SS Zamzam was a steam ocean liner that was launched in 1909 in Ireland and scuttled in 1941 in the South Atlantic.
She was launched as Leicestershire and was a UK troop ship in the First World War. In 1930 she was converted into an exhibition ship and renamed British Exhibitor.
In 1933 she was bought by an Egyptian company that renamed her Zamzam and had her converted into a pilgrim ship. In 1941 she took passengers from Egypt to the USA. On her return voyage to Egypt a German merchant raider attacked and scuttled her.
Building Harland and Wolff built Leicestershire in Belfast for the Bibby Steamship Company, launching her on 3 June 1909 and completing her on 11 September. She had twin screws driven by twin quadruple expansion engines. Between them the two engines developed a total of 823 NHP and gave Leicestershire a speed of or .
As built, Leicestershire had capacity for 230 passengers, of her hold space were refrigerated, and her tonnages were and .
Leicestershire had four masts. This was a distinctive feature of all Bibby Brothers ships built up until 1939.
A year later Harland and Wolff built a sister ship, Gloucestershire. She was launched on 7 July 1910 and completed on 22 October.
UK service Bibby Brothers ran passenger and cargo liner services between Liverpool, India and Burma. Leicestershires maiden voyage was from Birkenhead to Rangoon.
By 1913 Leicestershire was equipped for wireless telegraphy. The Marconi Company operated her equipment on the standard 300 and 600 metre wavelengths. Her call sign was MYL.
In August 1914 Leicestershire was requisitioned as a troop ship. She brought the 17th Lancers from Bombay to Marseille, and then took part of Indian Expeditionary Force D, including Burmese troops, to the Persian Gulf. She was then returned to her owners.
On 11 October 1917 she accidentally rammed in the Irish Sea off the east coast of County Wexford, sinking the yacht and killing 17 of her crew.
In November 1917 Leicestershire was again requisitioned as a troop ship. She took 2,000 troops from Plymouth to Bombay. Between April and August 1918 she took 2,000 UK troops to Archangelsk as part of the North Russia intervention in the Russian Civil War and was one of several ships that brought US troops to Britain. In December 1918 she repatriated 3,000 Australian Army troops to Fremantle, Melbourne and Sydney.
After the First World War Leicestershire was returned to Bibby Brothers, who had her refitted to return to civilian service. She was converted from coal-burning to oil, which freed her coal bunker to be turned into more cargo space. In the 1920s she continued her service between Liverpool and Rangoon.
By 1930 Leicestershires tonnages were and . That year the British National Exhibition Ship Company bought her, had her converted into an exhibition ship and renamed her British Exhibitor. Her new owners intended her to tour the British Empire promoting UK goods. In 1931 the exhibition opened on the River Thames but in 1932 the company went bankrupt.
Egyptian service The Egyptian Company for Travel and Navigation bought British Exhibitor on 28 September 1933. It renamed her Zamzam after the Zamzam Well at Mecca. She was converted to carry 600 Muslim pilgrims, and one of her holds was converted into a mosque. She carried pilgrims for at least two months each year.
In 1934 Zamzam passed to the Société Misr de Navigation, who registered her in Alexandria. Zamzam spent the remainder of the 1930s carrying pilgrims between Suez and Jeddah. Her UK code letters HPRD and original call sign were superseded by the Egyptian call sign SUBZ.
In September 1939, the Kingdom of Egypt severed diplomatic relations with the Axis powers but did not declare war. While Egypt was neutral, British military forces were based there and the country had limited autonomy. The UK ran military operations in the Mediterranean and Middle East theatre of World War II from Egypt, and held authority over Egyptian merchant ships. In both World Wars it requisitioned them at will.
In October 1939, a month after the Second World War began, Zamzam was laid up. A year later, on 28 October 1940, she was in Alexandria Port during a Regia Aeronautica air raid. Fragments from one Italian bomb damaged her forecastle. She was repaired and returned to service. She had an Egyptian crew commanded by UK officers.
In December 1940 Zamzam took 99 passengers and a cargo of cotton from Alexandria to the USA via the Suez Canal, Indian Ocean, Cape Town, South Atlantic and North Atlantic. On 24 February 1941 she landed her passengers at Jersey City. She then continued to Boston.
Final voyage In March 1941 Zamzams return voyage to Egypt was delayed when a stevedore claimed he had suffered a skull fracture while working aboard her. She was held at Hoboken for several days, until her owners deposited a $50,000 bond.
On 20 March Zamzam left Jersey City to return to Alexandria. She carried about 140 crew and about 200 passengers, but sources differ as to the exact number of each. Most of her crew were Egyptian, but they included also Sudanese, Greeks, Yugoslavs, Britons, one French national and a Czechoslovak. 137 of the passengers were Christian missionaries of various denominations and boards: Lutheran, Assemblies of God, African Inland Mission, Brethren, Congo Inland Mission, Disciples of Christ, Baptists) or their wives and children. Another 24 were volunteer ambulance drivers of the British American Ambulance Corps on their way to serve in North Africa with the Free French forces.
One missionary wife, Lillian Danielson, found that the lifejackets in her cabin were in poor condition and were too large to fit her six children, whose ages at the time ranged from one to 10. She repaired them and altered them to fit.
