SS ELENI KANAVARIOTI (HELENA)

The steamship ELENI KANAVARIOTI (1886-1941), built as the FEDERATION, was the last British ship to escape Germany before the Great War (1914-1918). In 1921, it came to the Greek seas under the name the SPETSOPOULA and it was sold the following year to the Germans as the LUISE BLUME. In 1925, it was renamed the NACKA under a Swedish flag and renamed again in 1926 as the ALSTER. In 1927, it returned to Greece as the MARIA and from 1928 to 1939 it travelled under the name HERAKLIS. After repairs, it was renamed the ELENI KANAVARIOTI. Then, in 1940, it was seized by the Greek government and used by the occupying Germans as the HELENA, until it was sunk.

The tragedy of S/S ELENI KANAVARIOTI

On the morning of the 6th of April 1941, the German armies simultaneously attacked Yugoslavia and Greece. The Yugoslavian army tried to fend off the attack, but the German onslaught could not be stopped. As the front collapsed, some units of the Yugoslav Army stationed in the southern provinces of the country (Vardar, Bregalnica and Kosovo) retreated into Greece. Their aim was to unite with the Greek and British forces and to continue fighting on their side, hoping for a counterattack to the north. The Germans occupied Skopje on the 7th of April and Yugoslav units escaped to a Monastery on the frontier and entered Greek territory on the 9/10th of April. They joined the British forces and followed them on their withdrawal out of mainland Greece. About 2,500 Yugoslav troops arrived in Kalamata, where they joined 20,000 other Allied troops who were hoping to be transported to Egypt and the Middle East. On the 23rd of April, the destroyer HEREWARD embarked 250 Yugoslavs who were custodians of the Yugoslavian Crown Jewels. However, the Germans had completed their occupation of the mainland before the British led evacuation could be completed. As a result, 1,500 Yugoslavs were captured by the Germans.

On seizing the Greek ports, the Germans confiscated any ships which had not fled south in time. The Greek authorities had issued a highly contentious directive which forbade the movement of Greek merchant ships out of the country, with the exception of those less than 1,000 tonnes. As Captain N. Petropoulos (1972) comments, “It appears that the government and some officers of the British Navy had the foolish hope that they would secure the country’s inland transport. The decision was clearly wrong. Following the seizure of the ports, the Germans made every vessel available for their own military needs.”

Among the ships commandeered was the cargo steamship ELENI KANAVARIOTI. The 66.75 x 9.38 metre vessel was built at the S.S. Austin & Son yards in Sunderland, England in 1886 as the FEDERATION for the Co-operative Wholesale Society. This company was founded in 1863 and by 1876, it had become involved in cargo transportation to various French ports and Hamburg, Germany.

he FEDERATION (Charles Hill Collection)

The 797 gross ton FEDERATION was propelled by a single screw driven by a three-cylinder 161 hp steam engine. In 1906, it became part of the West Hartlepool Steam Nav. fleet and embarked on voyages to the North Sea. The outbreak of World War I in August 1914 found the ship in Hamburg. To avoid confiscation, its captain discreetly sailed it out of the port with dimmed navigation lights and managed to escape, thereby making the FEDERATION the last British ship to leave Germany. The vessel was sold in 1916 to Bede Metal & Chemical Co. of Newcastle. In 1921, the ship raised the Greek flag after it was purchased by Spetsiotissa shipowner Despina Petroutsis, who renamed it the SPETSOPOULA. The following year, it was sold on to the Germans as the LUISE BLUME. In 1925, it was in Sweden, where it was renamed the NACKA and, in 1926, the ALSTER.

The following year it was re-purchased by Greeks. This time by Panagis Halikiopoulos of Argostoli who registered it in Piraeus as a/a 595 and named it the MARIA. In 1928, it was bought by Porthito Baikas. In 1933, it was resold to A.G.E. Cement and given the name HERACLES. On the 12th of March 1939, during a voyage from Thessaloniki to the island of Mytilene with a load of grain, the HERAKLIS ran aground at Cape Zeitigli, resulting in an inflow of water and its sinking to the height of the main deck. It was helped by the rescue [tug?] boats MARIGO MATSA and EVANGELISTRIA. After several days of effort, The HERAKLIS was eventually refloated. It was taken to Piraeus, where it was put up for sale. It was purchased by Spyr. Kanavariotis, who repaired and renamed it the ELENI KANAVARIOTI.

