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SS Alfios

Greek cargo ship

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 14, 2026
Entity authorityQ112339476
Source-derived summary

SS Alfios, built as SS Bolivian, was a B-class standard cargo ship built by the British government and later operated by the Greek mercantile company Theofano Maritime.

Characteristics

Alfios was a cargo freighter which had a gross register tonnage of 3,154 GRT which measured 400 ft (120 m) long, 52.5 ft (16.0 m) broad, and 28.5 ft (8.7 m) tall. It was made of steel and was powered by three triple expansion engines made by Richardsons Westgarth which produced 517 nominal horsepower for a speed of 12 knots.

History

The ship was built as Bolivian in 1919 at West Hartlepool, United Kingdom, by Irvine's Shipbuilding for Frederick Leyland & Company and was registered at Chios, Greece. In 1933, the ship became owned by N.G. Livanos and was renamed Alfios. Later that year, it was obtained by Theofano Maritime, who would operate the ship until it sunk in 1946.

On 24 April 1946, Alfios was in transit across the Atlantic Ocean from Glasgow to Halifax to pick up a shipment of pit props. While steaming near Sable Island, Alfios ran aground on a shallow spit of sand. A week after the ship was wrecked, on 1 May, HMCS Middlesex set out to rescue the 30 crew and 2 passengers stranded on Alfios. Middlesex successfully rescued everyone aboard, bringing them to safety in Ottawa.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “SS Alfios” as greek cargo ship. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Alfios, Greek and cargo.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1919, 1933, 1946—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Alfios, Greek and cargo providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “SS Alfios”, the useful work is to connect “greek cargo ship” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q112339476. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1919, 1933 and 1946.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Locating named sources
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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “SS Alfios”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow SS Alfios primary sources, SS Alfios archive and Alfios research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from SS Alfios” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.