SS Tubantia was a luxury liner built for the Dutch in 1913.
She was designed for speed and luxury, particularly for service between the
Netherlands and South America.
Tubantia was state-of-the-art in that electricity was used
for all on-board facilities, even down to personal cigar lighters in every
stateroom. Being brightly lit was regarded as a safety feature, in that being
easily seen as a civilian ship belonging to a neutral country during wartime
would be an additional safety feature.
However, this did not prove to be the case on 16th March
1916, when SS Tubantia was at anchor 58 miles from the Dutch coast and was hit
by a torpedo fired by UB-13, a German U-boat. Fortunately, three nearby ships immediately
came to her rescue and there were no casualties.
One reason why nobody died as a result of the sinking was
that the ship had very few passengers at the time. Despite all the claims of
being a safe ship, not many people were willing to take the risk of a voyage at
a time when U-boat wolf packs were known to be patrolling in the region.
At first, the German government denied responsibility for
the sinking, coming up with the strange claim that Tubantia must have
encountered a stray torpedo that had been fired weeks before. However, few
people believed this story and eventually Germany did pay reparations to the
Netherlands.
The story might have ended there, were it not for the fact
that many people started to take particular interest in what might have been on
board the ship when it sank. A number of multinational dive teams made repeated
dives to the wreck in the years that followed, clearly in the belief that it
would be worth their while to do so.
However, all that was found in the way of cargo was a hold
full of Dutch cheese. Rumours began that the cheese was hiding a consignment of
gold bullion, but there was never any confirmation that this was the case.
Needless to say, the cheese was soon well past its sell-by date and not worth
the bother of rescuing it.
© John Welford
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