Site Map | Search Warsailors.com | Merchant Fleet Main Page | Warsailors.com Home |
|
D/S Polarland To Polarland on the "Ships starting with P" page. Owner: D/S A/S Vestland Delivered in Oct.-1923 from Laxevaag Maskin- og Jernskibsbyggeri, Bergen, Norway (135) as Polarland to D/S A/S Vestland (Rich. Amlie), Haugesund. 246' x 37.9' x 15.7', Triple exp. (Laxevaag), 164 nhp. Managed by Rich. Amlie & Sverre Amlie, Haugesund from 1936. Captain: Finn N. Abrahamsen Related item on this website:
Polarland is listed among the ships in Convoy SC 76 leaving Halifax on March 24-1942. In Sept. that year she can be found in Convoy SC 100 - follow the links for cruising orders. The following year, she was fortunate to miss what has been dubbed the worst convoy battle of the war fought in the North Atlantic. This took place in March-1943 and the two eastbound convoys SC 122 and HX 229 were involved. Gudvor, Askepot and Polarland had started out from New York in Convoy SC 122, but only Askepot was present when the attacks started, the other 2 having lost the convoy in a storm and returned to port. The battle lasted for 5 days and when it was over on March 20, 22 merchant ships had been sunk, with HX 229 being the hardest hit (Abraham Lincoln was the Commodore Vessel for HX 229 in which Elin K was sunk) - only one U-boat was sunk by airplane on March 19.
In the afternoon of Jan. 4-1945 Polarland was in station 31 of Convoy SH 194, on a voyage from St. Lawrence, N.F. and Sydney, N.S. (departed the latter Jan. 2) for Halifax and Philadelphia, with a cargo of 1200 tons of flour spar, when a torpedo struck on the port side (in view of land off Halifax, about 4 n. miles away) and she sank within 15 seconds, 44 30N 63.00W. 2 men were able to throw themselves onto a raft which floated clear of the ship as she sank, another 3 came to the surface nearby and were also helped onto the raft. All the survivors had been on the poop when the attack occurred. The torpedo had come from U-1232 (Dobratz), which had also torpedoed the Canadian M/T Nipiwan Park shortly before Polarland was hit, and the alarm had been sounded on Polarland so that all on board had been called out. The survivors were picked up about an hour later by the Canadian mine-sweeping sloop HMCS Kentville (J-312) and landed in Halifax where an inquiry was held on Jan. 6-1945 with all 5 survivors appearing. Rohwer also lists the Canadian minesweeper HDML 1163 as damaged by this U-boat. This sources gives position as 44 30N 63W for all 3 vessels.
External websites related to the text on this page: More on this battle - Scroll down on the page (from USMM in WW II). Casualties / Polarland - 20 are commemorated here. Seaman Anton Thomassen died on Jan. 25-1941 after an accident on board. There's also a Mate Sigvald Andreas Eide listed - perhaps he too had died previously? Back to Polarland on the "Ships starting with P" page. The company later had another Polarland, built in Haugesund 1966, 12 877 gt. Became Iscelu in 1977 (Georgetown), Turkish Trakya in 1981, Trakya I of Istanbul that same year, Panama registered Lung Hao in 1989. Wrecked by typhoon Sarah near Hualien on Sept. 12-1989. The text on this page was compiled with the help of: "Nortraships flåte", J. R. Hegland, "Sjøforklaringer fra 2. verdenskrig", Volume II (Norwegian Maritime Museum), and misc. (ref. My sources).
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
