RMS Empress of Russia
 During the war in the Red Sea (ca.1915)
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The RMS Empress of Russia was an ocean liner of the Canadian Pacific Line put into service in 1913 , which transported passengers, mail and cargo on the Pacific route between the Canadian west coast and East Asia . The ship served as an auxiliary cruiser in World War I , was back in service as a passenger ship between the wars and was used as a troop transport in World War II . After the Empress of Russia burned down in Barrow-in-Furness in September 1945 , it was then scrapped.
The ship
Beginnings and First World War
The 16,810 gross registered tons (GRT) steamship Empress of Russia was built in 1912/13 at the Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Company in Govan near Glasgow and was launched there on August 28, 1912. The 173.73 meter long and 20.73 meter wide ship had three funnels, two masts and a maximum draft of 12.80 meters. It had four propellers and drove at an average cruising speed of 19 knots. It could carry 284 first, 100 second and 800 third class passengers. The ship had four decks that stretched the entire length of the ship. The luxuriously equipped and richly furnished rooms of the first class included the dining room, a library, a writing salon, a lounge, a smoking salon, a veranda café and a well-equipped gym.
The Empress of Russia was classified in the highest possible category, 100 A-1, by the ship classification society Lloyd's Register of Shipping . She was the first liner to have a straight stern , which was more common for warships. This construction proved to be very beneficial in terms of control, speed and containment of vibrations. During the test drives on March 22, 1913, the contractually stipulated speed of 20.5 knots was exceeded by three quarters of a knot.
The Empress of Russia had an identical sister ship , the Empress of Asia , which was also built by Fairfield Shipbuilders and was launched a few months after her. These two ships were among the last newbuildings before the outbreak of World War I and replaced the Empress of Ireland and the Empress of Britain as flagships of the CP fleet. On April 1, 1913, the Empress of Russia ran in Liverpool on her maiden voyage to Hong Kong via Suez and then operated on the Pacific route between Vancouver and Hong Kong. In the same year the Empress of Russia broke the record for the fastest Pacific crossing, which had been held by the Empress of Japan for years .
The steamer was not long used in passenger traffic. On August 23, 1914, the Empress of Russia was requested by the British Admiralty and converted into an armed auxiliary cruiser (Armed Merchant Cruiser). In the first months of the war it was part of a sea blockade intended to interrupt German trade off the Philippines . She was later relocated to the Indian Ocean , where in November 1914 she took on around 230 crew members of the small cruiser Emden of the Imperial Navy , which was stranded in the Cocos Islands after a battle with the Australian light cruiser Sydney . In December 1914 she was sent on patrol in the Red Sea until she was discharged from the British Admiralty in November 1915.
The ship was refurbished in Hong Kong and re-entered the Pacific passenger and mail service on February 12, 1916. At the beginning of 1918, however , the Empress of Russia was drafted again for military service and now had to transport US troops to Europe. On January 12, 1919, she left Liverpool for her last war voyage, took on Chinese workers in Le Havre and then steamed via Suez to Hong Kong and then on to Vancouver.
Between the wars and World War II
On April 10, 1919, the Empress of Russia ran out on its first voyage in peacetime. On the way back she stopped in Manila and Vladivostok . The ship remained on the Pacific route until December 1940, when it was used again for the war effort after completing the 310th crossing. She was initially intended as a troop ship for the recruits of the Royal Australian Air Force and the Royal New Zealand Air Force . In March 1941, the Empress of Russia arrived at the Clyde , where the corresponding renovation work was carried out. As a troop transport, it drove out to Freetown , Cape Town and Suez and arriving from Suez via Newport News and Halifax to bring Canadian troops to Europe. In 1941 Philip Mountbatten , who later became Prince Consort of Elizabeth II , served as a midshipman on the Empress of Russia .
Among the various troop deployments of the Empress of Russia was the Allied landing in North Africa , Operation Torch . In October 1943 she went on a special mission when she was sent to Gothenburg to exchange prisoners of war . This was followed by seven trips to Reykjavík in service with the Royal Air Force . In April 1944 she served in Rosyth as a barge for Russian sailors who were to be assigned to British warships as crew members. After the Allied landings in Normandy (see Operation Neptune ), the Empress of Russia was used in Spithead as a supply ship for tugs .
In October 1944, the Empress of Russia was launched in Gareloch (Scotland) until further renovations took place in June 1945. She was to be made afloat to return Canadian troops to her homeland. On September 8, 1945, when the ship was in Barrow-in-Furness , however, a fire broke out on board, which destroyed the ship so much that repair was out of the question. The ship was in the same year at the demolition yard Thomas W. Ward Shipbreakers Ltd. scrapped in Inverkeithing .
The prominent passengers that the Empress of Russia carried during its service time included the Chinese statesmen Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek , who traveled on the ship from Hong Kong to Shanghai in November 1922, and the American comedian Will Rogers , the went to Japan with the Empress of Russia in November 1932 .
Web links
- Ship description in The Ships List (approximately in the middle)
- Historical and technical data in the Clydebuilt Ships Database
- Other basic ship data