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CareerĪthenia was built for Anchor-Donaldson Line, which was a joint venture between Anchor Line and Donaldson Line. By 1930 her navigation equipment included wireless direction finding, and by 1934 this had been augmented with an echo sounding device and a gyrocompass. She had capacity for 516 cabin class passengers and 1,000 in 3rd class. She had six steam turbines driving twin screws via double reduction gearing, giving her a speed of 15 knots (28 km/h). The Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company of Govan in Glasgow built Athenia, launching her on 28 January 1922 and completing her in 1923. German authorities denied that one of their vessels had sunk the ship, and the Kriegsmarine did not admit responsibility until January 1946. The dead included 28 US citizens, leading Germany to fear that the USA might react by joining the war on the side of the UK and France.
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128 civilian passengers and crew were killed with the sinking condemned as a war crime. She worked between the United Kingdom and the east coast of Canada until September 1939, when a torpedo from a German submarine sank her in the Western Approaches.Īthenia was the first UK ship to be sunk by Germany during World War II, and the incident accounted for the Donaldson Line's greatest single loss of life at sea.
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SS Athenia was a steam turbine transatlantic passenger liner built in Glasgow in 1923 for the Anchor-Donaldson Line, which later became the Donaldson Atlantic Line. First UK ship sunk by Germany in World War II