The Alphacca was a steam freighter with accommodations for 24 passengers.

It left Cape Town on March 23rd, 1942 with destination Freetown in Sierra Leone with a cargo of 2000 tons copper, 25 tons vanadium and 400 tons zinc.

Accident

On March 27th, an accident on board of the Alphacca caused serious injuries to three of the engineers when they were trying to repair a freezer on board. The first engineer Jakob de Vries and second engineer Pieter Willem Kooij both died of their wounds. The third engineer, Arie van Wijngaarden, survived the accident.

Torpedo

On April 4th, 1942, the ship was sailing at 150 nautical miles south of Cape Palmas (Ivory Coast) when it was torpedoed by the German submarine U 505 and sunk. At 21:29, the Alphacca was hit by a G7A torpedo in the back section of the ship near the lodgings, after having been pursued by the submarine for over seven hours. Most of the crew members and all of the passengers left the ship the following morning at 07:07 and went into four lifeboats. The ship sank and the crew had not been able to send out a distress signal because the radios were out of order.

Victims

Fourteen crew members were missing after the attack. The submarine later emerged and approached the lifeboats to question the survivors. The Germans asked the usual questions about the name, nationality, cargo and route of the ship, but also whether they had enough supplies. Before the Germans left, they wished one another luck and a good voyage. At the start, the conversation was in English, but they soon switched to German, a fact that the German commander Loew entered in his war diary and remarked that he found it to be an irony of fate that they fought people who spoke the same language.

The lifeboats then sailed towards the coast, but the stoker died the next day of his wounds and was buried at sea. On April 9th, all four the boats landed east of Cape Palmas.

After a week, the survivors went on board of the HMS Hydrangea (K 39) and FFL (K 195) and were brought to Freetown, where five wounded were admitted in an hospital.

Yard: W. Gray & Co Ltd, Sunderland

Owner: an Nievelt, Goudriaan & Co's Stoomvaart Maatschappij N.V., Rotterdam

Stichting Maritiem historische databank

Died crew members according to Oorlogsgravenstichting, Uboat.net and Oorlogsbronnen :

• Haersolte, J.W.J. van (ed) (1947).
  Scheepsrampen in oorlogstijd no. 170.
• uboat.net.
  Alphacca.
• oorlogsgravenstichting.nl.
  Alphacca.
• Nationaal Archief, Den Haag.
  Buitengewone Raad voor de Scheepvaart.
  2.16.31; 103.
• Stichting Maritiem Historische Databank.
  Alphacca.
• Oorlogsbronnen.
  Jakob de Vries.