Confiscation and loss

The Koenjit was originally the Danish ship Stjerneborg. On May 12th 1940, after the start of the Second World War, it was confiscated in Surabaya. The ship was placed in the service of the Koninklijke Rotterdamsche Lloyd NV under the name Koenjit (the Indonesian word for the spice turmeric).

On a voyage with a cargo of war materials from Halifax in Canada to Alexandria via the Cape of Good Hope, the solitary sailing Koenjit was torpedoed in the Atlantic Ocean on May 13th, 1942 by the German submarine U-156. This happened at the height of Barbados, in position 5°30’N/52°40’W. The ship sank yet all 38 crew members were saved.

Marhisdata

The crew after the attack

Before the attack, Master Rasmus M. Rosenhøj was sailing a zigzag course at about 420 miles norhteast of Barbadoes because the ship had already been followed by a submarine for eight hours. In the end, it was struck by a torpedo on the starboard side aft in the engine room, which caused her to sink by the stern. All crew members abandoned ship in two lifeboats, except the master and the chief officer who remained aboard to make sure that everybody had left. They had to jump overboard and swam to the boats when the ship eventually sank. The submarine surfaced to question the survivors and its commander Hartenstein asked for the name, nationality and destination of the ship. The answers he got from the men were so short and so vague that he was not able to establish the identity. Nevertheless he told them their position and course to the nearest land before leaving the area.

The lifeboat in the charge of the master with 25 occupants managed to reach the French island La Désirade, but were not allowed to land there as the island served as a leper colony. Fearing internment on the Vichy controlled Guadeloupe, they decided to head for Dominica and reached Roseau on 19 May. The thirteen occupants of the other lifeboats were picked up by the US steam tanker Christy Payne and were landed at Newark, New Jersey on May 27th.

(Also see Uboat.net under references for this story).

Yard: A/S Burmeister & Wain's Maskin-Og Skibsbyggeri , Copenhagen

Propulsion: 12 cylinder, 4 stroke oil engine, 2 screws

• Marhisdata.
  schip id 3477.
• uboat.net.
  U156 Koenjit.