Talk:SS Athenia (1922)

Notable Individuals Aboard

This section is fundamentally flawed and should be deleted as it stands. There is absolutely no indication as to whether most of these named individuals perished or survived. 621PWC (talk) 17:06, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

pov

The British crews were famous for putting the passenger's lives before there own, and were expertly trained to handle such "events;"

you must be joking with this text... Bias POV i could go on... Jacob80574.108.39.88 (talk) 14:21, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Special Pleading

I'v removed this excuse;
"(though Lemp's action would have been in accordance with the rules, had the Athenia indeed been a merchant cruiser)".
if we are going to get into that game it needs to be discussed here, to achieve NPOV. It used to be the view that the sinking was deliberate policy, that Germany had decided to tear up the rule book from the outset (I could give you plenty of sources that said that). But it would be more honest to acknowledge that current thinking is Lemp acted outside his brief/was over-zealous. So I expect a similar honesty from anyone else here.Xyl 54 (talk) 17:30, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I would disagree. All my sources state that at the beginning of the war the german subs operated under strict order to obey all rules concerning submarine warfare. This was not because the Germans valued these rules, as their actions in Poland, where they did indeed tear up the rule book from the outset. Rather Hitler thought that once Poland was conquered Britain and France "would come to their senses", realize that they had little to gain and much to loose in long war against Germany and would agree to a face-saving peace. Therefor anything that could bolster public sentiment in Britain for continuing the fight (like bombardments of british cities) was strictly forbidden in the first months of the war. Nevfennas (talk) 21:31, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Lemps actions were in violation of his own orders as well; If you want it mentioned, fair enough.

I know the action would have been legitimate if he’d been right, but re-stating it looks like an attempt to excuse him and the action.

I don’t believe Lemp was a monster (Padfields character portrait suggests the opposite), but what he did was wrong, and we need to be clear on that. Xyl 54 (talk) 12:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I wanted to make clear that Lemp was not deliberatly breaking the rules and disobeying his orders, but that his actions are more resembling negligence in the worst possible case by not adequately assuring that the target was indeed what he thought it was. Given the situation he could not improve the identification (surfacing his boat and trying to stop the ship the ship would have been unfeasible at best and suicide in the worst case), but had to decide between either immediate attack or letting the target escape. He made his choice and instead giving the ship the benefit of the doubt (assuming that he had any doubt at all) he decided rather to attack and take the risk of torpedoing a civilian ship Nevfennas (talk) 21:47, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

We don’t seem too far apart on this; do you want to add that the action was also in violation of Lemp’s orders?

What about, "This was in violation… own vessel. This also violated his own orders, to adhere to Prize Rules." in para 1. Xyl 54 (talk) 16:45, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I extended the description of the engagement rules to clarify that these would not have applied to warships. Otherwise I think the article is ok as it is right now. Nevfennas (talk) 21:48, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, looks OK. Xyl 54 (talk) 12:19, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Question: Was SS Athenia running darkened and on a zigzag course when Lemp made his attack? Can someone answer that please? 2605:E000:CA45:AA00:903F:99CC:EC91:6B9B (talk) 08:59, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Mistake?

For the same reason I haven't changed this:
"mistaking her for an armed merchant cruiser"
Lemp didn’t make a mistake; he mis-identified her. You can mistake an AMC for a passenger ship, but not the other way round; a passenger ship looks just like what it is. The burden of proof was on Lemp to show Athenia was anything other than what she looked like, and he blew it. I shall change this if there is no objection. Xyl 54 (talk) 17:32, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

An AMC is a converted civil ship. Given that passenger ships were converted (see HMS Rawalpindi), all it took was Lemp thinking that he was seeing guns that were installed on the ship to believe he was looking at an AMC. Nevfennas (talk) 21:36, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, he wanted to believe it

But this wasn’t a passenger ship disguised as a warship, which could be described as a mistake; he saw a passenger ship, and decided, for whatever reason ( he’s dead, so we can’t ask him, but the “mistaken for an AMC” line came later, as part of the cover-up) and in the absence of any real evidence, that she was a warship and attacked her.

