SS Orteric (1910)

SS Orteric was a Bank Line cargo and passenger steamship that was built in Scotland in 1910–11 and sunk by a U-boat in the Mediterranean Sea in 1915. In 1911 she took 960 Spanish and 565 Portuguese migrants to Hawaii to work on the sugar plantations.

She was the first of two Bank Line ships that were called Orteric. The second was built in England in 1919 for the United Kingdom Shipping Controller as War Coral. Andrew Weir & Co bought her and renamed her Orteric. She was wrecked in 1922.

Building
Russell & Co of Port Glasgow on the Firth of Clyde built Orteric for Andrew Weir & Co. She was launched on 19 December 1910 and completed in January 1911. Her registered length was 460.0 ft, her beam was 57.0 ft and her depth was 28.9 ft. Her tonnages were and. She had a three-cylinder triple expansion engine that was built by Rankin and Blackmore of Greenock. It developed 690 NHP and gave her a cruising speed of 13 kn.

Andrew Weir & Co registered Orteric in Glasgow. Her United Kingdom official number was 129534 and her code letters were HSCV. She was equipped for wireless telegraphy, and her call sign was GLE.

Migrant ship
In 1911 Orteric took 960 Spanish and 565 Portuguese migrants to Hawaii to work as contract labour in the sugar cane plantations. This made her the last ship to take part in the Portuguese immigration to Hawaii of 1878–1911, and the second ship to take part in the Spanish immigration that followed. The Spanish immigrants, who were mostly from the area of Seville, embarked at Gibraltar, and the Portuguese embarked at Oporto and Lisbon.

Orteric left Gibraltar on 24 February 1911 and reached Hawaii on 12 April 1911 after 48 days at sea. Hawaiian newspapers reported that the two groups argued and fought with each other on the long voyage, "so much so that they had to be separated. The women... went as far as hair pulling." There was an outbreak of measles on the voyage that caused 58 deaths, most of them children.

Loss
In December 1915 Orteric was carrying about 10,000 tons of sodium nitrate from Antofagasta, Chile, to Alexandria, Egypt. At about 1620 hrs on 9 December she was in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Cyrenaica when she sighted the German U-boat SM U-39. Orterics master, Captain McGill, attempted evasive manoeuvres, but U-39s commander, KptLt Walther Forstmann, opened fire with his 88mm deck gun. At least four shells hit Orteric. One killed a member of her Chinese crew, and another destroyed her wireless.

Orteric raised a white flag in surrender, and her crew began to launch her lifeboats, but U-39 kept firing. A shell hit one of the boats, killing a second member of her Chinese crew and wounding another four. Her crew successfully launched her remaining three lifeboats, but left behind Captain McGill, the third officer, the second engineer and the wireless officer. The four officers then abandoned ship in a small emergency boat. U-39 then came within about 200 ft of Orteric and fired a torpedo at her. Orteric sank within about five minutes, about 140 miles south by east of the island of Gavdos.

The U-boat crew then detained Orteric's emergency boat and ordered Captain McGill to board U-39. KptLt Forstmann ordered McGill to sign something in a book, which McGill did not understand as it was in German. McGill was then released to return to the emergency boat. The four lifeboats kept together, and a few hours later a British hospital ship rescued their occupants.