SS Athenia The SS " Athenia " was the first British ship to be sunk by Nazi Germany in World War II . Description . Athenia was built by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company , Ltd . , and was launched at Govan , Scotland in 1923 . She was built for Anchor - Donaldson Ltd . ' s route between Britain and Canada . For most of her career she sailed between either Glasgow or Liverpool , and Quebec and Montreal . During the height of winter , she operated as a cruise ship . After 1935 , her owners became the Donaldson Atlantic Line Ltd . " Athenia " measured 13 , 465 gross tons , was 526 . 3 feet long and had a 66 . 4 foot beam ( 160 . 4m x 20 . 2m ) . She had two masts and a single funnel . She carried 516 cabin class passengers and an additional 1 , 000 in 3rd class . She was a twin propeller vessel powered by steam turbines , with a top speed of 15 knots . Sinking . " Athenia " , under Captain James Cook , departed Glasgow for Montreal on 1 September 1939 , via Liverpool and Belfast , carrying 1 , 103 passengers , including more than 300 Americans , and 315 crew . She left Liverpool at 13 : 00 on 2 September , and on the evening of 3 September was south of Rockall ( 250 miles / 400 km northwest of Inishtrahull , Ireland ) , when she was sighted by the commanded by " Oberleutnant " Fritz - Julius Lemp around 16 : 30 . Lemp later claimed that the fact that she was a darkened ship steering a zigzag course which seemed to be well off the normal shipping routes made him believe she was either a troopship or a Q - ship or an armed merchant cruiser . " U - 30 " tracked the " Athenia " for three hours until eventually , at 19 : 40 , when both vessels were between Rockall and Tory Island , Lemp ordered two torpedoes to be fired . The first struck home and exploded , while the second misfired . " Athenia " began to settle by the stern . Several ships , including , raced to the site of the attack . The captain of " Electra " , Lt . Cdr . Sammy A . Buss , was Senior Officer Present , so he took charge . He sent the destroyer on an anti - submarine sweep of the area , while " Electra " , another destroyer , , the Swedish yacht " Southern Cross " , the 5 , 749 ton Norwegian tanker MS " Knute Nelson " , and the American freighter SS " City of Flint " , rescued the survivors . Between them , about 981 passengers and crew were rescued . The German liner en route from New York to Murmansk , also received " Athenia " ' s distress signal , but hardly surprisingly ignored it . The " City of Flint " took 223 survivors on to Halifax , and the " Knute Nelson " landed 450 at Galway . " Athenia " remained afloat for over fourteen hours after being torpedoed , until she finally sank stern first at 10 : 40 the following morning . Of the 1 , 418 aboard , 98 passengers and 19 crew members were killed . The toll in lives included fatalities caused when the torpedo struck , and from accidents and other mistakes during the evacuation . Most of the fatalities occurred in the engine room and after stairwell , where the torpedo hit , though other sources dispute this . Some died later when one of the lifeboats was crushed in the propeller of the " Knute Nelson " . In this case No . 5A lifeboat came alongside the empty tanker and tied up against advice astern of No 12 lifeboat . Only 15 feet separated the life boat from the tanker ' s exposed propellor . Once the No . 12 lifeboat was emptied it was cut adrift and began to sink . This fact was reported to the bridge of " Knute Nelson " . For some reason the ship ' s throttle was then set to full ahead . The 5A lifeboat ' s warp parted under the strain , causing the lifeboat to be pulled back into the fast revolving propellor . This resulted in about 50 deaths . A second accident occurred at about 0500 hrs when No . 8 lifeboat capsized in a heavy sea below the stern of the yacht " Southern Cross " causing ten deaths . Three passengers were crushed to death while attempting to transfer from lifeboats to the RN destroyers . The other fatalities were due to falling overboard from " Athenia " and her lifeboats , or to injuries and exposure . Twenty - eight of the dead were American citizens , which led to German fears that the incident would bring the US into the war . Aftermath . The sinking caused dramatic publicity throughout the English - speaking world . The front pages of many newspapers running photographs of the lost ship alongside headlines about Britain ' s declaration of war . As an example , the " Halifax Herald " for 4 September 1939 had a banner across its front page announcing " LINER ATHENIA IS TORPEDOED AND SUNK " with , in the center of the page , " EMPIRE AT WAR " in outsized red print . A Canadian girl , 10 - year old Margaret Hayworth , was included among the casualties , and was one of the first Canadians to die as a result of enemy action . Newspapers widely publicized the story , proclaiming " Ten - Year - Old Victim of Torpedo " as " Canadians Rallying Point " , and set the tone for their coverage of the rest of