HMS Baralong

HMS Baralong was a cargo steamship built for the Bucknall Steamship Lines by Armstrong Whitworth at Low Walker on the Tyne, launched on 12 September 1901 and completed that November as one of four near-identical sisters. She was 360 feet long, measured 4,192 gross tons and had a three-cylinder triple expansion engine of 535 nominal horsepower. In 1902 she towed a floating dock toward Durban, but the line parted at Mossel Bay and the dock was wrecked, and in 1905 she collided with the Japanese ferry Kinjo Maru with the loss of 160 lives. The Admiralty requisitioned her in 1914 and in 1915 she was converted to a Q-ship with three concealed 12-pounder guns. She sank the U-boats U-27 in August and U-41 in September 1915 in the engagements known as the Baralong incidents, which Germany called war crimes because of how the German crews were killed. She was renamed Wyandra to hide her identity, returned to her owners in 1916 as Manica, sold to Japanese owners in 1922 and scrapped in 1933.