By the evening of July 7, 1942, the SS Hartlebury was seventeen nautical miles from the Britwin lighthouse on the coast of Novaya Zemlya. She was alone. Days earlier, the British Admiralty had ordered Convoy PQ 17 to scatter, and the thirty-five merchant ships that had sailed together from Iceland were now spread across hundreds of miles of Arctic Ocean, each making its own desperate run for Russia without escort. Hartlebury had already survived two and a half years of transatlantic convoy duty. She would not survive the next ten minutes.
The Hartlebury was the last of five sister ships built by Lithgows of Port Glasgow for J&C Harrison Ltd of London between 1932 and 1934. Her older sisters -- Harlingen, Hardingham, Harbledown, and Harpasa -- had entered service before her, all sharing the same beam though the final two ships were slightly shorter. Launched on January 30, 1934, Hartlebury was a standard British tramp steamer, built for carrying bulk cargo across the world's oceans. Nothing about her construction suggested she would become anything more than a footnote in maritime records. The war changed that, as it changed everything.
From November 1939 to September 1941, Hartlebury made her living on the Atlantic. She joined four HX convoys carrying grain from the United States and Canada to the United Kingdom and Ireland. She made two additional runs bringing grain from South America, linking up with SL convoys from Freetown in Sierra Leone for the homeward leg. Her final transatlantic voyage carried steel from the US to Liverpool via Convoy SC 43 out of Sydney, Nova Scotia. These were the unglamorous but essential voyages that kept Britain fed and armed -- long weeks of zigzagging through U-boat-infested waters, watching for torpedo wakes, and hoping the escorts would keep the wolfpacks at bay.
In October 1941, Hartlebury transferred to the Arctic convoy routes, some of the most dangerous sea lanes of the entire war. She sailed with Convoy PQ 2 to Archangel and Convoy PQ 11 to Murmansk, surviving both runs. Then came Convoy UR 26, which took her from Loch Ewe in western Scotland to Hvalfjordur in American-occupied Iceland. There she joined Convoy PQ 17 -- a name that would become infamous. The convoy departed Hvalfjordur on June 27, 1942, thirty-five merchant ships carrying tanks, aircraft, ammunition, and supplies desperately needed by the Soviet Union. German forces attacked from July 2, and on July 4 came the order that sealed the convoy's fate: scatter.
At 6:35 in the evening of July 7, with the coast of Novaya Zemlya tantalizingly close, two torpedoes from a German submarine struck Hartlebury. The first blasts killed six crew members and destroyed all but one of her lifeboats. Ten minutes later, a third torpedo hit. Hartlebury sank bow-first. The surviving lifeboat capsized as it launched, spilling its occupants into the Arctic water. The remaining crew leaped into the sea and tried to reach the ship's life rafts. Thirty-eight men died that evening: twenty-nine crew, seven DEMS gunners, and two Royal Navy signalmen. Only twenty survived.
Captain George W. Stephenson and twelve other survivors reached land at Pomorski Bay on the coast of Novaya Zemlya. Seven more made it to the American cargo ship Winston-Salem, which had run aground on North Gusini Shoal. A Soviet survey vessel rescued those seven and transferred them to the motor ship Empire Tide. Eventually all twenty survivors reached the corvette that carried them to Archangel on July 25. Captain Stephenson had been trapped by falling debris when the torpedoes struck. He was freed and survived, but the head injuries he sustained that evening proved fatal. He died less than a year later. Today the Hartlebury lies on the floor of the Barents Sea, one of twenty-four merchant ships from Convoy PQ 17 that never reached their destination.
The wreck site is located at approximately 72.50°N, 52.00°E in the Barents Sea, near the western coast of Novaya Zemlya. The Britwin lighthouse on the Novaya Zemlya coast is the nearest landmark. Rogachevo Air Base (ULDA) on Novaya Zemlya is roughly 100 km to the north. Naryan-Mar Airport (ULAM) lies approximately 550 km to the south. The area is open Arctic sea, often ice-covered from November to June. No surface features mark the wreck site.