Pollockshields

Built in 1890 in Hamburg, Germany, the Pollockshields was a 323-foot cargo steamer. With the approach of the First World War, near the end of 1914, she was refitted into a German naval supply ship for operations in the North Atlantic. Ten years later and known at the time as Graecia, she was captured by HMS Argonaut. After the capture, the British Government named her the Pollockshields. Travelling from Cardiff, Wales, for an undisclosed port of rendezvous, the steamer ran into a “white squall” on September 2, 1915. Five days later the ship struck the near-shore reef off Elbow Beach. Among her collection of flattened deck and hull plates strewn across the bottom of both sides of a shallow break in the reef, in depths between 15 to 30 feet, are two substantial boilers and an enormous spare propeller, as well as her immense triple expansion engine.