How is that an ‘innocent’ mistake? Xyl 54 (talk) 12:56, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

The only visible difference between a passenger ship and a passenger ship converted to an AMC are the installed guns and maybe camouflage-painting on the hull (but not all AMC had that, especially this early in the war). Given that these are hard to see at night its possible to be uncertain what you are looking at. And if you somehow get the impression that the target is behaving not like a passenger ship, but like a warship (e.g. it appears to be zigzagging or sailing under reduced lights) it will be close to impossible to prove or disprove that impression. Nevfennas (talk) 22:04, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

It still sounds like negligent mis-identification, rather than innocent mistake. I’d prefer “mis-identified” there, but I’m not insisting on it. What do you reckon? Xyl 54 (talk) 16:47, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Nevfennas. In my opinion the problem revolves around how the word "armed" in the Prize Rules is to be interpreted. This word does not necessarily mean "guns". An AMC may be "armed" with sub-waterline torpedo tubes, and also with depth charges, and neither would be visible from a distance. The U-boat commander would then have had to decide on the other evidence if the passenger ship was acting so abnormally that he could infer she was armed. Geoffreybrooks, 22 May 2009. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Geoffreybrooks (talk • contribs) 12:49, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Question: Was SS Athenia running darkened and on a zigzag course -- as an AMC would -- when Lemp made his attack? Can someone answer that please? 2605:E000:CA45:AA00:903F:99CC:EC91:6B9B (talk) 08:59, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Insult

But I've removed this
"Most of the fatalities were caused by a botched rescue attempt"
As it's plain insulting.
Are you saying the British were responsible for all these deaths? Why not go the whole hog and claim it was a British mine, or that the British sank her deliberately to bring the US into the war? We’ve heard that story before.!
If Lemp hadn’t torpedoed the Athenia, the rescue operation wouldn’t havwe been necessary in the first place.
And over 1000 people (passengers and crew) abandoned their sinking ship at night in the North Atlantic in autumn, and were picked up by the attending vessels; that sounds like a success to me.
And Padfield is unequivocal; most of the fatalities occurred where the torpedo hit, and in the after stairwell; and those who died in the mishap with the lifeboat were still indirect casualties of the attack.
Xyl 54 (talk) 17:38, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Better, but no.

My other point, above, is that most of the casualties were at the time of the hit, and offered a source for that; Blair says that "some of the casualties were from the lifeboat incident. So where does "most… come from?

And it still looks like an attempt to shift the blame.

So I've re-written it, as I was wanting to fix some other stuff as well. But I'd like to hear from you about this. Xyl 54 (talk) 12:51, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

PS I'll add references later, in case you want to change anything. Xyl 54 (talk) 12:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Your edit is fine. I dont know who inserted the "most", I reinserted the line because it helps to explain the number of fatalities given that Athenia didn't sink until the next day. That this may appear to shift the blame from Lemp to the assisting vessels is unfortunate. Lemp has to take full responsibility for any casualties, because if you torpedo a ship fatalities among the crew are to be expected and cannot be excused by whatever mistakes the rescue parties may have made (and given the number of survivors they do appear to have made a good job). Nevfennas (talk) 21:27, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks; I still need to put in the references! Xyl 54 (talk) 16:49, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I realise this is a very old edit, but there's still some text from it in the article that confuses me: what is an "after stairwell"? Do you mean "aft stairwell" i.e. at the rear of the boat? Quietbritishjim (talk) 18:30, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, let's set propaganda issues aside for a moment and function as objective historians. How many people were killed when the torpedo hit or died of injuries caused by the torpedo explosion? How many people safely left the SS Athenia and died/were killed when lifeboats were damaged or destroyed during rescue operations? 2605:E000:CA45:AA00:903F:99CC:EC91:6B9B (talk) 08:59, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Done! Xyl 54 (talk) 12:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

(new section)

Rademacher (Drei Tage im September, MareVerlag Hamburg 2009), not a sympathiser with the Third Reich, indicates that fifty casuialties resulted directly from the torpedo. The majority of the dead lost their lives in two incidents involving boathandling during transfer from the lifeboats, and from exposure. Upon request I will provide his list. I notice that one contributor above is showing his partiality and getting hot under the collar, both of which are to be deprecated amongst historians, amateur or professional.

(interpolated reply to post by Geoffreybrooks on 22 May 2009) .

That would be me; and what does get me hot under the collar is Nazi revisionism. But if you are making claims to be a historian, amateur or otherwise, I suggest you don’t

.a) add unsourced, unverifiable detail [1] and speculation [2];

.b) remove detail that is sourced when it conflicts with your stuff,[3] and

.c) alter another sourced statement so it agrees with you while completely changing the meaning of what that author actually said[4]. OK? Xyl 54 (talk) 14:10, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

In assembling the details for the purpose of provisionally apportioning blame, one has to bear in mind a few simple points.

("apportioning blame"? It's no part of WP's function to apportion blame!)

(1) Lemp was reckless in sinking Athenia without first signalling her to stop and firing a shot over her bow to see the reaction. If Athenia had ignored his order to stop, it would then have been legitimate under the Prize Rules for him to have sunk her without further warning.

