SS Aquila (1940)

SS Aquila was a cargo ship built in 1940 as SS Duke of Sparta by William Gray & Company at West Hartlepool on Tees-side, UK. She was launched in July 1940 and completed in October of that year. At the same time W. Gray also built her sister ship, SS Duke of Athens.

Duke of Athens and Duke of Sparta were built for S. Livanos' Trent Maritime Co Ltd. In 1951 Duke of Sparta was sold to Grimaldi Brothers of Naples, Italy.

Stowaways from Nigeria
On 24th or 25 December 1947 Duke of Sparta sailed from Apapa on a voyage via Las Palmas to Kingston upon Hull, England. Before she sailed, five stowaways were found aboard and were handed over to the police. After two days' sailing, when she was off the Gold Coast, two more stowaways were found. Duke of Sparta summoned the assistance of fishing canoes in the vicinity, and the stowaways were transferred to the canoes to be put ashore. Some days later Duke of Sparta called at Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. Some days after she left Las Palmas a further five stowaways were found aboard, and these were kept aboard until Duke of Sparta docked at Hull.

Early in 1948 a controversy was raised in Nigeria over the treatment of some of Duke of Sparta's stowaways. A Mr Eusebius Tunde George of Lagos, Nigeria alleged that six stowaways were found aboard off Gold Coast, that the crew threw them all into the sea, and that only he and one other stowaway survived. Mr George's allegations were widely published in Nigerian newspapers on 13 February 1948 and subsequently repeated in the newspapers of other British colonies.

On 28 April 1948 the British Communist MP Willie Gallacher raised Mr George's allegations in the UK House of Commons. The Labour Government's Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Christopher Mayhew MP, replied refuting the allegations in detail. Mayhew's Labour colleague Will Nally MP added that on 17 February the Nigerian Review had published an article headlined "Fantastic story about stowaways is proved false", that also had refuted Mr George's claims.

Bombed and sunk by the CIA
At the end of April 1958 Aquila was in ballast and anchored off Ambon City in Indonesia when a Douglas B-26 Invader bomber aircraft, operated by the CIA and painted black and with no markings, bombed and damaged her. The date of the bombing is 28 April according to one source but 1 or 2 May according to another. Aquila stayed afloat for a month but sank on 27 May 1958.

The attack was part of a CIA covert operation to support right-wing Permesta rebels in North Sulawesi to destabilise President Sukarno's government of Indonesia. The CIA pilots had orders to target foreign merchant ships in order to drive foreign trade away from Indonesian waters, thereby weakening the Indonesian economy in the belief that this would undermine Sukarno.

The pilot was the CIA and former USAF pilot Allen Pope, who in the same sortie also bombed the merchant ships SS Armonia (1924) and SS Flying Lark. On 18 May the Indonesian Navy and Air Force shot down Pope's aircraft and captured him, after which the USA rapidly aborted the CIA mission and radically revised its policy towards Indonesia.

Wreck
For many years the position of Aquila's wreck was unknown. One source published in 1999 asserted that Pope had sunk her off the port of Donggala, near Palu in Central Sulawesi. This now seems to be incorrect.

For some years recreational scuba divers knew the wreck of a cargo ship in Ambon Bay without knowing her name. In October 2009 divers penetrated the mystery wreck's engine room and recovered a maker's plate from one of her water heaters. This gave the maker as a company in West Hartlepool where SS Aquila had been built, which at last gave a clue to the wreck's identity. Aquila is on a slope on the seabed off Ambon, with her stern about 15 m below the surface and her bow about 35 m below the surface.