SS Athinai was a Greek transatlantic steamer that burned and sank on 19 September 1915.

Commercial career

The SS Athinai was commissioned by the Hellenic Transatlantic Steam Navigation Company to operate between Piraeus, Kalamata, Patras, and New York. She was requisitioned by the Greek navy for use as a military transport between November 1912 and June 1913, after which she resumed her normal operations. Her owners went bankrupt in August 1914 and she was purchased by the National Steamship Navigation Company and was operated by the National Greek Line for use on the same route.

Destruction by Fire

On 13 September 1915, the Athinai left New York City carrying 438 passengers and crew of 70 and a cargo of coffee, rice, cotton and newspaper. A fire started in her sealed lower #2 hold on the morning of September 18th, while the ship was still only a few days out of New York. Captain Nicolas sBoziatgiles ordered the hold's vents closed and pumped steam from the engine into the compartment in an effort to control the fire, but by the next morning the flames appeared to have started anew and a general SOS

SOS

SOS is the commonly used description for the international Morse code distress signal...

 was issued on the ship's wireless set. Her distress call was received by the Anchor liner SS Tuscania

SS Tuscania (1914)

The SS Tuscania was a luxury liner of the Cunard subsidiary Anchor Line, named after a town in Italy. She was torpedoed in 1918 by the German U-boat UB-77 while carrying American troops to Europe and sank with a loss of 210 lives.-Commercial career:...

, by the British freighter Roumanian Prince, by the Atlantic Transport Line

Atlantic Transport Line

The Atlantic Transport Line was a Baltimore, Maryland-based passenger shipping line that was folded into the International Mercantile Marine shipping trust in 1901. The line developed with railroad support as an offshoot of Bernard N. Baker's Baltimore Storage and Lighterage Company in 1881...

 liner Minnehaha

SS Minnehaha

Minnehaha was a 13,443-ton ocean liner built by Harland and Wolff and launched on 31 March 1900. Operated by the American-owned Atlantic Transport Line, she was the sister ship of SS Minneapolis, SS Minnetonka, and SS Minnewaska....

 and by the French liner Touraine, but by the time the Tuscania and Prince arrived the fire appeared to be uncontrollable. Passengers were ferried from the Athinai to the Tuscania and Prince by lifeboat, and the burning Athinai was abandoned at 40' 54" N, 58' 47" W. Only one passenger lost his life: a man who jumped overboard in the confusion.

Aftermath

Captain Boziatgiles immediately asserted his belief that the fire was caused by incendiary bombs, noting that the fire started in a hold containing a relatively non-combustible cargo of rice and coffee and that the fire had seemed to reignite at several points in the hold on the morning of the 19th, after the flames had seemingly been damped by pressurized steam the previous day. Based on his testimony, the National Steam Company secured the help of a detective agency to investigate the workers involved in filling the hold. Boziatgiles's claim was seemingly vindicated with the 24 October arrests of two Germans, Robert Fay and Walter Scholz. The men had attempted to purchase 10 pounds of explosive picric acid

Picric acid

Picric acid is the chemical compound formally called 2,4,6-trinitrophenol . This yellow crystalline solid is one of the most acidic phenols. Like other highly nitrated compounds such as TNT, picric acid is an explosive...

, a suspicious action which led investigators to discover New York Harbor maps, high explosives and ship-mountable explosive devices in their apartment and in a rented storage unit. Fay later claimed to be a German spy and was eventually convicted, along with Scholz and a third conspirator, on two indictments of "conspiring to destroy vehicles with intent to cause loss".