Qualla: SS Laurentic

SS Laurentic: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. At seventeen hundred hours on 25 January 1917, the armed merchant cruiser SS Laurentic slipped out of Buncrana into a bitterly cold blizzard. There were warnings of a U-boat near the mouth of Lough Swilly. Her commander, Captain Reginald Norton, had been told to wait for a destroyer escort. He chose to sail anyway. Within an hour, Laurentic had struck two German mines off Fanad Head. She went down quickly. The crew abandoned ship in good order. Then, in lifeboats adrift in a winter Atlantic gale, three hundred and fifty-four men died of hypothermia. The ship carried forty-three tons of gold in her second-class baggage room. Most of it would eventually be recovered. The dead never were.

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Image: Public domain

SS Laurentic: From Liverpool Liner to Armed Cruiser

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RMS Andania, CC BY-SA 4.0. Laurentic was built in Belfast by Harland and Wolff, launched on 10 September 1908, and completed the following April. She was an experiment: her two outer screws were driven by triple-expansion engines whose exhaust steam fed a low-pressure turbine driving the centre screw. The ...

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Image: RMS Andania | CC BY-SA 4.0

SS Laurentic: The Lifeboats

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greg Clarke from Buncrana, Donegal, CC BY 2.0. The crew managed to launch their boats in time. They got off the ship. But the Atlantic in January, in a blizzard, off the cliffs of Fanad, is a killing environment. Three hundred and fifty-four men froze before help arrived. Many of those who reached the rescue ships died in the...

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Image: Greg Clarke from Buncrana, Donegal | CC BY 2.0

SS Laurentic: The Gold

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Laurentic was carrying 3,211 gold bars, about forty-three tons, payment for American war supplies. Within months the Royal Navy began salvage operations led by Captain Guybon Damant, a specialist in deep-water diving. Among his team was Petty Officer Augustus Dent, the ship's own...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

SS Laurentic: Digging by Hand

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodhullandemu, CC BY-SA 4.0. Damant abandoned the original route. He directed his crew to blast away the mainmast and dig a vertical shaft down through five decks. Minesweepers in the area kept detonating loose German mines; one explosion gave a diver what Damant called a severe blow. By the end of 1917 they...

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Image: Rodhullandemu | CC BY-SA 4.0

SS Laurentic: What Remains

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. By 1924, when Damant was awarded the CBE, his team had recovered 3,186 of the 3,211 bars. Three more turned up in the 1930s through private salvage. Twenty-two are still down there, somewhere in the silt between Fanad and Malin Head. The wreck lies in Irish territorial waters and...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain