Wreck of Torpedoed WWI Troop Ship Discovered off Greece

A Greek diver and explorer has fulfilled a decades-long dream to find the wreck of a lost WWI troop transport, the SS Arcadian. 

The Arcadian was built in 1899 at the Vickers yard in Barrow-in-Furness, and she was originally christened Ortona. The ship served the Pacific Steam Navigation Company’s route from London to Australia for seven years, then entered service with the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. She was retrofitted as a luxury cruise ship at Harland & Wolff in 1910 and renamed RMS Arcadian. At the time of her first cruise in 1912, she was the world’s largest full-time cruise ship. 

RMS Arcadian, seen here as RMS Ortona (Frederick Charles Gould)

In early 1915, as the UK prepared for an amphibious assault on Gallipoli, the British Admiralty chartered Arcadian for use as a command ship. She was soon repurposed as a troop ship for operations in the Mediterranean and served in that capacity for most of the war. 

On April 15, 1917, Arcadian was under way from Greece to Alexandria, Egypt. Just as her crew and passengers were completing a lifeboat drill, she was attacked by the German U-boat UC-74. A single torpedo struck her engine room, and she went under in less than six minutes. The crew managed to lower four lifeboats away, and 1,056 people abandoned ship and survived. 279 lives were lost in the sinking, including many of the engineering crew and the galley crew. 

One of the survivors, Thomas Threlfall, had survived the sinking of the Titanic exactly five years earlier, and he was grateful that he could abandon ship into the waters of the Aegean rather than the North Atlantic. “This time we had calm sea and warm weather, and you had a chance, but with the Titanic you died in the water almost as soon as you got in,” he told media at the time. 

The wreck of the Arcadian was lost to time until this year, when it was rediscovered by Greek researcher Kostas Thoctarides at a position off Sifnos, resting at a depth of about 500 feet. The vessel landed bow first and settled to the bottom in an upright position.

“The main feeling was excitement and a sense of satisfaction. For a long time we have been reading this thrilling story that has so many fascinating aspects,” said Thoctarides. “For us it was a journey into the past and the history of the Arcadian, which is unknown to most people in Greece.”