A Welsh merchant marine freighter that became a historic footnote as part of an ill-fated convoy in early World War II, S.S. BEATUS had 15 solid years of performance for her owners at W.H. Seager & Co. Ltd. and Tempus Shipping Co. in Cardiff, before she was undone by a German U-Boat in 1940.
A sleek looking freighter shown as a fine dockyard model directly from the yard of her builder, Ropner Shipbuilding & Repairing Co., Ltd of Stockton-on-Tees, her builders plate makes clear known details of her construction: 4885 Gross Tons, built 1925, 410 ft. length, 48 ft. beam, 24' depth. The model has a nice portion of silver-plated fittings, including the massive scale four-bladed propeller, with a vast amount of deck showing the inked-in planking and window details. Traditional British colors of deep ochre and black for her hull and gray top decks are present.
The steamship often stopped in Nova Scotia, and in Oct. 1940 loaded with 1626 tons of steel and 5874 tons of lumber and a large deck cargo of crated aircraft parts, she slipped into Convoy SC-7 out of Sydney, Nova Scotia and was met in the Atlantic by a German wolfpack group of submarines, with U-Boat 46 claiming the credit for sinking BEATUS. Remarkably, all 32 men onboard were rescued by H.M.S. BLUEBELL. As relieved as they must have been to have been saved, they were pained with the loss of such a fine ship.
