SS Port Nicholson was a British refrigerated cargo ship owned by the Port Line. She entered service shortly after the First World War and was sunk by a German U-boat in the Second World War. Her wreck has subsequently been discovered, attracting attention with claims that she was carrying a large cargo of platinum ingots and other precious metals when she was sunk.
Description
Port Nicholson was long, with a beam of . She had a depth of and a draught of . She was assessed as , . She was propelled by four steam turbines of 967 nhp, single-reduction geared, driving twin screws. The turbines were built by Hawthorn Leslie, they could propel her at .
Port Nicholson was a refrigerated cargo ship. She had of refrigerated cargo space. There were two refrigerating machines. Coolant was brine and the cargo holds were insulated with cork.
Construction and early years
Hawthorn, Leslie and Company built Port Nicholson at its Hebburn yard. She was launched in November 1918 and completed on 13 May 1919. Her owners were Commonwealth and Dominion Line, which registered her in London. Her United Kingdom official number was 143508 and her code letters were JWKB. By 1930 her call sign was GRST.
She made sailings between the United Kingdom, and Australia and New Zealand. During her service life, she was involved in a number of incidents. On 23 October 1924, she ran aground at Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain and was holed. She was refloated on 6 November. Port Nicholson was twice damaged by fire. The first incident occurred while en route to New Zealand in 1928, when her cargo caught fire, forcing her to put into Pago Pago. The second occurred while moored in Melbourne in 1937, when the Government Cool Stores caught fire. Port Nicholson was adjacent to the wharves at the time, and had a cargo of cattle on board. Water was sprayed onto the livestock, saving them. In 1937 the Commonwealth and Dominion Line was re-branded the Port Line. Port Nicholson was involved in another accident on 9 June 1938, when she collided with and sank the tugboat Ocean Cock, with the loss of four lives.
Final voyage and sinking
With the outbreak of the Second World War, Port Nicholson remained in service, transporting cargoes around the globe. Her last voyage, in 1942, took her from Avonmouth across the Atlantic to Halifax, via Barry. She was at Halifax on 14 June 1942, and left for Wellington, with an intended call at New York City and a transit of the Panama Canal. She formed part of convoy XB 25, one of the coastal convoy routes, that ran between Halifax Harbour and Boston. She was under the command of her master, Harold Charles Jeffrey, and was carrying a cargo of 1,600 tons of automobile parts and 4,000 tons of military stores.
The convoy was tracked by the , commanded by Joachim Berger. At 4.17 hours on the morning of 16 June 1942 he fired a torpedo at the convoy, which was then off Portland, Maine. He fired a second torpedo a minute later, but the gale conditions at the time prevented him from observing the results accurately, and he recorded that while one torpedo had hit a ship, the other seemed to have missed. In fact, both torpedoes struck Port Nicholson, the first in the engine room, the second in the stern. Two men in the engine room (7th Engineer William McGrery and Greaser Willian John) were killed immediately, and as Port Nicholson began to settle by the stern, the remaining crew abandoned ship and were picked up by the Royal Canadian Navy corvette .