Goya was a Norwegian motor freighter used as a troop transport by Nazi Germany and sunk with a massive loss of life near the end of World War II. Completed in 1940 for the Johan Ludwig Mowinckel Rederi company, the ship was named after Spanish artist Francisco Goya. Following Germany's invasion of Norway that year, she was seized by the Kriegsmarine and pressed into service as a troop transport. Near the end of the war, Goya took part in Operation Hannibal, the evacuation of German military and civilian personnel from remaining pockets held by the Germans along the Baltic Sea. Loaded with thousands of refugees, the ship was sunk on 16 April 1945 by the Soviet submarine L-3. Most of the crew and passengers died in the sinking. The sinking of Goya was one of the biggest single-incident maritime losses of life of the war, and one of the largest such losses in history, with just 183 survivors out of roughly 6,700 passengers and crew. Early service Goya was originally built as a freighter by the Akers Mekaniske Verksted shipyard in Oslo, Norway, in 1940. The ship was 146 m (475.72 feet) long and 17.4 m (57.08 feet) wide, had a capacity of 5,230 GRT, and a top speed of 18 knots. Following the German occupation of Norway, the ship was seized by Germany and in 1942 refitted as an auxiliary transport vessel for German U-boats. In 1943, Goya was turned into a depot ship (tender), providing support to smaller vessels, but the following year was moved to Memel (present-day Klaipėda, Lithuania), where she was used as a target ship for torpedo practice by the 24th U-boat Flotilla. In 1945, during Operation Hannibal, Goya was used as an evacuation ship, moving people west from the eastern and southern Baltic. Her commanding officer was Captain Plünnecke. Goya was marked as a hospital ship and carried over 1,000 hospital beds for very seriously wounded and immobile soldiers. Sinking On 16 April 1945, Goya was sailing from Gotenhafen (Gdynia), around the Hel Peninsula and across the Baltic Sea to Kiel in western Germany. The convoy included Goya, two smaller vessels (Kronenfels and steam tug Aegir), and two minesweeper convoy escorts, and . Goya was just one of over 1,000 ships commissioned to participate in the Operation Hannibal evacuations organised by Kriegsmarine Commander-in-Chief Karl Dönitz. The ship, meant to accommodate 850 crew members, was