Edinburgh Castle (ship, 1948)
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The Edinburgh Castle (III) was a 1948 commissioned passenger ship of the British shipping company Union-Castle Line , which was used in passenger and mail traffic between Great Britain and South Africa . In 1976 it was decommissioned and scrapped in Taiwan .
history
The 28,705 GRT steam turbine ship Edinburgh Castle was built at Harland & Wolff in Belfast , Northern Ireland . The passenger and cargo ship was 227.39 meters long, 25.45 meters wide and had a maximum draft of 9.75 meters. The passenger accommodations were designed for 227 passengers in first class and 478 in cabin class. There was also a crew of 400 people. The Edinburgh Castle was the third ship of the shipping company to bear this name (after the predecessors put into service in 1872 and 1910). The ship was powered by steam turbines that operated on two propellers and made 35,000 Shaft Horsepower (SHP). The cruising speed was 22 knots.
The Edinburgh Castle was ordered from Harland & Wolff together with an identical sister ship , the Pretoria Castle (II), after the Union-Castle Line had negotiated a new ten-year contract with the South African government for the carriage of British mail . They were the Union-Castle Line's first new acquisitions after the end of the Second World War and also the shipping company's largest ships up to that point. The two new, modern ships were to replace the Warwick Castle and the Windsor Castle , both of which had been sunk in the war.
The Pretoria Castle (hull number 1332) was launched on August 19, 1947, the launch of the Edinburgh Castle (hull number 1333) followed on October 16, 1947. The Edinburgh Castle was christened by Princess Margaret , which was one of the first public appearances of the 17th -Year-olds. On December 9, 1948, the ship ran from Southampton on its maiden voyage to South Africa. The Edinburgh Castle was used on the mail ship route between Southampton, Madeira , Cape Town , Port Elizabeth , East London and Durban with occasional stops in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on the return journey. The mail trips of the Union-Castle Line ships to South Africa always started in Southampton, while the "Round Africa" trips always started from London.
In 1954, the Edinburgh Castle set a record on the route from England to Cape Town when she completed the journey in 11 days and 21.5 hours. On February 10, 1956, she was the first ship to use the new Union-Castle Terminal at Pier 102 in Southampton Docks. In 1962 the Round Africa service was discontinued. In the same year, the ship was completely modernized at a Harland & Wolff branch in Southampton and provided with air conditioning , among other things . In 1965 the ship was rebuilt and from then on could carry 155 first class passengers and 491 tourist class passengers. From then on, the Edinburgh Castle was used in a new express service to Cape Town, which was operated in cooperation with the shipping company Safmarine . The Pretoria Castle and the Transvaal Castle , which went into service in 1962 , were even left entirely to the Safmarine.
The Edinburgh Castle stayed on this route until it docked for the last time with passengers in Southampton on April 12, 1976. After that she drove to Durban only with cargo on board, which she reached on May 10, and then on to Kaohsiung ( Taiwan ), where she arrived on June 3. There the ship was bought by Chou's Iron & Steel Company Ltd. scrapped.