Built During the Hamidian Massacres, Sunk During the Genocide

By 1896, close to 300,000 innocent lives had been lost throughout the Armenian highlands.

In a speech delivered in Liverpool that year, former UK Prime Minister William Gladstone protested vehemently against the atrocities and called for resolute action by the European powers against the Turks. Against this background, there is little doubt that the unremitting suffering of the Armenians would have been ingrained in the consciousness of the wider British public.

With the constant flow of news reports causing outrage and clamors for justice, it is understandable why the people behind the building of the SS Armenian would choose to rename the vessel. It may have been a small but significant gesture, an expression of solidarity with the Armenian people in their hour of torment and agony.

Fitted out with stables to transport horses, the SS Armenian commenced its maiden voyage from Liverpool to Boston on September 28, 1896. Three years later the ship was contracted by the British authorities to serve as a transport in the Boer War, and in 1901, it was used to transport 963 Boer prisoners of war to Bermuda.

After the war, in March 1903, the ship’s management was taken over by the White Star Line — the same company that would come to operate the RMS Titanic just a few years later — and it resumed its cargo service between Liverpool and New York.

In 1910, it was repainted in the distinctive Leyland insignia — a pink funnel with a black top.

The Armenian completed its peacetime assignment in March 1914, before being briefly laid up prior to its deployment as a horse transport during World War I. Although not fitted as a passenger vessel, it was used to transport the Grenadier Guards, an infantry regiment of the British armed forces, to Belgium on the October 7, 1914.

The SS Armenian began its final voyage in June 1915 with 175 men onboard. It was chartered to carry a cargo of 1,422 mules from the US to Bristol, England. The animals were intended as replacements for the horses that had been lost in the fighting in France.

At around 6:30 p.m. on June 28, while heading northeast off Trevose Head, Cornwall, a watchman on the Armenian sighted a German submarine. In what proved to be an erroneous decision, Captain James Trickey ordered the ship ahead full-steam in an attempt to outrun the U-boat, which turned out to be the U-24. The captain was signaled to stop and surrender after two shots were fired across the ship’s bow, but he refused. The U-boat’s commander, Rudolf Schneider, then opened fire with the deck gun, scoring several hits on the Armenian, one shot taking out the Marconi room.

After more than a dozen men lay dead or injured on the deck, Trickey finally agreed to surrender. Much to his surprise, he and the crew were treated well by the Germans from that point on. With several lifeboats damaged from the shelling, they were allowed to take the remaining boats and make for the Cornish coast. The Armenian was then sunk by two torpedoes fired into its stern. It went down in minutes.

The survivors were picked up the following day by the Belgian steam trawler President Stevens. Four of the injured died before they could be rescued.

29 men lost their lives, including 19 Americans. The Armenian needed hands to tend to the mules, so many of the 175 men onboard were muleteers who had been hired at Newport News, Virginia, before sailing. Of the 29 fatalities, 12 were muleteers who refused to abandon the animals and preferred to go down with the ship. Most of the victims were African Americans.

Following the sinking of the RMS Lusitania 52 days earlier, in which more than 100 Americans lost their lives, the sinking of the Armenian caused a second crisis between Germany and the US, as the majority of the men who died were again American. Much was made in the press of this fact, with both the British and French papers doing their best to fan the flames of anti-German sentiment in the US, with the hope of drawing America into the war.

While the propaganda war raged in the newspapers, President Woodrow Wilson considered the Armenian incident before making any official pronouncements, preferring to wait until the investigation was over. His procrastination proved expedient. The ship was undeniably engaged in the transportation of contraband to England — work animals destined for the Allied armies fighting in France — and this made it a legitimate target according to most experts.

Even though the accepted rules of engagement regarding the sinking of merchant ships in wartime required a ‘stop and search’ approach, it was established that not all U-boat commanders obeyed these rules. However, the investigation found that Rudolf Schneider had indeed tried to stop the ship before opening fire with the deck gun. It is likely that had Trickey complied with the order to stop, the SS Armenian would have been spared.

The furor caused by the sinking of the Armenian eventually abated because of the circumstances surrounding the event, and the US did not declare war on Germany until April 1917.

In 2002, amateur divers claimed they had discovered the wreck of the SS Armenian, but their claim was proven incorrect (the wreck was of the auxiliary cruiser HMS Patia.)

The SS Armenian was finally located and identified by wreck hunter and archaeologist Innes McCartney in 2008. The discovery was featured on the History Channel in an episode of Deep Wreck Mysteries titled, “Search for the Bone Wreck.”

The ship sits upright in 95 meters of water, 45 miles from the reported location given by the British crew at the time of the sinking. A mass of animal bones was found inside the ship, a testament to the hundreds of animals whose deaths were but a minor statistic in a global conflagration that claimed millions of lives and provided ideal cover for the commission of one of mankind’s greatest ever crimes — the Armenian Genocide.

(Tigran Kalaydjian is the author of Sentinel of Truth: Gourgen Yanikian and the Struggle Against the Denial of the Armenian Genocide [2012.])