- SS Norge
SS "Norge" was a Danish passenger liner sailing from
Copenhagen ,Oslo andKristiansand to New York, mainly with emigrants, which sank offRockall in 1904 in the biggest civilian maritime disaster in theAtlantic Ocean up to that time.She was built in 1881 by Alex Stephen & Sons Ltd of Linthouse,
Glasgow , for the Belgian company Theodore C. Engels & Co ofAntwerp ; her original name was "Pieter de Coninck". The ship was 3,359 GRT and DWT|3,700|metric|first=yes, and the convert|1400|hp|MW|adj=on engine gave a speed of convert|10|kn. She could carry a maximum of 800 passengers.In 1889 she was sold to A/S Dampskibs-selskabet Thingvalla of Denmark (later to be the Skandinavien-Amerika Linien or Scandinavian-America Line) and renamed "Norge".
On
28 June 1904 "Norge" ran aground close toRockall , on St Helen's Reef. According to Sebak's comprehensive account, the final death toll was 635, among them 225 Norwegians. The 160 survivors spent up to eight days in open lifeboats before rescue.Among the survivors was the poet
Herman Wildenvey . [http://www.wildenvey.com/]The wreck of "Norge" was located off Rockall in July 2003.
ee also
*
List of United Kingdom disasters by death toll References
* Per Kristian Sebak - "Titanic's Predecessor: The S/S Norge Disaster of 1904" (2004) ISBN 82-996779-0-4
External links
* [http://home.online.no/~fndbadm/norge.htm Extensive site covering the catastrophe, in Norwegian]
* [http://www.orcadian.co.uk/features/articles/norge1.htm The Orcadian - "Four years’ research unearths SS Norge’s final resting place"]
* [http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~norway/na26.html Journal of American Ethnic History]nn:D/S «Norge»
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
