Duchess of York (ship)
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The Duchess of York was an ocean liner put into service in 1929 by the Canadian shipping company Canadian Pacific Steamship Company , which was used to transport passengers and cargo between Canada and Great Britain . From 1940 the Duchess of York served as an Allied troop transport in World War II , until it was attacked by German maritime reconnaissance forces off Spain on July 11, 1943 and sunk by a destroyer of the Royal Navy the following day .
Passenger ship
The 20,021 GRT steam turbine ship Duchess of York was laid down at the John Brown & Company shipyard in Clydebank near Glasgow under the name Duchess of Cornwall . When she ran on 28 September 1928 by the stack, but it was in honor of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon , Duchess of York , in the name of Duchess of York baptized. The ship was 183.18 meters long, 22.92 meters wide and had a maximum draft of 12.7 meters. It was powered by six steam turbines that operated on two propellers and could produce 3748 nominal horsepower. The top speed was 18 knots (33.3 km / h).
The Duchess of York belonged to the Duchess class of ocean liners of the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company, which entered service in the late 1920s. The other three were the Duchess of Atholl (1928), the Duchess of Bedford (1928; from 1947 Empress of France ) and the Duchess of Richmond (1929; from 1947 Empress of Canada ). Because they rolled conspicuously in heavy seas , the sister ships were also called "The Drunken Duchesses" (German: The drunken duchesses).
The passenger and cargo ship was built for service between Great Britain and Canada. On March 22, 1929, was Duchess of York in Liverpool on her maiden trip to Saint John in New Brunswick , and made on the way stop in Belfast (Northern Ireland) and Greenock (Scotland). This remained their typical route until the outbreak of war. In 1930 the ship set a new record when it completed the route from Liverpool to Saint John in six days, 22 hours and 14 minutes. In addition to her normal route, the Duchess of York also made trips from New York to Bermuda in 1931 and 1932 and also called Hamburg , Antwerp and Southampton .
The first captain of the ship from 1929 to 1934 was the highly decorated merchant ship Commodore Ronald Niel Stuart (1886–1954), who had been awarded several medals for his services in the First World War . He later became captain of the Empress of Britain (1931; 42,348 GRT).
Troop transport
After the Duchess of Atholl and the Duchess of Bedford had already been drafted as troop transports by the British Admiralty in 1939 , this was done with the Duchess of York and the Duchess of Richmond in 1940. The Duchess of York made three trips from Liverpool to Canada until they Sent to Norway on June 1, 1940 to evacuate 4,000 British soldiers and civilians. On June 21, 1940, she transported 3,000 German prisoners of war to Canada, including Franz von Werra . Shortly afterwards, she brought 1,100 refugee children to Canada.
The ship later went to Brest and then to Saint-Nazaire with members of the French Foreign Legion to save 5,000 British soldiers and nurses from bombing raids. Her next assignment led the Duchess of York as part of the convoy WS 3 via Cape Town to Suez , after which she continued with reinforcement troops to Singapore . This was followed by two trips from Liverpool to India and six supply missions as part of Operation Torch .
On July 7, 1943, the Duchess of York ran under the command of Captain William George Busk-Wood, OBE , in Glasgow to Greenock, from where she was on July 8 as part of the convoy "Faith" (Faith) to Freetown in Sierra Leone took off . The convoy consisted of the troop carriers Duchess of York and California , the supply ship Port Fairy and the destroyers Douglas and Iroquois as escorts. On July 9th the frigate Moyola was added.
On the evening of July 11, 1943, the convoy was about 300 nautical miles west of Vigo , on the northwest coast of Spain three Maritime Patrol aircraft of the type Focke-Wulf Fw 200 ( "Condor") of the combat squadron 40 attacked. The Duchess of York and California were bombed and went up in flames. Both ships were abandoned by their crews. On the following day, July 12th, both ships were sunk by the Douglas , ( location ) in order not to attract any submarines . Of the more than 600 men aboard the Duchess of York , 34 were killed. The remaining ships in the convoy were sent to Casablanca with the frigate Swale as an escort ship , but were bombed again the same day by two German Condors, with the Port Fairy being badly damaged. Overall, more than 100 people were killed in the attacks on the convoy.
The Duchess of York was the last ship that the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company lost to the Axis powers during World War II. It is also one of the ten largest Allied ships sunk by the Germans in World War II.
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