Lt-Col. Low and the
Sinking of HMS Attack

On 30 December 1917 a German U-Boat torpedoed transport ship, HMT Aragon off the Egyptian coast. Emerging on the wrecked upper deck, Canadian passenger Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Adamson Low witnessed “about fifty men floating in the water, many of them past recall and badly mutilated from the effects of the explosion.” Over six-hundred passengers, troops and crew, including the ship’s captain, drowned. Low and survivors were picked up by an escort destroyer, HMS Attack …

After hours in the water Low and the remaining survivors were finally rescued by a trawler and taken to Alexandria, Egypt. As Low later reported, “Hundreds of cases of heroism, rescue and narrow escapes were crowded into those minutes.” Two months later, Low resumed his trip to Cyprus and made a favourable report on timber usage for war purposes. Describing the return to England he remarked, “The journey back was uneventful.”

Order Through Their Eyes: A Graphic History of Hill 70 and Canada’s First World War