Technical
general cargo vessel
motor, 417 hp diesel - single screw
4,392 GRT - 8,220 DWT
391' x 52'8" x 25'5"
Service speed 9.5 knots
Armament: 1 x 4 inch - HA/LA 12 pounder aft - Hotchkiss and Lewis machine guns amidships - 5 gunners

The vessel was the second ship in the third column of the convoy.  On the morning of the 9th the convoy  was steaming parallel to the coast of Greenland on port at a distance off 15 miles. 

At that moment the Jedmoor's engine slowed and then stopped.  Chief Engineer Robert Adamson reported to the bridge that the fuel lines were blocked and it would take some time to clear them. In the meantime the ship was drifting and two black balls were hoisted at the masthead, indicating the ship was "not under command".  Fifteen minutes later, the last ship of the column, the ore carrier Hampton Lodge, steamed by.  Some time later two stragglers, Southgate and Makefjell, also passed while they tried to catch up with the convoy.   

U-85, which had sighted the convoy's smoke was closing in on the convoy.  As  standard procedure for the first boat of a wolfpack that sighted the convoy Greger did not engage but reported the convoy to BdU.  Although U-85 slowed down to keep the convoy at a distance the U-boat slowly closed in on what appeared to be a lone ship.  When U-85 was about 10 miles from the vessel it became clear she was alone and stopped.  Since the ship was at a safe distance from the convoy Greger decided to attack her. The Jedmoor had been lying stopped for two hours and the convoy was barely visible on the horizon to the northeast.  The lookouts were doubled up and all guns manned.   Suddenly the lookout on the port wing shouted a warning as the two tracks of torpedoes were streaking across her bow from port to starboard.  Even though the ship was stopped the torpedoes missed the ship by 50 yards or more.  Then a periscope was seen and distress rockets were fired to inform the convoy of the attack.  That the Jedmoor escaped destruction was due to a combination of circumstances.

When, at 09:59 (13:59 CET), Greger fired his first torpedo, it proved to be a tube-runner, sinking deep and passing below the merchantman's keel. When the U-boat's ballast tanks were filled too slow to compensate for the loss of weight, the U-boat porpoised, disrupting Greger's aim when he fired the three other torpedo tubes, all of which consequently missed.  It was the tracks of two of these latter torpedoes Jedmoor sighted.  Greger now turned U-85's stern to the steamer and fired a final shot - which also went wide.  With all tubes empty, Greger then dived deep to reload.  At 11:50, having reloaded his tubes, U-85 went to periscope depth to find that the destroyer Skeena and the corvette Orillia had abandoned the convoy and were standing guard over the Jedmoor.  For the next forty minutes the warships circled the merchant dropping depth charges and U-85 was forced to retire. Subsequently Jedmoor's defects were  repaired and she managed to rejoin the convoy. 

In the night of 16 September the convoy was now only little over 24 hours from British coastal waters.  U-98 (which was part of Gruppe Bosmüller - 9 U-boats) had penetrated SC-42's ring of escorts and then lay submerged between columns 3 and 4 on a parallel course, and keeping pace with the merchants on either side of her.  Gysae decided to attack the ships on his port side.  These were, in the lead  Jedmoor, followed by the Campus, the Maplewood, the Nicolas Piancos and the Hampton Lodge. From 2,000 metres the four bow torpedoes were fired in quick succession, one at each of the first four ships.  One muffled thud was heard, and that was all. 

The only one of U-98's torpedoes to hit struck Jedmoor in her No 1 cargo hold.  The pyramid of iron ore in the Jedmoor's forward hold, stowing only 12 cubic feet to the ton, occupied less than a third of the space, leaving two thirds to be filled by the sea pouring in through the hole in her side.  She began to go down by the head.  As her stern rose in the air, her propeller still running, there was a loud rumble as thousands of tons of iron ore in the holds shifted and ran towards the bows.  One by one, the steel watertight bulkheads of the holds collapsed under the weight, and the Jedmoor stood on her head as the whole of her cargo ended up in the forward part of the ship and the ship quickly sank. Eyewitnesses to the sinking gave the time she took to sink as anything from nine seconds to two minutes.  Although she sank very fast two distress rockets were fired.  These were seen by the corvette HMS Narcissus, which immediately increased speed to 14 knots to hunt for the U-boat. Douglas, Skate and Alberni also joined in for the hunt, firing starshells and snowflake rockets.  A number of depth charges were dropped but U-98 had already left the scene. Narcissus then searched for the Jedmoor, which was believed to be still afloat.  Throughout the remaining hours of darkness, Narcissus and Alberni searched in vain for the Jedmoor.  After sunrise the two corvettes came upon a large patch of oil, in the middle of which floated some debris from Jedmoor. She took with her the Master, 26 crew and five gunners.

Thanks to Walter Janssens for extra information on this page.

Unless otherwise stated, all dates and times are from the German perspective and are given in CET.
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