SS Clan Chisholm (1937)

Clan Chisholm was one of the Clan Line's Cameron-class steamships, built by the Greenock & Grangemouth Dockyard Co Ltd, Greenock[1] and launched on 5 August 1937.[2] She was registered in Glasgow.[1]

Chisholm had a pair of three-cylinder steam triple expansion engines and a pair of low pressure steam turbines, all built by J.G. Kincaid & Co of Greenock.[1] Each turbine was powered by exhaust steam from the low-pressure cylinder of one of the piston engines.[1] The combined power output of this plant was rated at 1,043 NHP.[1] She was propelled by twin screws, each driven by one triple-expansion engine and one turbine.

On 3 September 1939, the day that the UK declared war on Germany, Chisholm was crossing the Bay of Bengal from Chittagong in Bengal to Madras in India, where she arrived on 5 September.[5] On 9 September she sailed for Glasgow carrying 3,300 tons of tea, 1,900 tons of jute, 1,750 tons of pig iron and 2,600 tons of general cargo.[3] Her Master was Francis Stenson.[3]

Chisholm crossed the Indian Ocean, calling at Tuticorin on 13 September, Colombo in Ceylon overnight on the 14–15th, Aden on the 23rd and Suez on the 30th.[5] She passed through the Suez Canal to Port Said where she joined Convoy Blue 3, which sailed on 1 October and reached Gibraltar on the 11th.[5] There she joined Convoy HG 3 which sailed on 13 October and was to take her as far as Liverpool.[5]

On the evening of 17 October German submarine U-48, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Herbert Schultze, sighted Chisholm under way some 150 nautical miles (280 km) northwest of Cape Finisterre.[3] At 2032 hrs Schultze hit Chisholm with a torpedo that failed to explode.[3] At 2035 he hit her with a second torpedo, which detonated.[3] Chisholm sank in a few minutes and four crew members were killed.[3] Captain Stenson and 41 other survivors were rescued by the Swedish cargo ship MV Bardaland and landed at Kirkwall.[3] Another 17 were picked up by the Norwegian whaling ship Skudd, and the remaining 15 were rescued by the Union-Castle Line ship MV Warwick Castle.[3]

Approximate position of Clan Chisholm's wreck in the North Atlantic

In 1944 the same shipbuilder, Greenock Dockyard Co Ltd, completed a replacement Clan Chisholm for Clan Line.[6] Compared with her predecessor, the new Chisholm had almost the same length and beam, a pair of Kincaid triple-expansion engines of the same dimensions and with the same arrangement of feeding exhaust steam to low-pressure turbines.[6] However, her depth was 38.1 feet (11.6 m),[6] which was 8.2 feet (2.5 m) greater than her predecessor. Her GRT was 9,581,[6] which was 2,325 tons bigger than her predecessor. She survived the war but later suffered a fire and in August 1962 was scrapped in Hong Kong.[7]

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