S.S Ceramic - Home Page

This is the little known story of the final voyage of S.S Ceramic, which was torpedoed and sunk during World War II
with the loss of all aboard, except one.
This site is dedicated to all those who lost their lives aboard S.S Ceramic.

This is the story of Private William Gerald Godfrey, and the 656 or so passengers and crew who were lost at sea on the 7th December 1942 aboard the S.S. Ceramic.

In Memory

Mary Lillian Haggerty

18th December 1921 - 4th July 2006

The Widow of William Gerald Godfrey
and the reason this website began.

For 50 years my grandmother did not know the circumstances surrounding the death of her first husband, all that she knew was that he was lost at sea. So, I decided to take on the task of finding out what had happened to him.
The Imperial War Museum, London, gave me the starting point and things took off from there.

The S.S. Ceramic was built by Harland and Wolff, Belfast in 1913. She was launched for the White Star Lines Australian Service in December 1912, and for years she was the largest ship sailing between Europe and Australia.
In 1914 she was taken over for Trooping, and in May 1916 had a narrow escape from a torpedo attack in the Mediterranean. She had 2,500 troops on board.
On June 9th, 1917, she had another narrow escape from a torpedo attack in the English Channel, and on July 21st the same year, she was chased by a surfaced submarine, but out-distanced the enemy.

After the end of WWI, she went back into service as a passenger ship, sailing from Liverpool to Sydney. With the formation of the Cunard-White Star Line, Shaw, Saville and Albion acquired the Australian assets, which included “Ceramic”. “Ceramic” remained on the Australia via the Cape service.

In 1939, she was requisitioned once again for Trooping duties out of Australia, but she continued carrying passengers.
On November 23rd, 1942, S.S. Ceramic left Liverpool, commanded by Captain Elford, on what was to be her last voyage. She had on board 196 military/naval personnel, Nurses of the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service and 152 fare paying passengers in 1st Class, included among this number 12 children.
Only one of the passengers was to survive.

Originally sailing in convoy from Liverpool, on the 2nd or 3rd December Ceramic detached from this convoy and began sailing independently as routed. Nothing of incident happened until 8pm on the 6th December, when she was hit by a torpedo fired from the U 515, under the command of Korvettenkapitan Werne Henke, (1909-44)
The weather was cold and the sea was rough, it was quite dark and the visibility was poor.
Action Stations were sounded, and 2 or 3 minutes after the first explosion, 2 more torpedoes hit the engine room below the water line. The engines stopped and the ship was plunged into darkness.
There was very little panic as the passengers and crew made their way to the lifeboats. Approximately 8 lifeboats managed to get released onto the sea, all of them full to capacity.
S.S. Ceramic did not sink straight away, and after 3 hours or so, just before midnight the U 515 fired 2 more torpedoes at the stricken liner. This time she broke in two and disappeared within 10 seconds.
It took a total of 5 torpedoes to finally sink S.S. Ceramic.

The sea, by this time was very rough and it was raining. The lifeboats were becoming swamped and needed continual baling out.
At about 8am the next morning the wind had got up and a storm started. Rain and hail began lashing the survivors. Lifeboats were capsizing and there were many people in the water, supported by their lifejackets.
(Seamen in the area considered it at the time, to have been one of the worst storms that they had experienced.)

At about midday, the U 515 returned and surfaced near the survivors. Two German sailors threw a rope to one of the men in the water, Sapper. Eric Munday of the Royal Engineers, and took him aboard the submarine.
(Sapper. Munday was eventually sent to Stalag 8B in Upper Silesia and remained there until he was liberated.)

The wind at this time had reached Force 10, and the sea was almost swamping the conning tower on the submarine.
Henke was ordered by his H.Q. to return to the site of the sinking to try to find the Captain of the Ceramic to find out where she had been bound. A lookout from the submarine reported seeing a body, and then empty life jackets and the broken mast from the ship. He then saw a lifeboat whose occupants waved to him. It was reported later that Henke was very upset at the sight that greeted him when he returned to the site of the sinking.
Henke ordered his men to take the first survivor that came close enough to his vessel.

As a postscript to this story, on the 9th April 1944, the U 515 was sunk by four US destroyers & three aircraft from USS Guadalcanal. 44 of her ship's company, including Henke, were taken prisoner.
Kapitanleutnant Werner Henke and his crew were landed at Norfolk, Virginia on the 26th April and were transferred 3 days later to Camp Fort George G. Meade in Maryland.
While he was there, Henke was shot dead whilst attempting to escape on June 15th 1944.
In 1994, a stab at the Surrey phone book by my uncle, (Gerald’s son, born one week after his fathers death), found Mr. Munday alive and well and living in Surrey. It is thanks to Mr. Munday that we discovered the truth behind the sinking of S.S. Ceramic.

Thanks to The Commonwealth War Graves Commissions web site, I have managed to put together the crew and passenger list, along with some of the troops that were aboard the Ceramic.
Private Godfrey was a Dental Nurse in the Army Dental Corps, but I have been unable to establish where he was being posted. It is possible that he was headed for the Military Hospital on the island of Mauritius.
Most of the civilians were going back to their homes in South Africa.

The Service personnel are commemorated by name on the Brookwood War Memorial, which stands in the Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey
The civilians are commemorated by name in the S.S. Ceramic section of the Civilian War Dead Register.
The Merchant Navy personnel are commemorated by name on the Tower Hill Memorial, London.
The Naval personnel are commemorated by name on the various Naval War Memorials around the country.