Early casualty of WWII

SS Antilla (or ES Antilla, with 'ES' standing for Elektroschiff, which is German for electric ship) was a Hamburg America Line (HAPAG) cargo ship that was launched in 1939 and scuttled in 1940.

The ship was built for trade between Germany and the Caribbean, and was named after the city of Antilla in eastern Cuba.

Wikimedia Commons

A photo from 1939 of SS Antilla, photographer unknown.

Construction

The Antilla was built in Hamburg. After her launch in March she was completed on July 11th. She was one of three sister ships launched in 1939 for HAPAG. The Antilla and its sister ship Orizaba were built by the Deutsche Werft yard in Finkenwerder, Hamburg.

The Antilla and its sister ships had turbo-electric transmission engines. They had had two oil-fired high-pressure boilers that fed twin AEG turbo generators. These produced the current for an AEG electric propulsion motor that drove a single propeller shaft.

Maiden voyage

On July 15th, 1939, the Antilla departed from Hamburg on her maiden voyage to the Caribbean. En route there were technical problems with the propulsion system, but the ship eventually reached Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles.

On August 9th, the Antilla left Curaçao for Galveston, Texas, where she loaded 3,000 tons of sulphur as cargo for Europe. On August 25th, while still in Galveston, a radio message was received from Germany that included the code word Essberger, which was a signal for her captain, Ferdinand Schmidt, to open sealed orders. These type of orders had been issued to all German merchant ships, giving instructions on how to act when war broke out. Shortly afterwards, the Antilla received a second radio message with the same code word and according to the sealed orders this was an order for captains to mask their ships by altering their name and appearance and to immediately return to Germany.

The Antilla left Galveston and on August 28th she received a coded radio message that all German ships unable to reach a German harbour within four days should seek refuge in neutral ports, so they decided to sail for neutral Curaçao. However, en route Schmidt learnt that the port of Willemstad there was already full of German merchant ships, so he and three other German ships decided to change course for Aruba. In October the Antilla unloaded her cargo of sulphur at the port of San Nicolaas in the south of Aruba and then she and the other three ships took anchorage in Malmok Bay in the northwest of the island.

The German ships were monitored and blocked from leaving by British and French squadrons - but one of the other German vessels managed to escape and break the blockade. The other two attempted an escape but were spotted by the Royal Navy and subsequently scuttled by their crews.

Scuttling

As the early days of war progressed, fears grew that the Netherlands would also be invaded. Thus, the crew of the Antilla was confined to their ship. After the invasion of the Netherlands on May 10th, the government ordered the seisure of all German vessels in Dutch ports. Dutch marines approached the ship on the same day but were refused entry by the captain. While they went back to sure for reinforcements, the German crew was able to scuttle the Antilla. They did this by opening seacocks in the engine room and setting fire to parts of the ship. When the marines returned, they were not able to close the cocks because of the fires so the ship went down on May 11th. The crew was taken prisoner and were later transferred to Jamaica, where they were interred for the rest of the war.

Misconceptions

A number of popular misconceptions have arisen around the Antilla. One is that she was secretly a U-boat tender. Yet between her arrival off Aruba in September 1939 and Germany's invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940, the Dutch authorities repeatedly searched the ship for weapons and found none.

A second misconception is that when the Dutch sought to take over the ship, Captain Schmidt negotiated a 24-hour delay. This was not the case, the only delay was the wait for reinforcements by the marines.

A third misconception is that when scuttling the ship, the crew heated her boilers so that the seawater entering through her seacocks caused a boiler explosion, and that this explosion broke the ship in half. Yet divers that visited the wreck during the war found her intact.

A fourth misconception is that Captain Schmidt spent the war in a prison camp on Bonaire and after the war bought the camp to build a hotel. Yet the entire crew was transported to Jamaica and after the war the camp was bought by local entrepreneur Lodewijk Gerharts who built the hotel.

divebudy.com

The SS Antilla wreck from the air.

The SS Antilla is one of the Caribbean's largest shipwrecks, exceeded by only the 180 meters long cruise liners Bianca C. and Antilles. The ship lies on its port side in Malmok Bay in up to 18 meters of water, but a small part of the starboard side is exposed over water. Around 1953, storm damage had broken the wreck in two.

The ship attracts much marine life and it has become a popular dive site. Storm damage has continued to break up the wreck, and some divers consider it now unsafe to enter.

• Your Valuable Guide To The Great Antilla Wreck Dive in Aruba.
• Lloyd's (1940).
  Lloyd's Register, Steamers & Motorships (PDF). London: Lloyd's Register. 1940.
  Lloyd's.
• Willem Submerged.
  The true story of Es. Antilla (1939) and her crew.
• Wikimedia Commons.
  SS Antilla.