Built as a navy collier by William Cramp and Sons, Philadelphia, Pa., USA for the Navy Auxiliary Service.
07 May 1910 launched under the name CYCLOPS.
Displacement 19.360 tons, dim. 165.2 x 19.8 x 8.1m. (draught).
Powered by a steam engine, ?, speed 14 knots, bunker capacity 2.233 tons.
Cargo capacity could carry 10.457 tons coal and 2.923 tons oil.
Armament 4 – 4 inch guns.
Crew 236.
A classic Bermuda Triangle mystery, volumes have been written about this vessel, and more that comes to light, the more confusing it becomes. The CYCLOPS was a Proteus-class collier, placed in service with the Navy Auxiliary Service Atlantic Fleet. Prior to the First World War, the supported U.S. warships in European waters, off the Atlantic seaboard, and in the Caribbean, as a unit of the Naval Auxiliary Force.
The collier voyaged in the Baltic during May to July 1911 to supply Second Division ships. Returning to Norfolk, she operated on the East Coast from Newport to the Caribbean servicing the fleet. During the troubled conditions in Mexico in 1914-1915, she called ships on patrol there and received the thanks of the State Department for cooperation in bringing refugees from Tampico to New Orleans.
With American entry into the war, CYCLOPS was commissioned on 1 May 1917, with Lieutenant Commander G.W.Worley in command. She joined a convoy for St. Nazaire, France in June 1917, returning to the East Coast in July. Except for a voyage to Halifax, Nova Scotia, she served along the coast until 9 January 1918 when she was assigned to Naval Overseas Transportation Service.
She ten sailed to Brazilian waters to fuel British ships in the South Atlantic, receiving the thanks of the Sate Department and Commander in Chief, Pacific. She put to sea from Rio de Janeiro 16 Feb. 1918 and after touching at Barbados on 3 and 4 March, was never heard from again. Her loss with all 306 crew and passengers (21 officers and 285 enlisted men), without a trace is one of the sea’s unsolved mysteries.
What’s even more mysterious is the loss of hr two sister ship’s, the PROTEUS and the NEREUS, which both disappeared on almost the same route in 1941. The loss of those two ships was overshadowed by the onset of the Second World War.
Maldives 2001 5RF sg?, scott?
Source: Watercraft Philately 2003 page 78/79.