Torpedo attack led to Angus rescue

It was the night one century ago that an Angus lifeboat saved a torpedoed crew, while the tide of war was changing miles away.

The volunteer rowers of Montrose were called upon to save the men of SS Eganaes on March 22 1917, the victims of unrestricted German submarine warfare.

It transpired another U-boat had torpedoed an American vessel the same night, with more dramatic consequences for the First World War.

Their story and the brave actions of crews over 200 years of RNLI and lifeboat history are retold in a new book, which was launched on Wednesday night.

Historian John Aitken contributed towards the volume for RNLI Lifeboat Histories, which he said was a “great privilege” and built on research by the late Dorothy Morrison.

Mr Aitken said the Standard Oil vessel Healdton was torpedoed off the Dutch coast, with the loss of 21 crew, on the same night as the Eganaes during the North Sea U-boat blockade off Peterhead.

The Montrose crew were launched the next day to rescue eight herring fishermen, unaware of America’s impending entry to the war on April 6.

“That same night, an American tanker was sunk over on the Dutch coast,” Mr Aitken said.

Although the press at the time assumed the ship had been torpedoed by a German submarine, later records released by Germany and Britain indicate that the ship may have struck a British mine that had been laid in a field of 1,000 mines off the Netherlands, two days earlier.

Reports of the time indicate the survivors of the Eganaes were seen two miles off Montrose.

John Aitken has contributed to the new book on the RNLI.