Oddly, this was not the first ship from the Donaldson Line called the SS Athena to be sunk by a German submarine. In 1917, her predessessor, built in Glasgow in 1903, was sunk in a similar fashion in the same general area while on war service for the British Government.
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In total, 117 passengers and crew died, including 28 American citizens. As a result of this, the US Ambassador to the UK sent his son, the future President John F. Kennedy, to meet the survivors and relatives of the dead at the Beresford Hotel on Sauchiehall Street. This was his first public engagement and can be seen as marking the start of his political career.
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A model of the SS Athena in Glasgow's Riverside Museum. The Athena was built in the city in 1923 as a trans-Atlantic liner for the Anchor-Donaldson Line. In September 1939, while entering the Western Approaches (the area of the Atlantic to the west of the UK and Ireland) she was torpedoed by U-30, a German submarine, making her the first British ship to be sunk by Germany in World War Two.
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