaged during their launch and thus useless. At least four of the remaining lifeboats were launched with a very small number of survivors. One other lifeboat was swamped and sank shortly after being launched. One of the internees on Arandora Star was Captain Otto Burfeind, who had been interned after scuttling his ship, the SS Adolph Woermann. Burfeind stayed aboard Arandora Star organizing her evacuation until she sank and he was lost.

Rescue
After a brief scout by a Short Sunderland flying boat that was following their SOS distress signal, the Canadian destroyer HMCS St. Laurent (H83) arrived to pick up the survivors. There were 586 survivors out of 1,216 detainees. The injured were taken to Mearnskirk Hospital. One of the survivors was the athletics coach Franz Stampfl.

The British War Cabinet received a report on the disaster on 3 July 1940, although its impact was over-shadowed to an extent by the Royal Navy attack on Mers-el-Kébir, French Algeria, that sank the French fleet.

Wreck and memorials
The wreck's position is 56.5°N, -10.63333°W.

In the weeks following the Arandora Star's sinking many bodies of those who perished were carried by the sea to various points in Ireland and the Hebrides.

In the small graveyard of Termoncarragh, Belmullet, Co. Mayo, Luigi Tapparo, an internee, from Edinburgh, and John Connelly a Lovat Scout, lie buried side by side.

Ceazar Camozzi (1891–1940) from Iseo, Italy was washed ashore on the Inishowen peninsula, Co. Donegal and is buried at the Sacred Heart graveyard, Carndonagh.

46 German civilian detainees, who were being shipped from England to Canada for internment when the ship sunk were buried in the Glencree German war cemetery in County Wicklow

An unidentified sailor, unrecognisable other than for a tattoo bearing the name "Chrissie" was washed ashore near Newhouse, on the Atlantic coast of Kintyre, Argyll and after official investigation, buried at the local churchyard of Killean. A memorial chapel was built in a cemetery in Bardi, home town of 48 of the dead. Bardi has also named a street Via Arandora Star.

St Peter's Italian Church in Clerkenwell, London, unveiled a memorial plaque in 1960. Each year a mass is held on the first Sunday in November, close to the anniversary of the unveiling of the plaque.

In 2004 the Italian town of Lucca unveiled a monument to 31 local men lost in the sinking, located in the courtyard of the museum of the Paolo Cresci Foundation for the History of Italian Emigration.

Numerous bodies were found on the Scottish island of Colonsay. A memorial was unveiled on Colonsay on 2 July 2005, the 65th anniversary of the tragedy, at the cliff where the body of Giuseppe Delgrosso was found.

A bronze memorial plaque was unveiled on 2 July 2008 at the Church of Our Lady and St Nicholas, Liverpool. It was relocated to the Pier Head in front of the old Mersey Docks and Harbour Board building after building work was finished.

In 2009, on the 69th anniversary, the Mayor of Middlesbrough unveiled a memorial in the town hall commemorating the town's 13 interned Italians held in cells there prior to deportation and death on the Arandora Star's final voyage.

On 2 July 2010, the 70th anniversary of the sinking, a new memorial was unveiled in St David's Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral, Cardiff by the Arandora Star Memorial Fund in Wales.

On the same day, 2 July 2010, a memorial cloister garden was opened next to St Andrew's Roman Catholic Cathedral, Glasgow.

The wreckage of one of the lifeboats remains visible at Knockvologan beach on the Ross of Mull, largely buried but with its iron suspension hooks still above the sand.