The Liverpool (Wreck)
Isle of Man /
Castletown /
World
/ Isle of Man
/ Castletown
/ Castletown
World
First World War 1914-1918, shipwreck, draw only border
The Liverpool, a 686 ton, 205ft steel steamer, was built in the Liverpool yard of J Jones & Sons in 1892. Her owners, the Sligo Steam Navigation Company, registered her home port as Sligo in Ireland, then still part of the United Kingdom, writes Kendall McDonald.
She worked as a short-voyage general cargo-carrier, often steaming back and forth between her name port and home port. Her three-cylinder triple-expansion engine with two boilers could produce 187hp, so she was not fast, but she was reliable and profitable, and remained so for the next 22 years.
During all those monied years, the owners of the Liverpool probably gave less thought to the possibility of war with Germany than to that of home rule for Ireland. The outbreak of war in 1914 put a stop to that, and the Sligo Steam Navigation Company found its ships at war too. Over the next two years, the cargoes in the holds of the Liverpool were more warlike, but the Government money was good.
The German Navy had launched the first of its unterseeboote, the U-1, in 1906. Its submarine warfare developed in haphazard fashion, as it did not quite understand that it possessed a weapon capable of bringing Britain to its knees by sinking the merchant ships on which it relied for food and war supplies.
It was one of the much later versions of U-boat which was to curtail the Liverpool's sea time. The U-80 was one of the big new minelayers, nicknamed by crews "the Children of Sorrow".
She served in the 1st U-Boat Flotilla of the German High Seas Fleet, which was ordered to resume the sink-on-sight war against merchant shipping in October 1916.
U-80 carried out several missions around the Hebrides and in the Irish Sea. Commanded by Oberleutnant von Glasenapp, she laid a minefield off the Isle of Man - 11 miles south-east of Chicken Rock Lighthouse - on 18 December, 1916, to catch shipping using Liverpool.
It caught the Liverpool two days later. Three of the crew died in a huge explosion when she hit a contact mine. She sank swiftly, but the rest of her crew were saved.
After sinking 26 ships in her wartime career, U-80 was scrapped by Britain after the war.
She worked as a short-voyage general cargo-carrier, often steaming back and forth between her name port and home port. Her three-cylinder triple-expansion engine with two boilers could produce 187hp, so she was not fast, but she was reliable and profitable, and remained so for the next 22 years.
During all those monied years, the owners of the Liverpool probably gave less thought to the possibility of war with Germany than to that of home rule for Ireland. The outbreak of war in 1914 put a stop to that, and the Sligo Steam Navigation Company found its ships at war too. Over the next two years, the cargoes in the holds of the Liverpool were more warlike, but the Government money was good.
The German Navy had launched the first of its unterseeboote, the U-1, in 1906. Its submarine warfare developed in haphazard fashion, as it did not quite understand that it possessed a weapon capable of bringing Britain to its knees by sinking the merchant ships on which it relied for food and war supplies.
It was one of the much later versions of U-boat which was to curtail the Liverpool's sea time. The U-80 was one of the big new minelayers, nicknamed by crews "the Children of Sorrow".
She served in the 1st U-Boat Flotilla of the German High Seas Fleet, which was ordered to resume the sink-on-sight war against merchant shipping in October 1916.
U-80 carried out several missions around the Hebrides and in the Irish Sea. Commanded by Oberleutnant von Glasenapp, she laid a minefield off the Isle of Man - 11 miles south-east of Chicken Rock Lighthouse - on 18 December, 1916, to catch shipping using Liverpool.
It caught the Liverpool two days later. Three of the crew died in a huge explosion when she hit a contact mine. She sank swiftly, but the rest of her crew were saved.
After sinking 26 ships in her wartime career, U-80 was scrapped by Britain after the war.
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Coordinates: 54°0'21"N 4°33'25"W
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