Miscellaneous Ship Histories

San Emiliano (I) - Part 1

 

San Emiliano  (I) was in service from 1928 until she was sunk by enemy action in 1942 with great loss of life; she had a working life of 14 years. There is further information about voyages on this ship on the Recollections section of the Benjidog website HERE.

Service Pre-War

 

San Emiliano discharged petrol at Santos in August 1939 and arrived in the river Amazon on 3rd September 1939 - the day the war began. She loaded a full cargo of fresh water from the Amazon for Curacao. It was common practice for tankers to take water from the Amazon for Curacao on their return from East Coast South American ports.

 

At present that is the limit of known information about her service prior to the war but see the section below about the British Ship Adoption Society.

Participation in WW2 Convoys

 

San Emiliano (I) took part in 47 convoys and a large number of independent voyages during WW2 before being sunk. The information shown in the table below is provided courtesy of Convoyweb   - see  Ext. Ref. #5.

Image 1

Basic Data: San Emiliano

Type: Tanker

Registered owners, managers and operators:

Eagle Oil and Shipping Co. Ltd,

London

Builders: Harland & Wolff Ltd.

Yard: Govan, Glasgow

Country: UK

Yard number: 1015G

Registry: Glasgow UK

Official number: 167216

Signal letters: N/K

Call sign: GRGL

Classification society: N/K

Gross tonnage: 8,071 tons

Net tonnage: 4,818 tons

Deadweight: 12.152 tons

Length: 479 ft 5 in

Breadth: 61 ft 2 in

Depth: N/K

Draught: 27 ft 0 in

Engines: Oil engine 8 cylinder, 25” bore, 55” stroke

Engine builders: Harland & Wolff

Works: Belfast Engine Works

Country: UK

Power: 4,300 bhp

Propulsion: Single screw

Speed: 12 knots

Cargo capacity: 12,000 tons

Crew: 48 at time of sinking

Image 2

Conversion to DEMS

 

At an unknown date, San Emiliano was equipped as a Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship (DEMS).

Standard references state that she was equipped with one 4.7” gun, one 12 pounder, two Twin Marlins, two Hotchkiss, one Savage Lewis and four P.A.C. Rockets.

 

The Recollections website has accounts by Stan Mayes of several convoys in which he sailed in San Emiliano HERE.

 

Stan states:

 

The 4.7" gun was on the poop and in addition there were two 20 mm Oerlikons located in nests built on the bridge, and one 40mm Bofors gun installed near the funnel. DEMS Gunners were on the ship. Mick Snashall and I had gunnery courses and gained a certificate. We were paid 6d per day for it while on ships Articles. We performed our normal duties, but manned guns during action stations. We also had lots of gun drill when at sea.

Image 3 is an enlarged and enhanced to show the nests for the Oerlikons which could be accessed from the deck by rope ladders as well as from the bridge.

Image 3

Image 4 shows Stan Mayes and Mick Snashal on duty at one of the 4.7" guns on San Emiliano.

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Image 4

Convoy HX 184

 

The following note and photos are from Stan Mayes

 

The convoy was led out of Halifax, Nova Scotia by the Blue Funnel passenger vessel Agapenor (7,587 grt) which was built in 1914 and subsequently torpedoed and sunk off Freetown in 1942 with the loss of 7 lives. Agapenor left Halifax at 11:00 on 8 April 1942, the last member of the convoy at 13:42 and the convoy is reported as arriving at Liverpool on 20 April 1942. In reality not all the ships in the convoy were destined for Liverpool and San Emiliano was bound for Swansea. According to Ext. Ref. #7, she was towards the rear of the convoy.

Images 5 and 6 taken on convoy HX 184 show San Emiliano with decks awash.

Image 5

Image 6

Images 7 was taken onboard San Emiliano on convoy HX 184. The ship in the background of the photo below is the Elders and Fyffes ship Cristales (5,368 grt) - the Commodore's ship for convoy HX184. Cristales was torpedoed by U-124 on 12 May 1942 - two weeks after the arrival of convoy HX184. She was part of convoy ON92 and sunk by gunfire from HMCS Shediac (K110) Fortunately all 82 on board survived, picked up by HMCS Shediac.

Image 7

Image 8 The photo below shows Stan Mayes AB (left) and Mick Snashal AB (right). The tanker in the background is British Power. On an enlarged version of the original photograph you can see the two funnels of a Danish passenger ship Amerika beyond the aft deck of British Power; she was sunk shortly afterwards whilst sailing in a later convoy. British Power survived the war.

Image 8

Image 9 is an enlargement of Image 8 to highlight the Degaussing cables fitted to San Emiliano. Degaussing reduced the risk of ships being detected by magnetic mines and was initially fitted externally as shown here. The thick cables carrying the degaussing current are to be seen strapped to the diagonal metal trough.

Image 9

Images

 

1. Images #1 and #2 from the collection of the Webmaster

2. Images #3 to #11 provided by Stan Mayes and enhanced by Brian Watson

 

Other San Emiliano pages on this website

Images 1 and 2 are photos believed to have been taken during trials in the Clyde in April 1939.

Almost overpaid!

 

In March 1942 it appears that there was an administrative error at Eagle Oil with the wages of ship’s carpenter D.P. Brennan - they were shown as £16 15s 0d instead of £14 15s 0d so the office notified Captain Tozer in a letter dated 9 April 1942. The main point of this appears to be to ensure that, in the case of loss of the ship, he would not be overpaid. Wages in any case would cease immediately for crew whose

ship was sunk.

 

In the event Daniel Brennan lost his life when San Emiliano was sunk four months later and we can all rest in our beds knowing that no overpayment would have occurred.

Images 10 and 11 show a copy of the letters sent to Captain Tozer.

Image 10

Image 11

Images 12 shows a copy of the official log of San Emiliano showing changes in crew in 1941 and 1942. The first entry records J Tozer taking over as Master on 29 December 1941. Later entries for January 1942 record new crew members. Of the names I can make out, three of these men were lost with the ship - Alan Woodward, Stephen Williamson and Harry Pyman.

Image 12