S. S. Minneapolis
Posted by Raven on July 21st, 2008
S. S. Minneapolis
Tonnage: 13,443 tons gross,
Length: 600.7’, Beam: 65.5’,
Builder: Harland & Wolff, Belfast,
Launch Date: 1900, Maiden Voyage: May 10, 1900,
Destruction: Torpedoed March 23, 1916,
Operated by A.T.L.: 1900 - 1916.
Notes: Official Number: 110515. Twin screws, quadruple expansion engines by builder with cylinders of 30″, 43″, 63″ & 89″, stroke 60″. Steam pressure 180 lbs, 1,227 n.h.p. 16 knots. 250 first class passengers. Depth of hold, 39-5’. Sisters: Minnehaha, Minnetonka, Minnewaska, Mongolia, Manchuria, Arabic.
Minneapolis was the first of the four sisters ordered and cost $1,419,120 (£292,000) to build. She evidently had largest registered tonnage of any ship afloat excepting the Oceanic, and she and her sisters were the largest vessels the Port of London could accommodate. During her trials Minneapolis reportedly “made 17 knots by observation and 19 knots according to the record by revolutions of the propeller… her time across the water is intended to be eight days.”
Unusually, her maiden voyage took her across the Atlantic sailing in ballast. She collected her initial cargo and passengers in New York and arrived on the Thames for the first time on May 1, 1900. She is recorded in the Morton Allan Directory of European Passenger Steamship Arrivals making a grand total of 155 voyages to New York for the A.T.L. passenger service between May 1900 and February 1915.
The British Government was not slow to take advantage for Minneapolis was one of the ships engaged to ferry units of the British Expeditionary Force to France on the outbreak of war in 1914. She is recorded sailing from Southampton with the 1st Buffs on September 8, 1914 and arriving at St. Nazaire the following day. She resumed her regular work on the North Atlantic for the A.T.L. in December but made only two voyages before becoming a British Military troopship early in 1915.
She crossed the Atlantic on the New York run a total of 155 times before being requisitioned. Minneapolis is known to have brought reinforcements of artillery (”B”, “C” and “D” Batteries 59th Brigade RFA with a dozen 18lber guns) to Gallipoli in August 1915. But her government service was tragically brief because she was torpedoed and sunk by U-35 195 north east of Malta on March 23, 1916 with the loss of 12 of the 189 people on board. Minneapolis evidently remained afloat for some hours after the attack and an attempt was made to tow her to Malta, but it had to be abandoned and she sank.