The Fate of the SS Automedon
An excerpt from ‘Victims of Atlantis’ by John Richardson
Monday 11 November 1940 was Armistice Day; a day of remembrance when the warring sides of WW1 ceased hostilities and came to peace. On board Atlantis a service was being held at 0800 in honour of those men and women who’d lost their lives in the conflict. However, while the service was in progress, the lookout in the crow’s nest on the after end the mainmast saw smoke on the horizon astern. The service came to a halt and action stations were sounded. Observing the approaching ship’s speed and direction, Kapitan Rogge altered course to fall in on a parallel course with the approaching ship, and then used his favourite tactic of reducing speed so as to be ‘caught up. After an hour or so, the overtaking ship which came up on the starboard quarter of Atlantis turned out to be a Blue Funnel Line cargo ship. She was the SSAutomedon of Liverpool, most prominent with her tall blue funnel and black top she was steering a course towards Singapore. The SS Automedon (Captain WB McEwan) had left Liverpool on August 24, and after being held up and rounding the Cape of Good Hope she had been at sea for 79 days.
At the appropriate time when he was a mile or so ahead of the SS Automedon, Kapitan Rogge of the KMS Atlantis increased his speed to maximum; fired a warning shot then went across the bows of Automedon in the same manner he had adopted with the Harrison Line SS Scientist six months earlier. The German battle ensign was hoisted while a signal hoist went up ordering Automedon to heave to and not use her radio. But that did not happen!
Indeed, the only response by Automedon was to transmit a distress signal, but her radio officer only managed to get – RRR- Automedon 04.16 – away before the Germans picked up the wave length and jammed the signal. The result being that just the ship’s name and it’s latitude had been sent.
As a result of not following the raider’s orders, it was from 2,000 yards that four 5.9 inch salvos smashed into the bridge and radio shack of the Liverpool ship with heavy loss of life. Badly damaged, out of control and not under command,Automedon continued at her speed of 14 knots as 11 more shells reduced the whole of the midship section to a mass of twisted steel. At the same time her lifeboats were smashed to smithereens. The shelling lasted for just three minutes.
The burning and shattered ship then came to a halt. Captain WB McEwan, the second and third mates, the radio officer and the helmsman had all been killed in the bombardment. The first mate who was not on the bridge at the time was the only deck officer to survive. One of Automedon’s crew had been seen running towards the gun on the poop deck, but before he could do anything the gun was destroyed by yet another 5.9 inch shell and the would be gunner lost his life. As well as those six fatalities, there were twelve others on board who suffered varying degrees of injuries.
When Leutenant Ulrich Mohr climbed aboard the shattered Automedon later on, he said he was horrified to see all the death, bloodshed and mangled remains of the ship’s superstructure, all of which had been caused by just a few minutes of shelling at a point blank range. Amongst the flames and smoke a search of Automedon began, she had a handsome general cargo consisting of crated aircraft with spare parts, motor vehicles, bicycles, copper sheeting, 550 cases of whisky, a large quantity of beer, 2½ million cigarettes and 120 bags of mail for the serving armed forces at Singapore. But the only things taken off the ship for use on Atlantis, were the 550 cases of whisky, a quantity of cigarettes, the contents of the freezers and the victual store rooms.
At that particular time, an unidentified ship that was stopped some miles away was observing the burning Automedon; and also the crew of Atlantis removing a variety of items from her with their own boats. That caused Kapitan Rogge some consternation as he was bang in the middle of a busy shipping lane. Indeed, a signal from the distant ship may alert a British warship to the scene. He therefore told Leutenant Fehler and his demolition party to make haste, plant charges in the engine room, set them for 1500 hrs and return to Atlantis. In the meantime, the strong rooms of Automedon were located and blown open. Inside were found 15 bags of top secret government mail. Then they found a single eyeleted green bag in what had once been the chart-room. It later turned out that those mail bags contained some of the most significant items to be captured during the whole of WW2. Indeed, what was discovered were the Allied military strengths in the Far East of the Army, Navy and Air Force, port layouts, charts, decoding tables, ciphers and much, much more. The RRR signal from Automedon had in fact been picked up by the SS Helenus,
SSAutomedon
(Captain PW Savery) which was ironically enough, a ship from the same Blue Funnel Line. That message was immediately sent on to Colombo in Ceylon, but due to the ineptitude of the radio operators there, the message was not read or attended to until 90 minutes later,
It has been asked by many people over the years, as to why a ship such as the SS Automedon had been entrusted to carry such top secret mails. But the fact remains that she had, and no blame can be placed upon her captain or any other member of his crew. Indeed, even though Captain McEwan must have known the mail bags in his strong room were top secret, he would never have known what secrets they held. They were all weighted bags, weighted so that they could be thrown overboard in an emergency, but he hardly had a chance to jettison them.
Had he been properly briefed before the passage from Liverpool began, and told that the mail bag’s were of ultra-importance, he would have dumped the weighted mail bags over the side, and then -sent an RRR message, and not the other way around; but it would appear that no such briefing had taken place, and Captain McEwan was simply following the normal procedure laid down by the Admiralty of sending the RRR message. Under those circumstances no blame should be placed on Captain McEwan.
Neither can any blame for loss of life be apportioned to Kapitan Rogge. The conventions of war made at the Versailles Treaty, stated that a warning shot and the appropriate signals to surrender are to be made when one ship attacks another. Such a procedure would give the victim ship’s crew time to abandon ship and take to the boats. If however, those warnings are not carried out, and the ship being attacked steams away and uses her radio, the attacking ship can then use the necessary force to stop or sink that ship. In the case of the SS Automedon,Kapitan Rogge had been obeying the Rules of War.