SS Beatus

Ropner Shipbuilding & Repairing Co Ltd of Stockton-on-Tees, England built Beatus, completing her in February 1925.[1] She had nine corrugated furnaces with a combined grate area of 190 square feet (18 m²) that heated three 180 lb_f/in² single-ended boilers with a combined heating surface of 7,500 square feet (697 m²).[1] The boilers fed a three-cylinder triple expansion steam engine that was rated at 436 NHP and drove a single screw.[1] The engine was built by Blair and Company, also of Stockton.[1]

Beatus was registered in Cardiff, managed by W.H. Seager & Co Ltd and owned by another of William Seager's companies, Tempus Shipping Co, Ltd.[1]

By early 1940 Beatus was sailing in convoys.[6] In February 1940 she joined Convoy SL-20 from Freetown, Sierra Leone to Liverpool with a cargo of wheat.[6] In May and June 1940 she brought a general cargo across the North Atlantic to the UK via Bermuda, where she joined Convoy BHX 46.[7] and Halifax, Nova Scotia, where BHX 46 joined Convoy HX 46.[8] In late July Beatus was carrying a cargo of steel and pit props when she joined another HX convoy, HX 60, from Halifax, NS to Liverpool.[9] Between ocean voyages, Beatus sailed in a number of North Sea coastal convoys.

Early in October Beatus left Trois-Rivières, Quebec, carrying a cargo of 1,626 tons of steel, 5,874 tons of timber and a deck cargo of crated aircraft bound for Middlesbrough via the Tyne. Her Master was Wilfred Leslie Brett.[3] She went via Sydney, Nova Scotia, where she joined Convoy SC 7 bound for Liverpool.[10] SC 7 left Sydney on 5 October. At first the convoy had only one escort ship, the Hastings-class sloop HMS Scarborough. A wolfpack of U-boats found the convoy on 16 October and quickly overwhelmed it, sinking many ships over the next few days.

Between 2058 and 2104 hours on 18 October, SC 7 was about 100 miles (160 km) west by south of Barra Head in the Outer Hebrides when U-46, commanded by Oberleutnant zur See Engelbert Endrass, attacked it. Endrass fired four torpedoes: one hit and sank the Swedish freighter SS Convallaria; another hit Beatus.[3] Frank Holding, Assistant Steward on Beatus, recalled:

"The next thing I heard was this explosion and a sound like breaking glass from down near the engine room. The ship stood still. When I went to the boat deck one of the lifeboats was already in the water, full of water... We knew we were sinking."[11]

Captain Brett and all 36 crew members survived, were rescued by a convoy escort, the Flower-class corvette HMS Bluebell, and were later landed at Gourock.[3]

• Lloyd's Register, Steamers and Motorships (PDF). London: Lloyd's Register. 1937. Retrieved 9 August 2013.