Zamzam called at Baltimore on 22–23 March and Trinidad on 30 March. Her Master, William Gray Smith, sought permission for her to sail fully lit as a neutral ship. The UK Admiralty refused, ordered him to sail blacked out and told him to follow a pre-arranged course.
Zamzam called at Recife, where passengers joined the ship including Fortune reporter Charles Murphy and Life photographer David Scherman. By the time she left Recife, Zamzam had 202 passengers. According to Murphy they included 73 women, 35 children and 138 of the total were US nationals. Six were tobacco buyers from Wilson, North Carolina travelling on business to Southern Rhodesia. There were also 26 Canadians, 25 UK nationals, five South Africans, four Belgians, two Greek nurses, an Italian and a Norwegian.
Zamzam carried 5,344 tons of cargo. It included 20 ambulances for the Free French forces in North Africa, an x-ray trailer, a field kitchen, 2,322 tons of lubricating and other oils, 1,000 tons of fertilizer, plus foods, tobacco products and manufactured goods. The ambulance corps' vehicles and other equipment aboard were worth nearly $100,000. Murphy wrote that the cargo's total value was $3 million.
On 9 April Zamzam left Recife to cross the South Atlantic to South Africa. She was due to reach Cape Town on 21 April. On 14 April she changed course. Captain Gray stated that this was because her wireless operator received a distress message from a Norwegian merchant ship, the Tai-Yin, that was under attack by a German raider.
Attack
At about 0555 hrs on 17 April the opened fire on Zamzam from a range of about . Nine 150 mm shells hit Zamzam port side, injuring several passengers and crew, including the ship's doctor. Zamzams engine room was holed below the waterline, causing her to list to port. Her wireless aerials were destroyed, and there was damage to her passenger accommodation, Master's quarters, and funnel. Atlantis ceased firing after about 10 minutes.
Nearly all of Zamzams passengers and crew abandoned ship, but shellfire had destroyed one lifeboat and damaged two others. The damaged boats were swamped shortly after being launched, including that carrying Mrs Danielson and her children, all of whom ended up in the water. Some passengers jumped from Zamzam into the sea. The ambulance drivers looked after women and children, treated the wounded, and pulled people out of the sea into the boats and liferafts.
When all the boats and rafts had been launched, Captain Smith was left on his ship with his Chief Officer, his Chief Engineer, six ambulance drivers, and a four-year-old girl who had become separated from her parents.
Rescue Atlantis rescued all survivors from the boats, from the water, and the group left on Zamzam. Atlantis Captain, Bernhard Rogge, sent a boarding party aboard Zamzam that searched her chartroom and Master's quarters, removed supplies and personal possessions. At about 1400 hrs the boarding party scuttled Zamzam with three explosive charges.
Scherman was in lifeboat number one. He photographed Zamzam being abandoned, and after he reached Atlantis, a German officer encouraged him to photograph Zamzam being scuttled. Atlantis crew confiscated some of his films, but he managed to keep four rolls hidden.
The next day Atlantis met her supply ship, , to whom all Zamzams survivors and their luggage were transferred except three who were too seriously wounded. Atlantis and Dresden parted, but they met again on 28 April. A delegation of survivors met Rogge on Atlantis and asked for more food to be transferred to Dresden, and for the US and other neutral survivors to be put ashore in South America to avoid the danger Dresden would face when running the Royal Navy blockade to reach Europe.
After conferring with his officers, Rogge said Dresden would look for a neutral ship to which to transfer survivors. Failing that, Dresden would approach the Brazilian coast and try to find a Brazilian coaster to take them. Only as a last resort would Dresden enter a neutral port to put survivors ashore. With that, Atlantis and Dresden parted again.
The next day one of the wounded, tobacco merchant Ned Laughinghouse, died aboard Atlantis. He had suffered a shrapnel wound to the skull during the shelling.
Dresdens voyage to France Dresden carried the survivors in her cargo holds, separated into three groups. Women and children formed one group, and were put up in the Dresdens small passenger cabins, while the officers and male passengers formed another and had to sleep in the ships holds, and the mostly Egyptian crew formed the third. Food remained short, and only slightly improved. Dysentery was rife. Dresden did not try to find a neutral ship, but headed straight for Europe. As she sailed into more northern latitudes, influenza broke out. Scherman photographed conditions aboard.
The survivors would spend the next month at sea. They complained constantly about the food, which included a thin breakfast gruel they called "billboard paste" and a bad tasting soup for dinner they dubbed "glop". Dubbing themselves "The Wandering and Wondering Society", to pass the time they formed a small band and swam in the ships small swimming pool until they reached the chilly north Atlantic. After reaching colder latitudes, they played chess, backgammon and other board games and endlessly debated where their final destination would be.
On 18 May Zamzam was reported missing. the UK Ministry of Information said she must be "presumed lost", but naval authorities in Cape Town insisted she was merely "overdue".
On 20 May Dresden landed survivors at Saint-Jean-de-Luz in German-occupied France. The USA was still neutral so its citizens were taken to Biarritz, where there was a US consul. Civilians of Allied nations were interned, initially in Bordeaux and then at various camps in German-occupied Europe.