A Cruise on the R. M. S. P. "Arcadian" [cover title]

London: Davey & Hackney, 1912. Some rubbing to binding. Photos with some age toning and occasional fading, but generally well preserved and crisp. Album containing 39 mounted black and white photographs, the first nine 11 1/4 x 7 inches (or vice versa); the remaining 6 1/4 x 4 1/2 inches (or vice versa). Each photo is captioned in the lower margin of the print. In a padded leather album, titled in gilt on the front cover. The photos, presumably assembled in this album to commemorate a single voyage, show: profile view of the ship from port, the dining room, social hall, smoke room, writing room, gymnasium, promenade deck, swimming bath, Captain Custance, (truncated) dancing deck, boat deck, Southampton docks, deep sea trawlers, playing cricket, Leith, thread the needle race, tennis, boxing. The final picture shows the "Arcadian" in a fjord in Norway.

SS Arcadian was a Barrow-in-Furness built passenger liner constructed in 1899 by Vickers, Sons & Maxim Ltd for the Pacific Steam Navigation Company (originally named Ortona). She was renamed Arcadian in 1910, after the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company acquired her in 1906. She started her first world cruise in January 1912, the largest dedicated cruise ship in the world at that time. These photos document her use as a cruise ship, so must date from circa 1912. In World War I she served with the Royal Navy and was sunk by a U-boat in 1917. On 15 April 1917 Arcadian was en route from Thessaloniki (Salonika) to Alexandria with a company of 1,335 troops and crew and escorted by a Japanese Navy destroyer. Shortly after completing a boat drill, while 26 miles north east of the Greek island of Milos, Arcadian was hit by a single torpedo from the German submarine SM UC-74 and sank within six minutes with the loss of 279 lives. A contemporary newspaper article described how four of Arcadian’s overcrowded lifeboats were successfully lowered before she sank. Some of the dead were cooks and stokers who were working below decks. The escorting destroyer had two torpedoes launched at her while she was attempting to rescue men from the water; survivors reported that she had lowered three of her own boats while going “at full speed”. More survivors, who had been clinging to a raft, were rescued at midnight by the Q-ship HMS Redbreast. Among the dead was the eminent bacteriologist, Sir Marc Armand Ruffer, who was returning to Alexandria after advising on the control of an epidemic among troops based at Thessaloniki (Wikipedia). (Inventory #: 410929)