page_title: HMT Aragon
section_title: Alexandria Roads
hierarchical_section_title: HMT Aragon / Alexandria Roads
caption_attribution_description: English: HMS Attack (1911) flying the flag of Vice-Admiral Beatty at the Battle of Dogger Bank
context_page_description: HMT Aragon, originally RMS Aragon, was a 9,588 GRT transatlantic Royal Mail Ship that served as a troop ship in the First World War. She was built in Belfast, Ireland in 1905 and was the first of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company's fleet of "A-liners" that worked regular routes between Southampton and South American ports including Buenos Aires.
  In 1913 Aragon became Britain's first defensively armed merchant ship of modern times. In the First World War she served as a troop ship, taking part in the Gallipoli Campaign in 1915. In 1917 a German submarine sank her in the Mediterranean, killing 610 of the personnel aboard.
context_section_description: Late in 1917 Aragon spent two weeks at anchor off Marseille before receiving orders in December to sail for Egypt. She took about 2,200 troops to reinforce the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in the Palestine Campaign against the Ottoman Empire, plus about 150 military officers, 160 VADs and about 2,500 bags of Christmas mail. She and another transport, the Nile, then sailed in convoy with an escort of destroyers for Egypt. On 23 December they reached Windy Bay, Malta, where the two transports stayed at anchor for four or five days. There they celebrated Christmas, and according to one VAD those aboard Aragon had a "top hole" time.
  Aragon and Nile then continued to Egypt with a fresh escort: the Acheron-class destroyer HMS Attack plus two Imperial Japanese Navy destroyers. The convoy weathered a gale, and off the Egyptian coast at daybreak on Sunday 30 December it divided. The two Japanese destroyers escorted Nile to Port Said, while Attack escorted Aragon to Alexandria. On approach to the port Attack zig-zagged ahead to search the channel for mines while Aragon waited in Alexandria Roads.
  The armed trawler HMT Points Castle approached Aragon flying the international flag signal "Follow me". The troop ship did so, until Attack returned and signalled "You have no right to take orders from a trawler". The destroyer intercepted Points Castle and then ordered Aragon to return to sea. The troop ship obeyed and turned back to sea.
  The most senior of Aragon's officers to survive what followed tried to make sense of the confusion:
  "The only explanation that the writer can put forward is that the commander of the Attack had a warning of mines in the channel, causing him to order Aragon to disregard Points Castle's "Follow me". Evidently the enemy laid mines at the appropriate time in the knowledge that the ship would be kept out and thus present a target for torpedo attack."
  Aragon and Attack were in Alexandria Roads about 8 miles (13 km) or 10 miles (16 km) outside the port, awaiting permission to enter, when at about 1100 hrs the German Type UC II submarine SM UC-34 torpedoed Aragon, hitting her port side aft and causing extensive damage in her almost empty number 4 hold. Aragon's deck officer of the watch, Lieut. J.F.A. Thompson, stated that she then listed to starboard.
caption: Acheron-class destroyer HMS Attack
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