J. Derraine 27-Jan-17

Killed in Action: 27 January 1917. Age 32.

Supplementary Notes: Drowned as a result of an attack by an enemy submarine.

Born: Galway.

Remembered: Tower Hill Memorial -London -United Kingdom.

ARTIST was a 3.570grt, defensively-armed British Merchant Ship. On the 27th January 1917 when 58 miles W ½ S from the Smalls, South Wales she was torpedoed without warning and sunk by a submarine. 35 lives lost including Master.

There were a few survivors who were picked up after two nights and three days in an open lifeboat including a young cadet officer Robert Davies Owen aged 18. He spent several months recovering from the affects of hypothermia and exposure. He went on to study medicine at Guy’s Hospital in London before becoming a leading Ear Nose and Throat surgeon at Cardiff Royal Infirmary. He died in 1990

The Secretary of the Admiralty makes the following announcement:-
The British steamship ARTIST (1917), when 48 miles from land, in a heavy easterly gale, was torpedoed by a German submarine on Saturday morning. In response to her appeal, sent by wireless, “SOS, sinking quickly,” auxiliary patrol craft proceeded to the spot, and searched the vicinity, but found no trace of the vessel or her survivors.
Three days later the steamship LUCHANA picked up a boat containing 16 of the survivors. The boat had originally contained 23, but seven had died of wounds and exposure, and were buried at sea.
The surviving 16 were landed, and of these 5 were suffering from severe frostbite, and one from e broken arm. The crew had been forced to abandon their ship in open boats in a midwinter gale, and utterly without means of reaching land or succour.
Those of them who perished during three days of bitter exposure were murdered, and to pretend that anything was done to ensure their safety would be sheer hypocrisy. The pledge given by Germany to the United States not to sink merchant ships without ensuring the safety of the passengers and crews have been broken before, abut never in circumstances of more cold-blooded brutality.