SS Laurentic (1927)
SS Laurentic (II)
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| History | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Laurentic |
| Owner: | White Star Line |
| Route: | Liverpool—Quebec City—Montreal |
| Builder: | Harland & Wolff, Belfast |
| Yard number: | 470 |
| Launched: | 16 June 1927 |
| Completed: | 1 November 1927 |
| Maiden voyage: | 12 November 1927 |
| In service: | 1927 |
| Out of service: | 1940 |
| Fate: | Torpedoed and sunk by U-99 off the west coast of Ireland on 3 November 1940. 49 people killed. |
| Status: | wreck |
| Notes: | The final White Star Line vessel and the last ship in the possession of the White Star Line to sink. |
| General characteristics | |
| Tonnage: | 18,724 Gross Register Tonnage |
| Length: | 600 ft(182.88m) |
| Beam: | 75.4 ft(22.98192 m) |
| Decks: | 5 decks |
| Propulsion: | Triple Expansion plus Low Pressure Turbines by builders. |
| Speed: | 16 knots |
| Capacity: |
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The second SS Laurentic was an 18,724-ton ocean liner built in 1927 by Harland and Wolff, Belfast, for the White Star Line. She served on the Canadian route from 1927 to 1936. After the merger of the White Star Line with Cunard Line, the ship was mainly used for cruise service. After December 1935, however, she was laid up unused in Liverpool. In August 1939, she was requisitioned and converted into an auxiliary cruiser for the Royal Navy for service in the Second World War. The Laurentic was torpedoed by the German submarine U-99 on 3 November 1940 off Bloody Foreland, County Donegal, Ireland during a rescue mission for another ship that had been torpedoed and sunk, but she remained afloat. After two more torpedoes smashed into the ship, she foundered, taking the lives of 49 people.
The construction of this ship is peculiar in several respects. In fact, it was the only time in sixty years that White Star Line ordered from the shipyard Harland & Wolff on the basis of a defined budget. The Laurentic thus appeared to be a ship at a discount, an unusual fact in the history of the company. The very origin of the construction was rather nebulous, since she was built with the hull number 470, while the Doric, put into service in 1923 (four years before her), had the hull number 573. This would suggest that the decision to build the Laurentic was made in the early 1920s and that the construction sites retained the cumbersome unfinished structure for more than five years, but the cause of the delay is unknown. Not only did it have a profile similar to that of the Doric, the Laurentic also stood out for its archaism: she was still propelled by coal when most of the newer ships were fueled by oil, and its propulsion is similar to the one used by the first Laurentic in 1909. She used two quadruple expansion engines powering sided propellers and a low pressure turbine for the central propeller. The construction was delayed by the 1926 United Kingdom general strike. The ship was eventually launched without a ceremony on 16 June 1927. She was completed five months later on November 1, after which she left Belfast for Liverpool with representatives of the company and shipyards on board.
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