SS Pommerania (1878)

The SS Pommerania was a German Hamburg-America Line ocean liner, built in 1873 by Caird & Co. of Greenock. She was a substantial passenger and cargo steamer of 3,382 gross tons, measuring roughly 110 metres long with a 12.2 metre beam. With a single screw, compound engines and a service speed of about 13 knots, she worked the North Atlantic route between Hamburg, Southampton and New York, carrying emigrants, cabin passengers, mails and general cargo. In short, she was part liner, part lifeline, and part floating luggage cupboard for the 19th-century Atlantic world.

Her final voyage ended in the Channel on the night of 25-26 November 1878, while returning from New York to Hamburg via Plymouth. Off Folkestone, she was struck amidships on the starboard side by the iron-hulled Welsh barque Moel Eilian, which was bound from Rotterdam to Cardiff. Four of Pommerania’s nine lifeboats were smashed in the collision, and she sank in less than half an hour. Sources vary slightly on the death toll, giving 48, 50 or 55 lives lost, but the scale of the disaster is beyond doubt. Today she lies in about 25 metres, a classic Channel liner wreck with machinery, scattered structure and real human history behind every plate and rib. For divers, this is Victorian steamship history at touching distance, and considerably more exciting than another tidy spreadsheet pretending to be a wreck.