Current Information:

Age-33

Born-Scotland

Before the war the Otranto was a passenger liner operating between Australia and Europe. In 1914 she was requisitioned by the Admiralty, converted  into an armed merchant cruiser and used to search for German commerce raiders. Later in the war she was employed as a troop carrying transport ship and it was in this capacity that she set sail from New York on 24th September, 1918,  as part of Convoy HX 50, with 665 American troops aboard and her own crew of 362. When the convoy reached the Scottish coast they encountered a very fierce gale and on 6th October, when off the coast of Islay, HMS Otranto collided with another transport ship, the Steam Ship Kashmir. The Kashmir survived this incident but HMS Otranto did not. Without power and with a huge hole in her side she drifted towards the rocks. Despite the mountainous seas and the dark,  the destroyer HMS Mounsey came alongside HMS Otranto and over 500 men were able to jump down onto her decks although many were crushed between the two ships  or fell in the sea and drowned. Full to the brim, HMS Mounsey departed leaving over 400 men still aboard HMS Otranto. Drifting towards Islay she hit bottom less than a half mile from the shore and the order was given to abandon ship. Men desperately swam through the stormy water for the shore but only 16 made it. It was the worst convoy disaster in the whole of the war  and the best estimate of the casualty toll from the disaster is a total of 470 men: 12 officers and 84 crewmen from Otranto, 1 officer and 357 American enlisted men, and 6 French fishermen who had been picked up when their fishing vessel had been hit off he coast of Newfoundland. Among the crew members who lost their lives was Frederick Lahive.