The MARIA (K. Zimeri, Municipality of Volos Archive)

On the 30th of October 1940, the vessel was seized by the Greek Government and assigned to the Maritime Directorate of Shipping. Sources dispute what happened to the ELENI KANAVARIOTI at the end of April 1941. Some report that on the 28/29th of April, it was bombarded by German aircraft and sank near Epanomi (in the eastern Thermaikos Gulf) while sailing from Smyrni (Ismir), Turkey to Thessaloniki. The same sources say that it was recovered by the Germans on the 12th of May and pressed into service. This view was also adopted by Vice Admiral K. Paizis-Paradelis (2004), despite not mentioning where it was sunk during the German air attack. l. However, Vice Admiral Christos Dounis (2000) does not report such an event. On the contrary, he states that the ship was seized by the Germans after the occupation of Piraeus. This is also the belief of the author, as we have to consider that Thessaloniki had already been occupied by the Germans by April the 9th and no Greek ship would sail there after that time. For that reason, the ship must have remained in the Piraeus area at the end of April, after having escaped the German air attacks which almost destroyed the Greek shipping fleet. As it was less than 1,000 tonnes, the ELENI KANVARIOTI had not been ordered to leave before the country was occupied, and was thus seized by the Germans as a prize of war. The Greek crew under Captain G. Mazarakis was obliged to remain with the vessel.

The Germans decided to transfer all Yugoslavs of Serbian origin who had been captured in Greece to the Osnabrück prisoner of war camp in Germany. They would be transported by rail to Thessaloniki, where they would embark on ferries. For this purpose, the ELENI KANAVARIOTI was renamed by the Germans as the HELENA. A total of 503 Serbs were aboard on May the 24th, among them were four generals and 52 high-ranking officers. They were accompanied by an armed guard of 20 Germans.

According to some Yugoslav reports, the vessel was unable to leave Piraeus as the Greek crew had sabotaged it. Departure for Thessaloniki was delayed until the following morning when the damage could be repaired. HELENA travelled during the day and remained anchored at night due to the risk of shipping mines. So, on the night of the 26th, it was moored off the coast of Epanomi on the eastern side of the Thermaikos Gulf. What the German administration did not know was that by the early morning of the 11th of May, the British submarine HMS RORQUAL[3]had laid 50 mines off the coast of Epanomi. On May the 26th, the mines inflicted their first damage, the Romanian steamer CARMENSYLVA (1,601 GRT), which sank with the loss of 15 lives.

On the morning of the 27th of May, around 04:30 hrs, the HELENA continued its voyage into the Thermaikos Gulf. About half an hour later, it also entered the British minefield and struck a mine. It also caused a large column of water to rise on the port side of the ship, which then inundated the deck as it cascaded back down to Earth. The blast almost broke the hull into two and water flooded in. The boat sank in less than 15 minutes, 2 or 3 nautical miles from Nea Michaniona. In the mayhem, both the crew and German guard scrambled for the lifeboats, mercilessly leaving their captives to their own fate below decks. Tragic scenes followed as the drowning men cried anxiously for help. The incident was perceived by locals in the nearby fishing villages, but they were reluctant to help as they thought the vessel had been transporting German soldiers. In the end, 214 prisoners were dragged down with the ELENI KANAVARIOTI as it plummeted towards the seabed, while 289 were rescued. According to Serbian narratives, the local fishermen rushed to help after a frantic Serbian Navy officer managed to explain what had happened using gestures and hand signs. After their recapture by the occupation authorities, the prisoners were returned to Thessaloniki. They were then sent to Osnabrück a few days later.

The unfortunate tragedy became the basis of a conspiracy theory which accused the Germans of deliberately sinking the vessel as revenge against the Yugoslavs who continued to oppose them, despite the surrender of their country. Supposedly, the vessel was sunk in a German air attack. These accusations, however, do not stand up in the light of historical truth. The location of the wreck coincides with the minefield as recorded in the RORQUAL* logbook, and survivor testimonies point to a mine explosion. Moreover, revenge could be extracted on the Yugoslavs in countless other ways which did not involve the deprivation of a vessel which was valuable to the Germans in the Aegean.

