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SS Baron Douglas

 

 

 

 

 

The SS Baron Douglas was built by Lithgows of Port Glasgow in 1932. She was a general cargo vessel.

Her steam triple expansion. 3cy 1500ihp engines were built by David Rowan & Co, Glasgow.

She was later named: Accrux (1957), Armonia (1961), Harmonia (1963) and Angelo Di Maio (1965).

Registered in Torre del Greco, Italy, she was latterly owned by Kelvin Shipping Co Ltd (H. Hogarth & Sons), Ardrossan, and was scrapped in 1970.

 

This would appear to be the same ship that was sunk by Italian frogmen(1) in Gibraltar in July 1942.

 

 

 

 

See also:

Ships named Douglas

Ships named Baron Douglas

Notes:
1. The Italian frogmen originally used a Spanish villa that was located 2 miles from Gibraltar. It was owned by an Italian officer married to a Spanish woman named Conchita Ramognino.

This villa held the frogmen who would sneak out into the harbor and attack unsuspecting British warships. But this proved very difficult and costly. The harbor was very well protected by netting, patrol boats and search lights. Because of this difficulty, the Italians decided to use a battered Italian merchant ship docked across the bay of Gibraltar. It was the 4,995 ton Olterra.

Italian frogmen secretly replaced the crew with divers and technicians and built a workshop to house, build and maintain human torpedoes. A door was then cut 6 feet below the surface to allow these 2-man human torpedoes to come and go undetected.

Replacement torpedoes were shipped from Italy disguised as boiler tubes. When the Italian frogmen commenced their attacks on British warships from this location, it proved just as costly. Five out of six frogmen never returned. But when the Italians decided to attack the merchant shipping, which was less protected, they were rewarded with easy prey. Italian frogmen sank or damaged a total of 42,000 tons of Allied shipping.The British never did find out where these frogmen came from or where they gone.

 

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