Of Ships and Men - Haslingden, Kalo, Snowdon Range - the Story

The following information has been compiled by “Heroism & Heartbreak” Project Volunteers from a wide range of sources, including Lloyd’s Registers, the Miramar Ship Index (http://www.miramarshipindex.org.nz/), U-boat.net (http://www.uboat.net/), and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s Tower Hill Memorial records (http://www.cwgc.org/). If you have any further information about these ships or their crews and would like to share it with us, then please contact us at infodesk@hartlepool.gov.uk

Of Ships and Men – Haslingden, Kalo, Snowdon Range

On May the 12^th, 1918, the small cargo steamer Haslingden was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine UB-21, when some 7 miles off Seaham Harbour. Built at the William Gray shipyard in 1895, this 2,000 ton well-deck steamship was owned by F. Yeoman & Sons, of West Hartlepool, and was sailing empty from Rouen to the Tyne to load a cargo of coal. Eleven of the crew were lost: 28-year old, 2^nd Engineer Edward Carroll who lived at No.17 Prissick Street, Hartlepool; John Lenney Bell; James Crawshaw; Robert Heugh; Cyril Reynolds Hunt; H. Johns; Harry Lyth; William Tucker; Thomas Walter Whitehurst; William Whitfield; William Thomas Wiles.

A month later another Gray-built ship was torpedoed and sunk, this time the small steamship Kalo. Built in 1903 as the Estonia for a Danish company, she was taken over by the British Government in 1917 and renamed. On June the 13^th, 1918, while on a voyage from Newcastle to Pauillac in France with a cargo of coal, she was torpedoed off Flamborough Head by the German submarine UB-107. 
Badly damaged and sinking, an armed trawler attempted to tow her towards the shore, but the Kalo quickly sank, going down in 100 feet of water. Three crewmen from the North-East were lost: Hartlepool-born 2^nd Engineer James Mann, who lived with his wife Florence Louisa at No.4 Friar Street, Hartlepool; and Firemen/Trimmers James Leask (born at South Shields), and William Rutley (born at Sunderland).

The four and a half thousand ton steamship Snowdon Range was a locally owned vessel belonging to the Neptune Steam Navigation Company, and managed by Furness Withy. The ship had been built in 1903 by Scott’s Shipbuilding & Engineering Company on the River Clyde and originally named Dalhanna, before being sold and renamed in 1915.
On the 28^th of March 1918, on a voyage from Philadelphia to Liverpool with general cargo and a consignment of explosives, she was torpedoed and sunk in the Irish Sea by the German submarine U-65. Four members of the crew were lost: 21-year old 4^th Engineer James Arthur Bowman, the son of John William and Elizabeth Bowman, who lived at No.8, Whitburn Street, West Hartlepool; and Firemen/Trimmers Saiyed Husain, Richard Keegan, and Robert Barbour Prentice.

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