Empress of Britain (1930 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The Empress of Britain was an ocean liner built by the John Brown shipyards in Scotland & owned by Canadian Pacific Steamship Company. In her time, she was the largest, fastest, and most luxurious ship to sail between England and Canada.

At around 9:20 AM on October 26, 1940, while traveling along the west coast of Ireland, the Empress of Britain was spotted by a German Focke-Wulf C 200 Condor long-range bomber, commanded by Oberleutnant Bernhard Jope. Jope’s bomber strafed the Empress three times and hit her twice with 250 kg bombs.

The bombs started a raging fire that could not be contained, and began to over take the whole ship. By 9:50 AM, Captain Sapworth gave the order to abandon ship. The fire was concentrated in the midsection of the ship, causing the passengers to head for the bow and stern and hampering launching of the lifeboats. Later that afternoon, the destroyers HMS Echo and Empress arrived. By then, the ship had been evacuated.

The fire had left the ship severely damaged and unable to move under her own power, but she was not sinking. At 9:30 AM on 27 October, a boarding party arrived and prepared the ship for towing. Hearing of the crippled liner by radio, U-32 caught up with the convoy towing the Empress of Britain later that day, and followed them for some time. Around 2:00 AM the next morning, October 28, U-32 fired three torpedoes, one of which hit. The Empress of Britain sank in nine minutes.

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