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| History | |
|---|---|
 France | |
| Name | Georges Philippar |
| Namesake | Georges Philippar |
| Owner | Cie desMessageries Maritimes |
| Port of registry | Marseilles |
| Builder | Soc desAteliers et Chantiers de la Loire, St Nazaire |
| Launched | 6 November 1930 |
| Completed | January 1932 |
| Identification |
|
| Fate | Sank 15 May 1932 |
| General characteristics | |
| Tonnage | |
| Length | 542.7 ft (165.4 m) |
| Beam | 68.2 ft (20.8 m) |
| Depth | 46.9 ft (14.3 m) |
| Installed power | 3,300NHP |
| Propulsion | 2× 10-cylinder2S SCSAmarine diesel engines; twinscrews |
| Speed | 18+1⁄2 knots (34.3 km/h) |
| Crew | 347 |
Georges Philippar was anocean liner of the FrenchMessageries Maritimes line that was built in 1930. On her maiden voyage in 1932 she caught fire and sank in theGulf of Aden with the loss of 52 lives.
Georges Philippar was a 17,359 GRT ocean liner. She was 542.7 ft (165.4 m) long, with a beam of 68.2 ft (20.8 m) and adepth of 46.9 ft (14.3 m). She was amotor ship with twotwo-stroke, single cyclesingle-actingmarine diesel engines. Each engine had 10 cylinders of28+3⁄4 inches (730 mm) bore by17+1⁄4 inches (440 mm) stroke and was built bySulzer Brothers,Winterthur, Switzerland. Between them the two engines developed 3,300NHP,[1] giving the ship a speed of18+1⁄2 knots (34.3 km/h).[2]
Georges Philippar was built byAteliers et Chantiers de la Loire,Saint-Nazaire for Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes to replacePaul Lacat, which had been destroyed by fire in December 1928.[3] She was launched on 6 November 1930.[2] On 1 December 1930 she caught fire while being fitted out.[4] Named after FrenchMessageries Maritimes CEOGeorges Philippar, she was completed in January 1932.[2] She was registered inMarseilles.[1]
Before she started her maiden voyage, French police warned her owners that threats had been made on 26 February 1932 to destroy the ship. The outward voyage tookGeorges Philippar toYokohama,Japan, without incident and she started her homeward voyage, calling atShanghai,China andColombo,Ceylon.Georges Philippar left Columbo with 347 crew and 518 passengers aboard. On two occasions a fire alarm went off in a storeroom wherebullion was being stored, but no fire was found.[3]TheGeorges Philippar class was an innovative design, experimenting withDiesel propulsion, sporting unusual square section short smokestacks (whimsically dubbed flower pots by the sailors) and an extensive use of electricity, for lighting, kitchen and deck winches. CEO Georges Philippar, created a special Greek-Latin term "Nautonaphtes" (Oil-powered ships) for advertising purposes as he felt that Diesel sounded too Germanic for post-World War I French public.
At the time French sailor's lore considered giving a ship the name of a living person a way to attract bad luck and the practice was later discontinued. The electric plant and wiring of theGeorges Philippar relied on high voltage (220 volts)Direct current. It proved troublesome from the shipyard stage onwards with cables overheating, circuit breakers malfunctioning … and so on.It was lavishly decorated with wood panelling and sported a high gloss varnished wooden grand staircase which proved highly flammable.
On 16 May, whileGeorges Philippar was 145 nautical miles (269 km) offCape Guardafui,Italian Somaliland,[5] a fire broke out in one of her luxury cabins occupied by Mme Valentin, when a spark from a faulty light switch ignited wood paneling. There was a delay in reporting the fire, which had spread by the time Captain Vicq was made aware of it. Vicq tried different firefighting methods, but to no avail. It has been reported that he decided to beachGeorges Philippar on the coast ofAden and increased her speed, which only made the fire burn more fiercely. However, these reports are unsubstantiated as the engine rooms were evacuated and the ship was left drifting. The order to abandon ship was given and adistress signal sent.[3]
Three ships came in response. TheSoviettankerSovietskaïa Neft rescued 20 people, who were transferred to the French passenger shipAndre Lebon and landed atDjibouti. They returned to France on the French passenger shipGénéral Voyron. Another 19 people were rescued by Brocklebank Line'scargo shipMahsud, and 12 more were rescued by T&J Harrison's cargo shipContractor;Hakone Maru also participated.[6] The two British ships landed their survivors atAden.Mahsud also took the corpses of some of the 52 dead.[5] On 19 May,Georges Philippar sank in the Gulf of Aden.[3] Her position was14°20′N50°25′E / 14.333°N 50.417°E /14.333; 50.417.[2]
Albert Londres, a French journalist, was last seen trying to escape by a porthole from the cabin in which he was trapped. Maurice Sadorge, the second engineering officer, tried to send him the end of a firehose from the deck above, but Londres couldn't grip it strongly enough and either fell in the sea or back into the burning cabin. His body was neither recovered nor identified. Someconspiracy theories, involving either sabotage byHo Chi Minh or a covert assassination of Londres by the Japanese intelligence services, have been advanced but are deemed dubious.
The November 1932 edition ofLa Science et la Vie carried an artist's impression of the burning ship on its front cover.[7]
An official enquiry was held and Cdt Vicq, his officers and crew, along with some passengers appeared in court along with Colonel Pouderoux, chief Paris firefighter, acting as an expert.Shipyard personnel were dissuaded from appearing in court but later testified that the electric plant of theGeorges Philippar had been troublesome from the start and that the shipyard board had planned to postpone the ship's commissioning in order to correct the defects but later changed their minds under the pressure of delay penalties.Cdt Vicq downplayed the electrical troubles and frequent short circuits, only admitting trouble with the electric kitchen ovens and appliances. (He had to have new heating elements hastily manufactured inYokohama as the original ones kept burning out in succession, exhausting the ship's supply of spares.) He chose to point out the faultless work of the emergency electrical generators, which he said were crucial in the comparatively low death toll. Captain's Vicq statements were probably biased by company loyalty for insurance reasons but the enquiry nevertheless concluded blamed the disaster on a "catastrophic fire initiated by a malfunction in the high voltage DC power grid of the ship" and recommended banning wooden fittings and panelling as much as possible in the design of future ships.The state-of-the-artNormandie was one of the first ships to benefit from these new guidelines, incorporating massively over-engineered firefighting equipment, a less troublesomealternating current powerplant and state-of-the-art circuit breakers.
Ironically this did not preventNormandie from burning in New York during World War II as an inexperienced crew of US Coast Guardsmen had taken over from the French crew and were not familiar with the equipment. Despite the new regulations, fire-related disasters continued to plague French ocean liners throughout the next decade, includingSSAtlantique in 1933, SSLafayette in 1938,SSParis in 1939, andNormandie in 1942.
Shipwrecks and maritime incidents in 1930 | |
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| Shipwrecks |
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| Other incidents |
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Shipwrecks and maritime incidents in 1932 | |
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| Shipwrecks |
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| Other incidents |
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