Umbilo Voyage History

This section will, in time, contain the stories of more than 450 merchant ships built or owned in the Hartlepools, and which were lost during the First World War. As an illustration of the truly global nature of shipbuilding, these ships were owned by companies from 22 different countries, including more than 30 sailing under the German flag at the outbreak of war.

Owners: 1890 Bullard, King & Co, London: 1909 Ellerman Lines (F Swift) London-renamed Castilian: Ellerman Lines (Graham Smith) London

Masters: 1892-94 HH Clark: 1898 AN Hagger: 1899 WE Gibbs: 1900-02 RK Kessler: 1903-06 HS Robertson: 1907-09 G Haig: 1913 G Port: 1915-17 H Gomes.

Umbilo is well known to historians of St Helena as the ship that repatriated Chief Dinizulu to his home in South Africa in 1890 after seven years detention on the island during the Zulu Wars.

On a voyage from Liverpool for Genoa with a general cargo of Castilian was torpedoed without warning by German submarine (U-61 Victor Dieckmann) & sank 110 miles NW by N of Tory Island on 18 April 1917. 10 lives lost.

Lives lost April 1917: Cooper, George Ernest, assistant cook, 17, Spenser Street, Bootle, Lancs.; Cullen, Henry, greaser/fireman, 29, b. Liverpool; Deroo, Gustave Louis, chief steward, 39, b. Dunkirk; Fisher, Neil McGregor, 3^rd engineer, 26, b. Liverpool; Heyes, Thomas Green, chief engineer, 42, b. Liverpool; Hughes, Edgar Arnold, sailor, 21, b. Penmachno; Hughes, William Henry, able seaman, 64, Irlam Road, Bootle; Sodergren, Alexander Thomas, able seaman/lamps, 34, b. Stockholm, resided Manchester; Thomas, William, mess steward, 16, b. Bury, Lancs; Wirtan, Erik, boatswain, 41, b. Finland.