A Dash to Search for Plane-Crash Survivors
On 14th August, the morning after leaving Le Havre on her way to New York, Caronia was suddenly diverted, in stormy seas, to a point 130 miles off the west coast of Ireland. At dawn that morning a 4 engined Super Constellation aircraft belonging to KLM had crashed into the sea with 99 people on board.
At the time, this was described as probably the worst crash in civil aviation history. With Caronia being equipped with an on-board hospital, she sped to the scene, as 3 RAF aircraft and a French trawler had all reported sightings of possible survivors in life rafts. The huge KLM aircraft had plunged into the sea just 25 minutes after takeoff from Shannon Airport, the last radio contact with it being at 3.40am.
Mike Sutcliffe writes…
Very interested to read the account of the KLM air crash. I was the duty Radio Officer on board the sister
Cunarder “Sylvania” that morning. We were off the coast of Ireland and were initially asked
to proceed and then stood down. I had to copy every transmission associated with the incident. The “Sylvania”
was my first ship and this was my first experience of a distress situation.
The New York Times reported the following day that there had been no survivors and that 57 of the 91 passengers were Americans returning home. It also confirmed that this had been the worst single commercial aircraft accident to date.
Mike Sutcliffe continues…
I was third Radio Officer (R/O) on the RMS “Sylvania” doing my initial six months. My watch was 4 to 8 so I
had been called by the 2nd R/O at 03.45 just as everything was happening. We had left Liverpool the previous
day, sailed to Greenock to pick up the Scottish passengers and was heading for Quebec and Montreal.
After we had passed north of Ireland heading west, Shannon Aer radio put out the SOS. The Chief was called, he advised the bridge and we responded to Shannon. They asked us to proceed to the area but after about 60 mins they released us as they had suitable ships closer.
We carried on with our normal watches but because of the situation I was asked to maintain a watch on all the distress traffic and log it separately in case it was required later. I can recall vessels reporting the finding of bodies and flotsam. It has stayed in my mind because it was my first ship and also the first distress working in which we could have been involved.
The Chief Radio Officer was A F Crosby (Bing) and the second was 'Mac' MacCarthy. We were employed by the International Marine Radio Company (IMRC) The Captain was F G Watts. That is all that I can really add. At the present I am of the age when these things come back into focus and I was trying to find the approximate date of the KLM crash when your website came up and there was the date I was looking for.
A couple of years later I was on the old Queen Elizabeth in New York when the Caronia came in. I went on board with some of the QE R/O's to have a natter with the Caronia staff.
If you can contribute any information, do please get in touch…
North Cape 