The shipwreck of the ELENI KANAVARIOTI lay at 40 metres. It was dismantled for scrap in 1949 by contractor I. Georgiadis under a Wreck Lifting Organization agreement. Unfortunately, as in other cases, the State agency made no distinction between shipwrecks that posed real dangers to navigation and others that should have been left untouched, as is appropriate for war tombs. Post-war financial and, apparently, spiritual poverty, led to the destruction of historically significant shipwrecks (e.g. the cruiser ELLI, and the destroyer QUEEN OLGA), not to mention the wrecks in which hundreds were entombed (e.g. the ORIA).

The sinking of the ELENI KANAVARIOTI is regarded in Serbia as the worst tragedy since the brief ‘April War’, as the 1940 invasion by the Germans is referred to. In the last week of May, an annual memorial service is held at the Sanctuary of St. Mark in Belgrade. It commemorates the dead in the presence of their relatives.


* RORQUAL (N 74) was built in 1935-37 at Vickers Armstrong, England and belonged to the Grampus class of mine-laying submarines. Its action sank ships amounting to a total capacity of 57,704 tons, many of them in the Greek seas. It was dismantled in 1946.

References

Paizi-Paradellis K., The Price of War, Maritime History Study Company, Athens, 2004.

Petropoulos ND, Memories and Thoughts of the old Navy, Private edition, 1972

Vujičić Dragan, The Blue Grave of World War II, Večernje Novosti newspaper, 24.5.2015

Dounis Ch. Shipwrecks in the Greek Seas 1900-1950, Finatec, Athens, 2000.

Spaldin B.G. & Appleyard H.S., The West Hartlepool Steam Navigation Company Limited and Talisman Trawlers Limited, World Ship Society, 1980.

The Co-operative Wholesale Societies, Limited, England and Scotland: annual, 1900.

Lloyd’s Register

Aris Bilalis is a researcher working on maritime history. The article entitled “The Tragedy of SS ELENI KANAVARIOTI” was first published in the Hellenic Navy Magazine.


[*] Ross J. Robertson is an Australian who has lived in Greece for the past thirty years. He has a BSc (Biology) and is an EFL teacher. He is the co-owner of two private English Language Schools and instructs students studying for Michigan and Cambridge University English Language examinations. He has written various English Language Teaching books for the Hellenic American Union (Greece), Longman-Pearson (UK) and Macmillan Education (UK). He published his debut novel (fiction/humour) entitled ‘Spiked! Read Responsibly’ in 2016. Moreover, he has written several spec screenplays and a number of newspaper articles, including an extensive series on the 75th anniversary of the WWII Liberation of Greece. A keen AOW and Nitrox diver, he is also a shipwreck and research enthusiast and has written features for UK Diver Magazine, US Diver and the Australian newspaper, Neos Kosmos. Ross continues to combine his expertise in English with his love of storytelling and local WWII history to produce exciting materials.

Author: Ομάδα Εναλίων Αποτυπώσεων

Η Ομάδα Εναλίων Αποτυπώσεων (ΟΕΑ) του Εργαστηρίου Τοπογραφίας, στο Τμήμα Αγρονόμων και Τοπογράφων Μηχανικών, συνεργάζεται με τα μέλη της καταδυτικής κοινότητας για την αναζήτηση, την τεκμηρίωση, την μελέτη και την ανάδειξη των ιδιαιτεροτήτων του θαλασσίου περιβάλλοντος, αναλαμβάνοντας συγχρόνως την σχετική ενημέρωση και ευαισθητοποίηση του κοινού. Μέσω εξειδικευμένων προγραμμάτων εκπαίδευσης και ενάλιων δραστηριοτήτων που συντονίζουν ή συμμετέχουν τα μέλη της ΟΕΑ επιδιώκεται η ασφαλής και υπεύθυνη προσέγγιση στα βυθισμένα τεκμήρια της φυσικής και πολιτιστικής μας κληρονομιάς.