SS Tanais, mistakenly referred to as Danae / Danais, was a Greek-owned cargo ship that was requisitioned by the German occupation forces in Greece during WWII. On 9 June 1944, she was torpedoed by a Royal Navy submarine and sunk off the port of Heraklion, Crete, killing several hundreds of deported Cretan Jews, Cretan Christian civilians and Italian POWs who were aboard. The number of casualties varies depending on source; it is estimated that between 500 and 1000 perished.
The vessel
Tanais was a 244 ft, cargo steamer built in 1907 by J. Blumer & Co at Sunderland, England. Initially named Holywood, she was purchased in 1935 by Greek shipowner Stefanos Synodinos and renamed Tanais after an ancient Greek city in the Don river delta. During the Battle of Crete, on 26 May 1941, Tanais was sunk by the Luftwaffe in Souda Bay. After being repaired, she was operated by the of Hamburg, carrying cargo and people from the mainland and the Aegean islands. MMR was a state-owned company that managed captured ships in the Mediterranean on behalf of the German Wehrmacht, with civilian crews under military jurisdiction.
The sinking
On late 8 or early 9 June 1944, Tanais sailed with a crew of 12 from Heraklion bound for Piraeus, escorted by three smaller vessels. Detained in the holds of Tanais were about 265 deported Jews from Chania who have been rounded up a few days before. There were also several dozens of Christian Cretan civilians having links with the resistance along with more than 100 pro-Badoglio Italian prisoners of war who had been arrested after the Armistice of Cassibile. The exact numbers of Cretan and Italian prisoners vary among sources. In the morning hours of 9 June, 14 mi. northwest of Dia islet, the ship was spotted by the British submarine HMS Vivid. The submarine fired four torpedoes, two of which hit Tanais, which sank in a very short time. The exact number of victims is unknown; it is believed that almost everyone aboard Tanais perished. Some sources mention 14 survivors. Whether the British submarine was aware of the human cargo on board Tanais has been the subject of debate and is still unclear today.
