SS Glentworth

SS Glentworth was a shelter deck cargo steamship built in 1920 by Hawthorn Leslie & Co. in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England for R.S. Dalgliesh and Dalgliesh Steam Shipping Co. Ltd., also of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.[1] After the Great Depression affected UK merchant shipping in the first years of the 1930s, Dalgliesh sold Glentworth to a company controlled by Counties Ship Management (an offshoot of the Rethymnis & Kulukundis shipbroking company of London[4]) who renamed her SS Box Hill.[1]

Details

The ship's stokehold had 12 corrugated furnaces with a combined grate area of 214 sqft.[2] They heated three 200 lbf/in2 single-ended boilers with a combined heating surface of 8655 sqft.[2][3] She was built as a turbine steamer: two steam turbines with a combined power output of 620 NHP drove the shaft to the single propeller by reduction gearing.[2] However, when she changed hands in 1934 she was re-engined with a Hawthorn Leslie 586 NHP three-cylinder triple expansion steam engine.[3] The conversion retained her original boilers, but her furnaces were converted to oil burning.[3]

The ship was equipped with direction finding equipment and radio.[2]

Loss

Late in 1939 Box Hill sailed from Saint John, New Brunswick bound for Hull with a cargo of 8,452 tons wheat.[1] On New Year's Eve she was in the North Sea 9 nmi off the Humber lightship when she struck a German mine.[1] The explosion broke her back and she sank almost immediately with the loss of over half its crew.[1]

Box Hill was Counties Ship Management's first loss of the Second World War. CSM's losses continued until just a week before the surrender of Japan in August 1945, by which time the company had lost a total of 13 ships.

Both sections of Box Hill's wreck were a hazard to shipping and showed above the water.[1] In 1952 the Royal Navy dispersed her remains with high explosive and Admiralty charts now mark her position as a "foul" ground.[1]

Sources & further reading