At 13:13 hours on 6 June 1940, a single torpedo from U-46 found its mark west of Galway Bay. The ship that received it had once been the largest of Cunard's post-war intermediate liners - a vessel whose first-class smoke room was modelled after the house of El Greco himself, complete with an American bar. By the time she slipped beneath the Atlantic on the evening of 7 June, four men had died with her. Two crew members, two ratings. One of them was Robert Yeates from Belfast, who had served Cunard White Star as chief engineer for years before war turned passenger liners into auxiliary cruisers and chief engineers into casualties.
She was laid down at Barrow-in-Furness in 1924 with the workmanlike designation Hull 586, and for a time she was to be called Servia. Then, on 24 February 1925, the day of her launching, Cunard changed her name to Carinthia. Six months later she made her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York, the largest of five intermediate liners the line had built after the First World War. The choice of name carried weight at Cunard. Earlier ships in the fleet had borne it before her, and another would carry it after. To christen a hull Carinthia was to enrol it in a small dynasty of Atlantic crossings.
What set Carinthia apart was the deliberate strangeness of her public rooms. The first-class restaurant - the Adams room - had silver lamps on each table. The first-class lounge was furnished and decorated in the style of King William of Orange. And on A deck, the smoke room was modelled after the Toledo house of the painter El Greco, an extraordinary choice for a Liverpool liner, with an American bar tucked inside it. Over two decks, an arena of five thousand square feet held a swimming pool, gymnasium, racket courts, and massage rooms. Even third class drew praise - small dining tables for family groups, a smoking room, a library, a shop. The intermediate liner, in 1925, was a place where one might cross the ocean and dine, for a few evenings, in a room that pretended to be Spain.
Through the 1930s Carinthia worked both sides of her career: the Liverpool-Boston-New York mail run, and increasingly, cruising. In 1933 she circled the world, calling at forty ports and covering forty thousand miles, including a stop at Tristan da Cunha, then advertised as the remotest island on the planet. That same year she raced toward an SOS from the Latvian steamer Andromeda, struck by an unknown object eighty miles from Ushant - but she was too far away, and the Andromeda sank before she arrived. The strangest moment came in September 1938. Cruising from New York to the Caribbean, 150 miles north of Florida, Carinthia turned to avoid the great hurricane bearing down. The storm turned with her. She drove straight into category-five winds and survived with only cosmetic damage and a great many seasick passengers.
When war came in 1939, Cunard handed her to the Royal Navy. She was painted grey, fitted with guns, and accepted into service as an armed merchant cruiser on 30 December 1939. The chief engineers and stokers and stewards stayed aboard - the men who had kept her plumbing and lamps and bars running through hurricanes and world cruises now found themselves on the northern patrol, watching for German blockade-runners in waters where U-boats hunted in return. In June 1940, west of Galway Bay, U-46 found her. The torpedo struck at 13:13. She did not go down quickly. For thirty-six hours she stayed afloat, her crew working to save her, before she finally sank on the evening of 7 June. Four men did not make it off. Robert Yeates, the Belfast chief engineer, was among them. Today the wreck lies at 117 metres - 384 feet - on the seabed about thirty miles east of Bloody Foreland, a quiet shape on the sonar of trawlers passing overhead.
Wreck site at 53.22 N, 10.67 W, west of Galway Bay in the open Atlantic. The wreck lies at 117 metres (384 feet) below the surface, about 30 miles east of Bloody Foreland. Nearest airport: Galway (EICM) to the east; Shannon (EINN) further south. From cruising altitude, the surface above the wreck reveals only open ocean - the Atlantic deeps holding their cargo of memory. Weather here is dominated by Atlantic systems; expect changeable visibility and frequent low cloud.