Extracts from Book, German Raiders of World War II
By A.K. Muggenthaler

"Thor's (Captain) Kahler had spent most of February and March in a fruitless hunt....

At one minute before 0700 on Monday 25 March, Thor swung suddenly to a course thirty degrees NNE 1/2E as her watch officer rang down for fifteen knots to close a vessel belching black smoke and steaming on a southerly course. It was large and had a gun.

When Kahler got within eleven thousand yards, the ship turned north, making away at high speed behind a curtain of oil and chemical smoke. The German war flag jerked up on Thor's main, and Koppen-Boehnke's gunners cut loose. The enemy was fast and she radioed "RRRR Britannia, RRRR 0724N 2434W gunned..." then switched to "QQQQ" signals with a powerful station the raider's operators tried to jam.

For Thor the shooting was difficult because of the smoke and the prey's skillful evasive helmsmanship but after 159 shells had been fired and several hits were seen to flare up, the vessel stopped, her signal flags "OMR" (I am surrendering) flying. Thor made "Leave your ship" just as her radio room reported to Kahler that a British unit had signaled a group of numbers to the 8,799-ton Britannia. Decoded, they read "help 72o 112," and were understood to mean that some vessel , presumably a warship, was telling the stricken liner that assistance was coming up from 112 miles away (less than five hours steaming for a cruiser) on a bearing of 72o

That was bad news for Kahler. He fished Deck Machinist Edwin M. Falconar off a raft and then waited until Britannia had been evacuated before sinking her. Reluctantly he left the survivors to sail off in their numerous boats, for reasons of his own self-preservation.

The people in the boats, he reasoned (and so advised his crew) would be picked up in a few hours.At first neither he nor his men had many qualms about deserting the British, and even those that did have had to take second place that afternoon when Muller's anxious pals were startled back to general quaters by the sighting of another ship.

It was not the British cruiser come to aid Britannia as so many feared, and Kahler stopped her with just a shot across the bow.....

....By one count, there were nine boats, some already making sail, and a number of rafts amid the flotsam as Britannia, her shrieking siren gurgling a last time in the burning oily sludge, went down almost vertically over her bow.

Some boats, like No. 4 were splintered; others, namely port No. 6 and starboard Nos. 1, 3, 5 and 7, were overcrowded. And in them, judging by the reports of those who eventually survived - the only way to arrive at any figures - were at least 317 souls , with another 14 known to have found very temporary security on the slippery gratings of the rafts. How many others were hanging on to the boats' hard lifelines and seine floats and clinging to boxes, hatch covers, or tabletops - as Lt..A..H. Rowlandson, R.N., did for a while - will never be known....

Note:

Originally when Britannia left Liverpool on a dull, cheerless March 11, there were appoximately 327 passengers (R.N., R.A.F., Army, Indians, and twelve women) plus about 200 (mostly natives) crew on board. Quotes and estimates are from correspondence with MacVicar, the company, MacVicar's log for No. 7, a report filed by MacVicar and Sublieutenant L.S. McIntosh, and survivors' accounts such as Frank West, Lifeboat Number Seven (London: William Kimber & Co., Ltd, 1960)

....The eighty-two men jammed with standing room only in No. 7, a clinker-built, 28' x 10' x 3.9' boat with a Board of Trade capacity of fifty-six persons, broke down, according to its Commander, Britannia's third officer William MacVicar, into eighteen Europeans, twenty-five Indian passengers, and thirty-nine Goanese and lascar crew.....

...On that day, the twenty-ninth, only three of the men who had joined Lieutenant Commander Rowlandson on a raft....were still alive....

....,That evening, the remaining survivors were lifted aboard the Spanish Cabo de Hornos, which then searched the area to pick up four more men from two rafts, one boat containing seven and another with sixty-five, and so wirelessed to all ships at 2000 asking for assistance.

Note:

In Thor, they heard that message. As a master seaman, professionally concerned, and a human being, Kahhler was shocked, surprised that the warship he had presumed coming up had not been able to find the people from Britannia whose radioed position had been off only sixty miles in longitude and even less in latitude.

....Only 195 of Britannia's passengers and crew had ben accounted for by April 15 when Kahler snared his last victim, Sir Ernest Cassel.

Cabo de Hornos had rescued 77, Shaw Savill's Raranga had picked up another 67, and 51 had been found by the 3,100-ton Spanish Bachi after having spent only five and a half days in Lifeboat No. 5.

....in No7., ...after twenty-three days...stumbled ashore...not far from Sao Luis, Brazil, the grand total of those who came through Britannia's battle alive was 331. Of the 153 Europeans known to have gotten into boats or on rafts, 81 percent came through, but only a third of the Indians had the strength to survive....."

Colin Bower
21 October 2020

Link to:
Britannia Index