Monowai (ship, 1925)
 The Monowai in Milford Sound , February 1933
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The Monowai (II) was a passenger ship put into service in 1925 , which initially belonged to the British Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) and from 1930 to the New Zealand shipping company Union Steam Ship Company . From 1940 to 1946 she served as an Allied auxiliary cruiser and landing ship . After the war used again as a passenger ship under the New Zealand flag, the ship was scrapped in Hong Kong in 1960 .
The ship
The 10,602 GRT steamship was built in 1924 by Harland & Wolff Heavy Industries Ltd. in Greenock , a branch of the Belfast shipyard Harland & Wolff , for the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. The 158.19 meter long and 19.25 meter wide ship had two chimneys, two masts and two propellers . The Razmak was powered by four-cylinder quadruple expansion steam engines and Bauer-Wach exhaust steam turbines, which made 14,740 bhp (maximum 16,150 bhp). Two single-ended and four double-ended Scotch steam boilers that were fueled were installed in the boiler rooms .
The Razmak was built for passenger and mail traffic from Great Britain to India ( Indies Mail and Passenger Service ) and provided with a straight stem and an elliptical stern . On three decks there was space for 142 passengers in the first, 142 in the second and 108 in the third class. The luxuriously furnished first class lounges, including the salon, the music salon, the lounge, the smoking salon and the veranda café, were located in the front part of the bridge deck. In the aft part of the same deck were the music salon, the veranda café and the smoking salon of the second class.
The second-class dining room was located amidships on the main deck below. Further ahead, separated from the pantry and kitchen rooms, was the first class dining room with 146 seats. The room, which stretched the entire width of the ship, had 24 windows through which daylight and fresh air could be let in. Three quarters of the upper deck were taken up by large first-class cabins, each designed for one or two people and each with a private bathroom. The ship's ventilation system supplied all rooms with fresh air.
Service as Razmak at P&O
On October 16, 1924, the ship ran at Harland & Wolff Heavy Industries Ltd. in Greenock from the pile was christened Razmak . The christening ceremony was performed by Jean Paterson Shanks, Baroness Inchcape, the wife of James Mackay, 1st Earl of Inchcape, the chairman of P&O. The name was borrowed from the fortress town of the same name in Wasiristan in northwest India (today Pakistan ).
On February 26, 1925, the ship was completed; shortly afterwards, the test drives took place in Belfast Lough. After this was successfully completed, the Razmak was handed over to the shipping company on behalf of its managing director Frank Ritchie. On 13 March 1925, put razmak in London on her maiden voyage to Bombay via Marseille and Sue from. The return journey began in Bombay on April 10, 1925. Among the passengers on this trip was Earl Reading , the Governor General and Viceroy of India.
On November 25, 1925, she received an emergency signal from the French gunboat Alerte in the Indian Ocean , asking for cooling water for its boilers. The Razmak came alongside the Alerte and delivered 20 tons of cooling water. On July 18, 1930, the steamer was launched in London, as P & O's Mediterranean Service had lost its popularity due to increasing competition from other lines.
As a Monowai of the Union SS Co.
In August 1930 the ship was taken over by the Union Steam Ship Company from New Zealand, which needed a replacement for their passenger steamer Tahiti , which sank 400 miles off Rarotonga on August 17, 1930. The Union Steam Ship Company had been part of the P&O Group since 1917. On October 3, 1930, the Razmak ran for the last time for P&O in London for a trip to Bombay and Colombo via Gibraltar , Marseille and Suez. She arrived in Wellington, New Zealand, in mid-November . There it was converted according to the ideas of the new owners and renamed Monowai . She was the second ship of the Union Steam Ship Company to receive that name. The passenger accommodations were designed for 224 saloon passengers, 69 second-class passengers and 205 passengers in tourist class.
The ship was structurally stabilized and provided with gun emplacements, which were shipped to New Zealand for this purpose and stored in Devonport . The former captain of the sunken Tahiti , AT Toten, has been appointed the new skipper of the Monowai . On December 2, 1930, the Monowai set sail in Wellington on her first voyage under the New Zealand flag to Vancouver via Cook Islands , Pago Pago , Tahiti , Honolulu and San Francisco . On January 25, 1931, she ran back to Wellington. On this voyage, she had undercut the Matson Line's Malolo record set in November 1930 by one hour and eight minutes and covered the voyage at an average cruising speed of 18.34 knots.
