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Empress - a general history

Completed February 1893; Official No. 98536: Code Letters HBCR.

Owners: 1893 Imperial SS Co (Sivewright, Bacon & Co.) West Hartlepool: 1901 Aznar & Co, Bilbao, Spain-renamed Cadiz: 1902 Cia Vasco Gaditana (JE Gomez) Cadiz: 1904 Ogmore SS Co (1899) (G Chitham) Cardiff- renamed Empress: 1911 Amaryllis Shipping Co Ltd (W Coupland & Co) Cardiff.

Masters: 1893-99 A Stewart: 1906 JH Gorvin: 1907-11 E Williams: 1916-17 A Armstrong.

Bound from the Tyne for Southend with a cargo of coal Empress struck a mine laid by German submarine (UC-63 Karsten von Heydebreck) & sank 4½ miles E by S ½ S of Withersea lighthouse on 31 July 1917. 5 lives lost.

Lives lost July 1917:

Anderson, Peter, able seaman, 47, b. Sweden

Husby, Olaf, boatswain, 49, b. Norway

Parker, Thomas W, fireman/trimmer, 25, b. Lincolnshire, resided North Shields

Rawles, George Edwin Arthur, leading seaman, 18, New Cross, London

Van Klanders, Peter I, fireman, 26, b. Rotterdam

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