Built as a passenger- cargo vessel under yard No 801 by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson, Newcastle U.K. for the Cie. des Chargeurs Reunis, Marseille, France.
20 November 1907 launched as the AFRIQUE.
Tonnage 5,404 gross 7,832 dwt., dim. 119.17 x 14.75 x 7.50m., draught 6.46m.
Powered by two triple expansion steam engines 7,200hp., two shafts , speed 14.5 knots.
14 April 1908 during trials she reached a speed of 17.5 knots.
Passenger accommodation for 79 first class, 68 second and 80 third class but could also carry tween-deck passengers. Crew 135.
April 1908 completed.
After completing used in the service from France to the French West Africa colonies.
22 July 1908 she made her maiden voyage.
She was also kept in service during World War I, but from 1916 with a yellow painted funnel, to look as a ship belonging to a Belgium company Cie Maritime Belge.
Under command of Capt. Antoine Le Dû and 602 persons on board including the crew and cargo she sailed from Bordeaux for West Africa.
In the night of 10 January 1920 in a position in the Bay of Biscay during stormy weather she got leakage into the boiler room and water flooded in, the pumps were started but due to that the boilers were cleaned in port, and the dirt from the cleaning not been removed to the upper-deck, but was still near the boilers, the pile of dirt started to moved by the rolling of the ship and were blocking the pumps which became useless.
It was decided to return to a port to pump out the water and repair the damage.
On 11 January early in the morning the starboard engine was not more working, the captain send out SOS and request urgent tugboat assistance.
The CEYLON of the same company came to the rescue but due to the bad weather she could not make a tow-line connection.
At around 14.00 Capt Dû received a message that the tugboats were unable to round L’ile d’Aix Island due to bad weather.
Around 18.00 the port engine slows down and stops for lack of steam pressure, the firemen working in waist high water could not put more coal on the fire. The engine room was abandoned around 20.00.
The Belgium steamer ANERSVILLE and the steamship LAPLAND came to the rescue but could do noting to help the AFRIQUE.
The AFRIQUE slowly drifts to the lightship Rochebonne and around 22.00 she collided with the lightship, after 7 or 8 minutes she got free of the lightship, but the crew reported a large leak near the third class accommodation.
At around midnight the captain ordered to launch the lifeboats, but passengers mostly all were seasick did not want to leave the vessel.
Only 6 lifeboats were available and a few rafts for the 602 people on board, and only a few left in the lifeboats. Slowly the AFRIQUE sank in a position about 46 16N 02 14W.
34 Men survived, all women and children were lost.
It was the largest French maritime disaster since the loss of the La BOURGAGNE in 1898.
On the stamp her funnel colours are not the colours of Cie des Chargeurs Reunis, a design mistake.
Ivory Coast 1990 155f sg1006, scott887
Source: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrique_(paquebot_1907) Dictionary of Disasters at Sea During the age of Steam 1824-1962 by Charles Hocking.