The SS Irish Oak was an Irish-operated steamship that was sunk in the North Atlantic during World War II by a German submarine.
In 1941, she was chartered by Irish Shipping Limited to transport wheat and fertilizer from North America to Ireland.
Sailing as a clearly marked neutral vessel and not in convoy, she was nonetheless torpedoed and sunk by U-607 on 15 May 1943 midway between North America and Ireland with the crew being rescued.
[4] With the abolition of the USSB, she was transferred to the United States Shipping Board Bureau in 1935,[4] and laid up in New Orleans.
[8] Acting for the Irish government, Minister Frank Aiken negotiated the charter of two oil-burning steamships from the US Maritime Commission's reserve fleet.
[11] Both were chartered by the government-owned Irish Shipping Limited (ISL) and managed by the Limerick Steamship Company,[10] with their port of registry changed to Dublin.
[5] Initially, Irish Oak sailed with Convoy SC 52, which departed from Sydney, Nova Scotia, on 29 October 1941.
[5] The crew of the Irish Oak became acutely uneasy after her engine failed, and she was left behind by SC 55, dead in the water to wait for a tugboat.
[19] Thereafter, Irish ships were clearly marked and fully lit, usually sailed out-of-convoy on a direct course and always answered SOS calls for assistance.
Six minutes later, Stornest radioed Irish Oak of abandoning ship in life-rafts since they had lost their lifeboats in the heavy seas.
Irish Oak continued to relay Stormest's SOS and spent ten hours to search for survivors in a westerly gale.
The rescue tug Adherent, the anti-submarine trawler Drangey and two corvettes from convoy ONS 137 joined the search to no avail.
[28] A week later Captain Matthew Moran was fatally injured while boarding at the Dublin quayside when the gangway collapsed beneath him.
On 14 May 1943, Irish Oak was en route from Tampa, Florida, to Dublin with a cargo of 8,000 tons of phosphate fertiliser.
[31] As dawn broke the next morning, 15 May 1943, a torpedo hit Irish Oak at 8:19am (12:19 German Summer Time).
[34][35] They were welcomed by Samuel Roycroft, a director of both the Limerick Steamship Company and of Irish Shipping Limited.
[38] The famed Labour leader James Larkin raised the issue of the survivors' treatment in the Dáil.
Citing the crew member who was told by the Labour exchange to "go and get his record card", which was lost when Irish Oak sank, he suggested for the Dáil to ask the German Consul-General to send a submarine to retrieve it.
[42] During World War I, the South Arklow Lightvessel Guillemot, operated by the Commissioners of Irish Lights, had given warning of a U-boat.
"[45] Discussion in the Dáil during the runnup to the general election focused on the possibility that a warning had been transmitted, and demands were made to know the nationality of the captain, a British subject:[44] Luke Duffy, secretary of the Labour Party, said that the "government was guilty of duplicity and near belligerency behind a facade of neutrality.
[45] The party issued an advertisement condemning the "criminal conduct of the Fianna Fáil Government in sending brave men to their doom on the Irish Oak".
[47] After the election, William Davin complained of "the unfounded allegations and the slanderous and libellous statements made against members of this {sic Labour} Party... had the audacity to charge members of this Party, during the recent election campaign, with having condoned the sinking of the Irish Oak.
He alleged that she was sailing at night without lights, zigzagging, and travelling at fourteen knots, although she appeared capable of barely half that speed.
[45] Nine days after the sinking of Irish Oak, on 24 May 1943, Admiral Karl Dönitz ordered a U-boat withdrawal from the Atlantic.
Of the Gernans' operational fleet, 41 U-boats, or 25% of them, had been lost in Black May, against a total of 50 Allied merchant ships destroyed.
In 1979, en route from Piraeus to Vietnam, she ran aground near Jeddah and was re-floated but sold for breaking up.