SS Naronic was a British cargo steamship built in 1892 by Harland and Wolff in Belfast, Ireland, for the White Star Line. A sister ship of , she was built at a time the company wanted to increase its market share in the transport of live cattle on the North Atlantic route. Along with other company's ships of the same type, she was responsible for transporting goods from Liverpool to New York City, United States, and bringing back American cattle on the return trip. She also had cabins that allowed her to carry a few passengers. At the time of her entry into service, Naronic was the largest cargo ship in operation.
On 11 February 1893, less than a year after her maiden voyage, Naronic went missing at sea during an east–west crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. The ship had departed without any problems being reported. However, at that time, there was no way for ships at sea to report possible incidents. Her wreck was never found, but soon after she went missing, two of her lifeboats were sighted by ships. The commission of inquiry formed to determine the causes of the sinking of Naronic found no explanation; tests carried out on her sister ship, the Bovic, proved that her stability was good; and no ice fields were reported on her route. Several hypotheses have been put forward, in particular that of a sinking following a storm or an explosion of chemicals transported in the hold of the ship.
The loss of Naronic killed 74 people. In the period following the disappearance of the ship, several bottles containing messages allegedly written during the sinking were found, but these were probably hoaxes. The cargo ship, although expensive, was not insured. The White Star Line replaced it in 1895 with a new and larger ship, the .
Design
Naronic and her sister ship, the Bovic, were the largest freighters in service on their first crossings (a record which two other cattle carriers of the White Star Line, the Cevic and the Georgic, then succeed). Naronic was slightly larger than her sister ship and both measured long by wide. she was then the largest steam cargo ship in the world, with her 143 metres length and her 6,594 GRT. More than a thousand animals and several thousand tons of goods could travel on board, as well as about fifteen passengers (generally the people accompanying the animals). Her price of £121,685 made her a relatively expensive ship for the time. On 15 July 1892, Naronic began her maiden voyage between Liverpool and New York under the command of a Captain Thompson. Bovic was put into service a few weeks later, on August 26.
Brief career and disappearance
In November 1892, Captain Thompson was replaced by William Roberts, former commander of the Adriatic. The ship continued to operate between Liverpool and New York. This early career was only disturbed by one incident: on 27 November 1892, despite the good conditions for transporting the animals, Naronic arrived in Liverpool having lost 34 animals. On 11 February 1893, Naronic left the port of Liverpool with sixty crew members on board, including several officers and mechanics who had served on board since her entry into service. The ship also carried fourteen passengers, who had accompanied the cattle, back to the US as well as 2,876 tons of goods. As usual in this direction, the ship did not transport cattle for the crossing, but had on board two horses, as well as several cages of live pigeons and chickens.
Like all ships of the time, Naronic had no wireless set or wireless operators in order to send a distress call; it would be another seven years before the Marconi International Marine Communication Company was founded and a ship would have a wireless set installed. Hence, in the event of damage or shipwreck in the open sea, they could only count on luck, that is to say, the passage of a nearby ship. The crossing of Naronic was supposed to last ten days, and no one was worried immediately, especially since delays were frequent. It was common for ships to lose a propeller or their machinery to break down. What was more, the strong storms that raged in February 1893 slowed down several ships. Rumours began to circulate in the press, according to which the ship was carrying hundreds of emigrants, which the company quickly denied. The most optimistic note was that if the ship was adrift, the passengers would have had, thanks to the cargo, provisions for several months.
On 19 March, new information was released: the British steamer SS Coventry reported seeing two of Naronics empty lifeboats 500 miles east of Halifax, Nova Scotia; the first lifeboat, found at 2:00 am on 4 March, was capsized and the second, found at 2:00 pm, was swamped. In the months following the disappearance of the ship, hoaxes and rumours began to circulate: several messages in bottles supposedly written by members of the crew of Naronic, were recovered from both sides of the Atlantic, but their authenticity was too doubtful to be taken seriously. The American press hypothesized that Naronic could have been sabotaged with on-board explosives; a cargo of this type would indeed have been discovered on Tauric. This rumour did not last long as Tauric<nowiki>'</nowiki>s explosives turned out to be just fireworks.
Following the disappearance
Inquiry and hypotheses
thumb|St. George's Hall, Liverpool, where the official inquiry into the disappearance took place
In addition to the 74 casualties, the disappearance of Naronic caused a net loss for the White Star Line, which had not insured the ship that was worth £121,685. However, as early as 1894 another cattle transporter replaced it, the Cevic, which was much larger, and another one was ordered to compensate for the loss, the Georgic, which was put into service in 1895. Insurers had to reimburse the cargo, which was valued at £61,855. The shock was also difficult for the families of the sixty British sailors and the fourteen American passengers. The wives of two crew members were sent to asylum due to trauma.
In June 1893, when hopes of recovering the ship had vanished, a commission of inquiry was convened at the initiative of the Board of Trade at St George's Hall, Liverpool. It was a priority of the investigation to refute a rumour created in the press. An inhabitant of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, claiming to be the brother of a ship's mechanic, had indeed declared having received a letter from the latter declaring that the boilers were in very poor condition and threatened the safety of Naronic. After investigating this matter, the commission concluded: “The machines and boilers were described by the inspector of the Board of Trade as being the best, and as having been installed at best… The machines are not only the best in their category, but were also maintained on each trip.” After evaluating the safety of the vessel, the commission recognized its powerlessness, and declared: "Unless new elements are provided, the probable cause of the loss of the vessel remains a matter of speculation and adds to the mysteries of the sea."
Naronics cargo list, published in the New York Herald in March 1893, included several chemicals (acids, potassium chlorate, sodium sulphide, calcium hypochlorite). Under certain conditions, these products could have caused an explosion resulting in the sinking of Naronic if the storm had displaced them or freed them from their bottles, which led historians John P. Eaton and Charles A. Haas to evoke a century later this hypothesis which had not been considered by the official inquiry. In October 1893, a newspaper reported the testimony of the captain of the Norwegian ship Emblem, who declared to have spotted in July a lifeboat of Naronic, floating upside down and covered with barnacles. Everything seemed to indicate that the boat was hastily prepared, confirming the hypothesis of a rapid and sudden sinking.
Messages in bottles
Four bottles with messages inside, which were recovered later, that claimed to have been written while Naronic was sinking. Two of the bottles were found in the US, one on 3 March in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, and one in Ocean View, Virginia, on 30 March. A third bottle was found in June 1893 in the Irish Channel, and the fourth was found on September 18 in the River Mersey near the ship's point of departure, Liverpool. While all four specifically mention Naronic sinking, the second bottle found contained the most detailed message: Because of the unidentified names signed on the papers, the reliability of the bottles as genuine testaments to the ship's fate has been questioned and the Court of Inquiry into the incident did not accept the bottled notes as genuine. If the messages were legitimate, the ship sank sometime after 3:20 a.m on 19 February 1893.