And? He didn’t though, did he? So there was nothing legitimate about it at all.

(2) If the British Admiralty Naval Control authority at Liverpool suspected that the Germans were likely to operate a policy of "sink at sight" on the high seas, an overloaded passenger ship such as the Athenia should have been detained until the situation clarified. Unless the British Admiralty allowed her to sail in the hope that she would be torpedoed and thus bring the United States into the war, it seems probable that the British Admiralty expected, or had been assured through diplomatic channels, that Germany would respect the Prize Rules.

“overloaded”? Where do you get that? She was carrying 1,100 passengers (about the same as the average car-ferry these days) and the text states she had capacity for 1500.

And “detained”? So the entire merchant marine was supposed to cower in port under the threat of half-a-dozen U-boats? You want to blame the victim for an illegal attack? Anyway, when she sailed, Britain was still at peace; is everything supposed to stop under the threat of terrorism?

“if” , “unless”, “probable”; all speculation.

And “sailed in the hope of being torpedoed”; is this from the Voelkischer Beobachter? Hardly an unbiased source, is it?

(3) If the British Admiralty expected that Germany would respect the Prize Rules, the correct procedure was for them to recommend that Athenia sailed with navigation lights set by night on a direct course for her port of destination as in peacetime. Lemp stated that Athenia deviating from this principle was what awoke his suspicions. The worst the liner could expect was to be stopped and searched by a U-boat for contraband. Since she was leaving the war zone and heading for Canada, a country still neutral at the time, it is likely that she would have been allowed to proceed.

Travelling with navigation lights on was no protection against U-boat attacks in WWI, so “the worst the liner could expect” would be to be torpedoed, like the Asturias, or the Rewa, or the Glenart Castle, and others, all hit while travelling fully lit on a straight course.

(4) At Liverpool on 1 September 1939, Captain James Cook consulted with Naval Control for five hours. He requested a warship escort. This was denied. Under the Prize Rules a passenger ship escorted by a warship may be sunk without warning. Accordingly there must have been something visible externally about Athenia which made her vulnerable to attack under the Prize Rules.

“requested an escort”; who says? And it’s untrue that travelling with an escort means a ship can be attack within Prize Regulations; attacking non-belligerents is illegal under international law, and the escort argument was one adopted by belligerents who wanted to circumvent this and justify attacks on ships in convoy. “Accordingly” it’s more likely Athenia’s captain requested an escort because he was concerned his ship would be the target of a sneak attack by a U-boat, as happened to the Lusitania, Ancona and Persia and a host of others, before her; and, as it turned out to Athenia herself.

(5) The recommendation that Athenia should sail darkened by night on a zig-zag course came from the British Admiralty. This suggests that Athenia might have been fitted externally with equipment which, had he seen it, could have led a U-boat commander to suspect that the liner was an integral part of the British naval effort and a legitimate target under the Prize Rules.

Where does this “darkened ship” business come form? Lemp sighted Athenia at 4 pm; why would a ship need it’s lights on in the afternoon?

And zig-zagging at speed was the best way to guard against an attack by submarine, so the advice “suggests” nothing of the sort.

“suggests”, “might”, “had”, “could”; more unfounded speculation

And “might have seen something”; really? So Athenia was fitted out with something that was invisible to everybody on board her, un-noticed when they boarded, strolled around the decks, abandoned her, and about which they said nothing when they got to America, but was plainly seen by Lemp through a periscope; something he saw, but didn’t bother to put in his log, or mention to his superiors when he got back. Hmm.

(6) Whereas relevant passages in the U-30 log were forged subsequently, Lemp did at least manage to bring the War Diary home. As soon as Athenia came to a stop in the water after receiving the torpedo, the very first thing that Captain Cook did was to ditch the Athenia logbook. Only at death are a shipwrecked master and his ship's log parted. Here we have a guilty man acting in panic, and in apportioning blame for the circumstances in which the encounter between Athenia and U-30 turned out the way it did, we must know far more about the conduct of the British Admiralty and Captain James Cook, and their reasons for sailing the liner in the manner they did. Behind it all lies the suspicion that the Athenia was not the innocent passenger liner she seemed, and the paying passengers were endangered by the actions of the shipping line and the ship's master, who kept them in the dark about the serious risk to which they were being secretly exposed. This if known could have resulted in legal actions which might have been very costly for Cunard and the Donaldson Line.(Geoffreybrooks 22 May 2009)

“Cook ditched the Athenia’s log-book”; again, who says? And “here we have a guilty man acting in panic”? Here we have a man who stayed sufficiently in control to evacuate all the passengers of his ship safely. And you’re saying he was on a secret intelligence-gathering mission for the Navy, which he wrote up in the ships log-book? Not very likely, is it?

