Athenia headed through the North Channel around Ireland and was well out into the Atlantic before war was declared.

Some 1,102, along with 316 crew, put to sea at 4 p.m. 1, picked up more people off Belfast that evening, and then went on to Liverpool to receive its final passengers. So Athenia had more passengers than usual. The international crisis in August-failed alliance talks between Britain, France and the Soviet Union followed by the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of Aug.В 23-had resulted in a crush of people attempting to get home before hostilities broke out. Unlike the large, glamorous luxury liner RMS Queen Mary on the Southampton-to-New York run, Athenia and her sister ships usually carried families visiting grandparents in Scotland and northern England, and students, tourists and immigrants. U-30 fired four torpedoes, one of which hit Athenia on the port side, striking the ship a mortal blow.ДЄthenia was a Donaldson Line ship, built in 1923, servicing the northern United Kingdom ports of Glasgow, Belfast and Liverpool on a regular route to Quebec City and Montreal. He concluded it was an armed merchant cruiser. In fact, Germany was committed by treaty not to sink civilian passenger ships, but as dusk fell that evening, the captain of U-30 sighted Athenia running without lights and sailing in a zig-zag anti-submarine pattern. 19 and 22 and were on station around the British Isles when the crisis over the German invasion of Poland reached its climax. A flotilla of 19 U-boats had sailed between Aug. The German submarine U-30 had attacked Athenia.ДЇor Canadians, Britons and even Americans, this is when and where the Second World War war began. But by about mid-afternoon Sunday, as Cook told one passenger, they should be far enough into the Atlantic Ocean northwest of Britain and Ireland to be out of danger.ДЄt 7:40, just as the evening meal was being served, a violent explosion destroyed the engine room, plunging the dining room into darkness, sending tables and chairs skidding across the deck, and causing the ship to list to port and begin settling by the stern.

While the ship had actually gotten underway two days earlier-en route from Glasgow to Montreal via Belfast and Liverpool-Cook had felt that the urgency of the international situation demanded his presence on the bridge. At just after 7 oвЂ™clock that evening, Captain James Cook of the passenger liner SS Athenia joined his first-class guests for dinner. Independent News and Media/Getty Images/534277070Д«ritain declared war on Germany at 11В a.m.

The sinking city save the survivors