Nirpura Gallery

Steamship Nirpura.

Master: 1943 Thomas George Hodgkinson.

In convoy DN-21 on a voyage from Durban for Karachi with 737 horses, donkeys & mules & 39 South African Defence Troops (a total of 126 persons on board) Nirpura was torpedoed by German submarine (U-160 Georg Lassen) & sank in the Indian Ocean in 32.47S/29.47E on 3 March 1943. About 80 men climbed into a lifeboat but they were blown out of it when two depth charges were dropped by a frigate trying to destroy the enemy. Some of the men managed to cling to the wreckage of the lifeboat but they either died of hypothermia or were eaten by sharks. Only three of those that took to the lifeboat survived. 38 lives were lost.

Lives lost March 1943: Cardoz, Ignacio, boy, 31, India; Eleash Ali, tindal, 43, India; Howie, Major Adrian Morrison (South African Vetinary Corps) aged 53, Cape Town; Idras Mian, fireman, 30, India; Jamshed Ali, bhandary, 51, India; Kennedy, James Middleton, 4^th engineer officer, 24, Dundee; Kileen, JW, warrant officer class 1 (South African Vetinary Corps) aged 50, Transvaal, South Africa; Mithan, topass, 21, India; Morkib Ali, oiler, 33, India; Muhammad Ishaq, fireman, 39, India; Mumtaz Mian, trimmer, 44, India; Muqaddas Ali, fireman, 32, India; Mustafa, Ud, Din, fireman, 24, India; Nicholson, George Augustine, 1^st radio officer, 24; Qutb Ali, trimmer, 32, India; Scaife, Thomas, 2^nd engineer officer, 42, Sunderland; Young, RS, corporal (dresser South African Vetinary Corps) aged 46, Johannesburg.

Survivors March 1943: Hodgkinson, Thomas George, master; Wilson, Dr Robert, medical officer.