Cilicia (ship, 1938)
 As a troop transport during the Second World War
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The Cilicia was a 1938 passenger ship of the British shipping company Anchor Line , which was used in the passenger and mail service on the route from Great Britain to India . From October 1939 she served under the designation HMS Cilicia (F54) as an armed auxiliary cruiser (Armed Merchant Cruiser) and later also as a troop transport in World War II . In 1946 the Cilicia returned to passenger traffic in India for the same owners and remained in service for the Anchor Line for almost 20 years until she was sold to the Netherlands in 1965 and scrapped in Spain in 1980 .
The ship
The Cilicia was the second of three sister ships that the Anchor Line put into service from 1937 for the traditional trade route to India, which was then still part of the Commonwealth . All three were twin-screw motor ships with a volume of more than 11,000 GRT, each powered by two sets of eight-cylinder diesel engines from William Doxford & Sons . The average cruising speed was 16.5 knots, but up to 18 knots could be achieved. All three ships could carry 300 passengers in first and 80 in third class and were considered to be serious competition to the Indian service of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) because of their high standards of equipment and catering .
The first of the three ships was the Circassia (III) (11,170 GRT) with hull number 661 from Fairfield Shipbuilders in Govan near Glasgow on June 8, 1937 . It was followed by the 11,136 GRT Cilicia , which was launched on October 21, 1937. The Cilicia was 154.23 meters long, 20.12 meters wide and had a draft of 8.23 meters. The motor ship had two masts , a chimney and two propellers . After the loss of the steamer Britannia (III) in 1941, the Anchor Line decided to build a third sister ship to replace it, the Caledonia (V) (11,152 GRT), which was not completed until 1948 with hull number 732.
On May 14, 1938, the Cilicia ran on her maiden voyage from Glasgow via Liverpool to Bombay . On the ship, a routine in life on board had only just established itself when the Second World War broke out less than a year and a half after commissioning , which initially ended the Cilicia's career as a passenger liner.
In World War II
On August 31, 1939, against the backdrop of the looming Second World War, the passenger ship was requested by the Admiralty for military service and converted into an armed auxiliary cruiser . The conversion was completed on October 9, 1939. The ship was provided with eight 152-mm cannons and two 76-mm cannons and from October 1939 as HMS Cilicia (F54) of the South Atlantic Station of the Royal Navy in the South Atlantic .
On March 20, 1940, the Cilicia collided with the Carinthia , a former British passenger ship that had also been converted into an auxiliary cruiser. Both ships drove in the dark and at high speed. The Carinthia rammed the smaller Cilicia almost amidships at the level of Division No. 2. The destroyer HMS Gallant then escorted the two ships to Belfast . The collision was so violent that the Gösch of Carinthia on board of Cilicia remained for the rest of their period of service as an auxiliary cruiser in the exhibition was on display.
From November 1940 she was assigned to the Northern and Western Patrol and from May 1943 to February 1944 the West Africa Command. On March 25, 1941, while on patrol in the Atlantic , the Cilicia received an emergency call from Britannia , also part of the Anchor Line , which had been attacked by a German auxiliary cruiser about 750 miles west of Freetown . The ship's doctor on the Cilicia , Dr. Thomas Miller, was the father of the Britannia's ship's doctor, Dr. Adaline Nancy Miller, who had just left the University of Glasgow three years earlier . No further radio messages were received; the Britannia had been sunk by the Thor . 249 passengers and crew members were killed. The Cilicia took three days later 63 survivors of the Britannia by the Spanish steamer Bachi , including the ship's doctor, Dr. Nancy Miller.
In 1942, the HMS Cilicia played an important role in the establishment of the naval base HMS Atlantic Isle on the island of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic, through which the population had a radio and ship connection to the outside world.
On February 16, 1944, the HMS Cilicia was dismissed from service as an auxiliary cruiser and assigned to the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT), which it used as a troop transport for the further course of the war . In 1946 the ship was returned to the Anchor Line. By the end of the war, the ship had transported 16,035 soldiers and prisoners of war .
Late years
The Cilicia was completely overtaken by the Anchor Line and resumed its previous passenger service from England to India on May 31, 1947. In November 1965 the ship was sold to Rotterdam for £ 170,000 , where it served as a floating accommodation ship for dock workers for 15 years under the name Jan Backx .
In August 1980, the ship was finally towed by the tug Zwarte Zee to Bilbao , Spain , where it was scrapped 42 years after its commissioning. For the last voyage, the ship was given the name Cilicia back and it was completely painted in the original colors of the Anchor Line.
Web links
- Entry in the Clydebuilt Ships Database
- Information about the year of the war service as HMS Cilicia
- Detailed information and pictures about the three sisters Circassia , Cilicia and Caledonia
- The Circassia in a listing of ships of the Anchor Line (information and pictures)
- Picture gallery (the Cilicia as a postcard motif) (lower third)