In 1932 the Monowai made five tours from Wellington to San Francisco under the charter of the Union Royal Mail Line. Among the passengers on these tours were a New Zealand parliamentary delegation headed by Finance Minister Joseph Gordon Coates on their return from a conference in Ottawa , the New Zealand team for the 1932 Summer Olympics and the Australian professional cricket player Donald Bradman . On November 24, 1932, the Monowai was relocated to the Transtasmanian route from Wellington to Sydney, as it was replaced on its previous route by the new Maunganui . Arthur Henry Davey became the new captain.
In March 1933, she broke the Maheno's 26-year record en route from Sydney to Wellington when she completed the journey in two days, 15 hours and 35 minutes at an average speed of 19.84 knots. From May 1933 she made two more crossings to Vancouver, because the Aorangi and the Niagara , which now served this route, were subjected to a general overhaul. In October of the same year she resumed her service on the Trans-Tasmanian route.
From 1933 until the outbreak of World War II, the Monowai was used for cruises from December to March each year , taking them either from Wellington and Auckland to New Zealand's North Island and into the Hauraki Gulf or from Sydney and Melbourne to the fjords of New Zealand's South Island . On a voyage in February 1934, the Monowai was caught in a storm off the coast of New South Wales that has been described as the most violent in the region for over 20 years. Huge breakers smashed windows of cabins on the A-deck and windows of the first class smoking parlor. Alexander Shaw, 2nd Baron Craigmyle, the new chairman of P&O, was also on board on this voyage.
Use in World War II
On 21 October 1939, was Monowai from the Royal Navy requested for the war effort and then in the Devonport Naval Base in Devonport in an armed merchant cruiser converted (Armed Merchant Cruiser). It was officially put into service on August 30, 1940 and received the tactical identification F59. In addition to machine guns and depth charges, the ship was armed with eight 6-inch cannons, six 20-mm guns and two anti-aircraft guns . In the following years it was mainly used as an escort vehicle for freighters and tankers, but also to transport New Zealand troops.
On January 16, 1942, the Monowai was unsuccessfully attacked by the Japanese submarine I 20 . The Monowai opened fire on the submarine, which was forced to dive into alarm . Japanese records later revealed that I 20 had fired four torpedoes, all of which had missed. On June 18, 1943, the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) took control of the Monowai to convert them into a Landing Ship, Infantry (LSI), a landing ship for the infantry. Between June 1943 and February 1944 the renovation took place in Glasgow . The ship was equipped with completely new armament, transport capacity for 1,800 fully equipped soldiers and 20 Landing Craft Assaults (landing vehicles). The Monowai was used , among other things, when the Allies landed in Normandy .
In the late phase of the war, the Monowai served as a transporter for soldiers, service personnel and prisoners of war . In 1945, after years of service in the war, the ship showed clear signs of wear.
Renovation and re-commissioning
In August 1946 the British government officially dismissed the Monowai from their service. The Union Steam Ship Company initially showed no interest in the overhaul of the ship. However, since the transtasmanian liner service should be resumed as soon as possible, the Monowai was handed over to Mort's Dock & Engineering Company in Balmain (New South Wales) for repair. Almost the entire interior and most of the machinery had to be replaced. The passenger accommodations have also been rearranged. On December 20, 1948, the Monowai completed its test drives after the conversion and was able to resume its liner service on January 19, 1949 under Captain Frank W. Young.
1956 was another scheduled overhaul, after which the Union Steam Ship Company received a permit for four more years of use for the Monowai . At the same time, the P&O management announced the construction of a replacement ship for the aged steamer. That decision should be left to the Union Steam Ship Company. However, as increasing competition from the airline was palpable, the shipping company decided to order not a new ship and the trans-Tasman shipping after the expiry of the four-year period, the Monowai set.
On May 19, 1960, the Monowai finally left Auckland for her last voyage across the Tasman Sea. On June 2, 1960, there was another Pacific cruise, which was the last passenger voyage of the ship. The following July, the Monowai was sold for demolition to the Hong Kong- based Far Fast Metal Industry Company for £ 165,000 . She arrived there on September 6, 1960. Six days later she was towed through Kowloon Bay to the Ngautaukok demolition dock, where the scrapping took place.
Web links
- Detailed description of the ship, its equipment and its history (with pictures)