SS Marquette (1898)

SS Marquette (1898) was a British troopship of 7,057 tons (then called HMTS Marquette) which was torpedoed and sunk in the Aegean Sea 36 nmi south of Salonica, Greece on 23 October 1915 by SMU U-35 (Germany), with the loss of 167 lives.

Those lost included 32 members of the New Zealand Medical Corps, the New Zealand Army Nursing Service, and the New Zealand Expeditionary Force; and included ten nurses and also medical orderlies of the 1st New Zealand Stationary Hospital in Salonika.

They had been allocated to a troop ship by the British authorities, despite an empty hospital ship having sailed on the same route on the same day from Egypt to the northern Greek port of Thessaloniki. The loss of nurses and medical staff led to the New Zealand government asking the War Office (via the Governor, Lord Liverpool) in November 1915 that transfers of medical staff be done by hospital ships where possible