This is a real set of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” arguments.

Lemp torpedoed Athenia in violation of international law and his own orders, yet somehow the British are at fault? This is the line the Germans took then, and persisted with even when they knew the facts after Lemp got back.

More, following the precepts of the Big Lie, they escalated from claiming it was a mishap (she struck a mine) to claiming it was a deliberate attempt to blacken Germany’s name. And the source of this claim is the Nazi party’s news organ…

So are we to believe the story that reliable newspaper of record first span, or is it more likely that Lemp saw a chance to open his score with a 13, 000 ton ship, and reckoned (accurately as it turned out) his superiors would back him to the hilt if he made a mistake, as had happened so many times in the previous conflict? I know what the balance of probability is for me. Xyl 54 (talk) 14:42, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

So we are expected to assume that Lemp deliberately disobeyed a direct order and attacked a ship that he knew was an unarmed passenger liner -- and we are also expected to assume that he had no reason whatsoever to suspect that it was a troop ship, Q ship or AMC? Allllllllllllllllllllrighty, then!

Three more questions:

1) Is it "Nazi revisionism" to mention the number of people who were killed by the torpedo hit and the number of people who died during transshipment operations? It would seem to go without saying that the rescue operations would not have been necessary if the ship had not been torpedoed.

2) Were the Germans/Nazis the only group who covered things up, released false information, or, to be blunt, lied about during World War II? If not, can this particular cover up be discussed in an objective manner?

3) Can the Wikipedia community expect to find German participation in World War II be covered in an objective manner or is objectivity still beyond our collective reach? It should be possible to find a place of objectivity and balance in the middle of the spectrum between the simple-minded glorification of all things Nazi on one extreme and knee-jerk German-bashing on the other.

Personally, I hope it is. (71.22.47.232 (talk) 10:12, 1 May 2010 (UTC))

Link

I’ve added another link; I thought it would be appropriate to have a British one, to compare with the 2 German ones.Xyl 54 (talk) 15:44, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

4 Famous people on the Athenia

Montgomery Evans II survived the sinking of the Athenia. He was a wealthy American (USA) book collector, world traveller, and a well known literary correspondent of the British author Arthur Machen. Evans' valuable book collection and manuscript of a book he was writing were lost. See page 104 of book referenced here for verification: Arthur Machen and Montgomery Evans, letters of a literary friendship 1923-47, edited by S S Hassler and D M Hassler, Kent State University Press,Ohio, 1994. Page 104 shows Machen's letter to Evans dated 4 Oct 1939 on his survival, and in addition the book contains other references to the sinking of the ship (see pages 46, 103 and 121).Floyd2008 (talk) 15:53, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

error about Trammell Crow wife

This article lists "Margaret Doggett Crow, wife of Dallas real estate investor Trammell Crow" as one of the notable deaths, but the Trammell Crow article suggests he was married to Margarett Doggett Crow from 1942 to his death in 2009. Something's wrong, here or there. --doncram 02:43, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

From the "Notable individuals aboard" section, i have removed the item

• Margaret Doggett Crow, wife of Dallas real estate investor Trammell Crow

because it seems to be in error, at least partially. Restore a corrected entry, someone, if you have definitive information. --doncram 02:22, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

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Admission of responsibility

... and the Kriegsmarine did not admit responsibility until January 1946

Impossible, as the Kriegsmarine no longer existed in 1946. Revised. Sca (talk) 13:49, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

War munitions

The ships was illegally transporting war munitions. (2A00:23C7:CF0A:5A00:3D8B:5199:EACE:5F5C (talk) 19:59, 7 September 2019 (UTC))

Do you have a reliable source for that? AlistairMcMillan (talk) 23:15, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

There is obviously nothing illegal about transporting munitions of war in merchant ships -- that is how they are always carried across the seas. Nor would carriage of munitions make any difference, under the Hague Conventions, to the U-boat captain's legal responsibility to give warning before attack (a rule ignored, to the point that it became something of a dead letter, by the submarine commanders of all combatant navies, but most obviously, aggressively and persistently ignored by the Germans, starting with this incident on the first day of the war). In fact the U-boat captain did not even bother to consult Lloyd's List and identify the ship he was attacking, so he could not possibly have known what was or was not on the cargo manifest even if a hypothetical German spy in Glasgow had wirelessed this information to Berlin. But there's no particular reason why Britain would have been shipping munitions to Canada just then, days before the outbreak of war, and of course the Athenia wasn't carrying any. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:32, 27 November 2023 (UTC)