the war . A thousand people met the train that transported her body back to Hamilton , Ontario , and there was a public funeral attended by the mayor of Hamilton and the city council , as well as the Lieutenant - Governor , Albert Edward Matthews , Premier Mitchell Hepburn , and the entire Ontario cabinet . When Grand Admiral Raeder first heard of the sinking of the " Athenia " , he made inquiries and was told that no U - boat was nearer than to the location of the sinking . He therefore told the US chargé d ' affaires in good faith that the German Navy had not been responsible . When , on 27 September , " U - 30 " returned to Wilhelmshaven , Lemp reported to Admiral Dönitz that he had sunk the " Athenia " in error . Dönitz at once sent Lemp to Berlin , where he explained the incident to Raeder . In turn , Raeder reported to Hitler , who decided that the incident should be kept secret for political reasons . Raeder decided against court - martialling Lemp because he considered that he had made an understandable mistake , and the log of the " U - 30 " , which was seen by many people , was altered to sustain the official denials . A month later the " Voelkischer Beobachter " , the Nazi party ' s official newspaper , published an article which blamed the loss of the " Athenia " on the British , accusing Winston Churchill , then First Lord of the Admiralty , of sinking the ship to turn neutral opinion against Nazi Germany . Raeder claimed to not have known about this previous to publication and said that if he had known about it , he would have prevented it appearing . In the US , 60 % of respondents to a Gallup poll believed the Germans were responsible , despite their initial claims that the " Athenia " had been sunk by the British for propaganda purpose , with only 9 % believing otherwise . Some anti - interventionists called for restraint while at the same time expressing their abhorrence of the sinking . Boake Carter described it as a criminal act . Some were not completely convinced that Germany was in fact responsible . Herbert Hoover expressed his doubts , saying , " It is such poor tactics that I cannot believe that even the clumsy Germans would do such a thing " , while North Carolina senator Robert Rice Reynolds denied that Germany had any motive to sink the " Athenia " . At best , he said , such an action " could only further inflame the world , and particularly America , against Germany , with no appreciable profits from the sinking . " He added that Britain could have had a motive - " to infuriate the American people " . It was not until January 1946 , during the case against Admiral Raeder at the Nuremberg trials , that a statement by Admiral Dönitz was read in which he finally admitted that " Athenia " had been torpedoed by " U - 30 " and that every effort had been made to cover it up . Lemp , who claimed he had mistaken her for an armed merchant cruiser , took the first steps to conceal the facts by omitting to make an entry in the submarine ' s log , and swearing his crew to secrecy . Legality of sinking . As " Athenia " was an unarmed passenger ship , the attack was in violation of the Hague conventions and the London Naval Treaty of 1930 which allowed all warships including submarines to stop and search merchant vessels , but forbade capture as prize or sinking unless the ship was carrying contraband or engaged in military activity . Even if this was the case , and if it was decided to sink their ship , it was required that passengers and crew must be transferred to a " place of safety " as a priority . Although Germany was not a signatory to the 1930 treaty , the German 1936 Prize Rules ( " Prisenordnung " ) binding their naval commanders copied most of its restrictions . Lemp of " U - 30 " did none of these things , choosing instead to fire without warning . Questioning of sinking . Following the sinking of Athenia , some conspiracy theories were floated among pro - Axis and anti - British circles . For example , one editor in Boston ' s " Italian News " suggested the ship had been sunk by British mines and blamed on German U - boats to draw America into the war . The claims were unfounded . Popular culture . While no movie was ever made regarding the full story of the sinking , the film " Arise , My Love " ( 1940 ) , directed by Mitchell Leisen and starring Claudette Colbert and Ray Milland , had a sequence involving the torpedoing of the liner . The sinking of the Athenia is mentioned in the song " Rollerskate Skinny , " written by Rhett Miller , and performed by his band The Old 97 ' s . In the novel " The Man Who Could Not Shudder " , Dr Fell announces the end of story by showing his audience a newspaper bearing headline " LINER ATHENIA : FULL LIST OF VICTIMS " . He means to say that the war has begun and the truth of the mystery is now unlikely to surface . Recent extensive research concerning the incident appears in Cay Rademacher ' s 2009 book " Drei Tage im September - die letzte Fahrt der Athenia , 1939 " published by Mareverlag , Hamburg .