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Society (St. Didier) Shipwreck
Society has been produced by Livingstone & Copper in 1920.
Weight: 2778 tons
Size: 323-8 * 44-1 * 22-6
Power: 234 nhp
Society has been taken by the French Navy in order to be used as a support ship for the fleet.
She has been sunked by an English aeroplane in 4th of July 1941.
When the summer of 1941 has come, the allied forces were making decisive performances in order to win
the advantage in the North African war and to defat the German Leader Rommel.
No matter what, the isolation of them by cuttng the supply lines was so important to the allied forces.
Even The Turks were becoming more close to the allied forces and their declaration of war to Japaneese,
and their independent moves were not making the shores of the Anatolia safe for the allied ships.
The same danger was also applied to the French ships serving Germany.
When spring aprroached, a French support ship and her escort ran away from the heavy bombardment of
the allied planes on the Syria way and reached to the fronts of Alanya.
But this was not the end of the runaway. The aeroplanes that catched the ships have increased the density of
the bombardment and continued to follow them to the Adrasan Bay.
Thinking that it would be a suicide to stay near the support ship, the escort ship left Society alone.
The only thing left for the Society was to enter to the gulf of Antalya and demand refuge.
But the result was not like expected. Under the confused looks of the Antalya countrymen that were watching
the ship from the today's Karaalioglu Park, the ship sunked by getting her nose up first after she has been
torpedoed and her ammunitons exploded leaving a lot of dead people behind.
The fishermen reacted immediately and runned to save the survivors. There was amunition and jeeps for desert
inside the hospital support looking ship. The ship has been called "Society" because of the personel without
wearing uniforms for camouflage and while the ship was sinking the survivors tried to take their belongings
with them.
The ship whose real name was "Saint Didier", is lying right under the buoy which is an untired guard
of the Antalya yatch harbour, 1 km away from there.
With her bow looking to south and stern looking to the north, she is lying between 18 and 34 meters
with an 35 degrees angle to the starport side. Her length is around 70 meters. In the studies
done between 1946 and 1974 , they salvaged the skeletons and a lot of the ship's cargo.
There is nothing much left as an artifact in the wreck becase of the later dives where everyone took some part of
the wreck as a souvenier.
But still she is getting the interest of the wreck divers. In order to perform a dive to here
you must get allowance from the Antalya Government and Sea Police. Another important point is
the crowded sea traffic because of her being too close to the harbour.
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