SS Camorta


SS Camorta was a passenger steamship built at A. & J. Inglis in 1880 and owned by the British India Steam Navigation Company.

Fate

Camorta sank in the Irrawaddy Delta on 6 May 1902 with the loss of all 655 passengers and 82 crew. She was en route from Madras, India, to Rangoon, Burma, across the Bay of Bengal, when she was caught in a cyclone while crossing an area called the Baragua Flats, just off the Irrawaddy Delta. All of her passengers and 73 of her crew were Indians. She was reported missing when she failed to arrive at Rangoon on 13 May 1902. Other British India vessels were sent to search for her. Initially a lifeboat was found near the Krishna lightvessel. The wreck was subsequently found by SS Purnea on 4 June 1902 in fifteen fathoms of water; her masts still stood six feet above the water. The disaster was the fourth-worst loss of life in the wreck of a British-registered civilian vessel in history after in 1912, in 1915, and in 1914.