UK Edition
SS Athenia, first British ship lost in WW2, 'found off Irish coast'
The first British ship to be sunk during the Second World War is thought to have been found on the sea bed off the coast of Ireland.
The transatlantic liner SS Athenia was torpedoed only hours after Britain declared war on Germany, bringing what are believed to be have been the country’s first casualties of the conflict.
Mapping of the sea bed is thought to have found the remains of the 13,400 ton vessel which was lost with more than 110 crew and passengers.
David Mearns, an experienced shipwreck hunter who found the location, said divers had yet to visit the wreck lying 650ft down, but he was nearly certain it was the Athenia.
He said: “I can’t put my hand on a bible in front of a judge and say 100 per cent his is the Athenia, but all of my experience says it’s a very, very high probability. I am 98 per cent plus certain.”
The 525ft liner was bound from Liverpool for Canada on September 3, 1939, carrying passengers hoping to escape the imminent hostilities.
Neville Chamberlain made his radio announcement that "we are at war with Germany" shortly after 11 in the morning and the Athenia was hit at 7:38pm by a German U-boat. A total of 1,418 passengers and crew were on board when it was hit on the port side by a torpedo.
Philip Gunyon, a survivor of the sinking, told the Telegraph the ship had begun to list immediately after it was struck and all the lights had gone out.
Mr Gunyon was seven at the time and had been living with his British father and Canadian mother in Northwood on the outskirts of London.
As war approached, his father, who was in Brazil on business, suggested his wife and children should catch a liner to sit out the war with her parents in Canada.
Mr Gunyon said at the time of the sinking he and his brother Andrew and sister Barbara were asleep together in a bunk in their cabin, while their mother was below in the dining room.
He said: “The lights went out straight away. She listed, then righted herself, then I waited. Eventually my mother found her way up from the dining room and came into the cabin.”
Donning life jackets over pyjamas, the family headed for the lifeboats. They and others spent the night rowing around before being picked up by the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Electra.
Mr Gunyon said: “I have mixed feelings about the Athenia being found. It’s a monument to Man’s folly, trying to settle arguments by fighting rather than talking.”
Mr Mearns began searching for the vessel in 2005. Using mayday calls and the logs of ships that picked up survivors, he pinpointed a spot around 200 nautical miles north west of Ireland.
A year later he heard the area was being mapped by the Geological Survey of Ireland. Looking at their sonar images in 2006, he found what he found a large wreck with a broken back in the right area.
He said: “Only passenger liners and perhaps warships are that large. The more I looked at that image, the more it was clear this had a really good chance of being the Athenia.”
His explorations were put on hold by expeditions to other wrecks, but he has made the case for his discovery of the Athenia in a new book, The Shipwreck Hunter.
Germany at first denied the sinking, fearing it would draw America into the war.
The U-boat commander, Fritz Julius Lemp, had mistaken the vessel for a warship and German naval authorities tried to cover up his actions. They even claimed Winston Churchill ordered a British submarine to sink the vessel to provoke Washington against Germany.
The truth only emerged at the Nuremberg Trials.