Montrose (ship, 1922)
 The Montrose 1934 in Funchal
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The Montrose (II) was an ocean liner put into service in 1922 by the Canadian shipping company Canadian Pacific Steamship Company , which was used in transatlantic passenger and mail traffic between Great Britain and Canada . From 1939 the Montrose served under the name HMS Forfar (F30) as an Allied troop transport in World War II , until it was sunk by the German submarine U 99 on December 2, 1940 about 500 nautical miles west of Ireland . 172 people were killed.
The ship
The 16,402 GRT steam turbine ship Montrose was built at the Fairfield Shipbuilders shipyard in Govan near Glasgow , where her two sister ships Montcalm (II) (1921) and Montclare (1922) were also built. The ship was supposed to be named Montmorency (after the waterfall of the same name in Québec ), but this was discarded before it was launched. Instead, the ship was given the name of a steamship of the same name that the shipping company had lost in 1914. The godmother was Lady Greta Watson Raeburn, wife of Sir Ernest Manifold Raeburn, OBE , the director general of the British Ministry of Shipping in the United States .
The Montrose was a 167.2 meter long and 21.4 meter wide passenger and cargo ship and had two funnels, two masts and two propellers . The ship was powered by two steam turbines with an output of 2532 nominal hp (NHP) and a speed of 16 knots. The ship could carry 542 passengers in the cabin class and another 1268 in the third class.
On December 14, 1920, the Montrose was launched and on May 5, 1922, she ran from Liverpool on her maiden voyage to Quebec and Montreal . In April 1928, the tourist class was introduced in addition to the two price classes offered. Shortly afterwards it collided with an iceberg in thick fog near Saint John . Two sailors were killed by falling ice and the ship suffered considerable damage in the bow area , but the Montrose was able to continue the voyage across the Atlantic to Liverpool on its own. On July 18, 1928, she made her first Atlantic crossing on the route Antwerp - Southampton - Quebec - Montreal and from May 29, 1929, she traveled the same route from Hamburg instead of Antwerp. She completed a total of eleven crossings on this route by June 1933.
In April and May 1929 there were also two stopovers in Cardiff to take emigrants on board. In 1931 new turbines were installed at Harland & Wolff in Belfast . Between March 26, 1932 and June 24, 1939, the Montrose carried out a total of 46 pleasure cruises as well as a few North Atlantic scheduled trips. In May 1937 the ship was accepted by the Royal Empire Society for a four day cruise from Liverpool to Spithead for the Coronation Fleet Review in honor of the coronation of King George VI. chartered. In January 1939 the tourist class was abolished again.
On August 25, 1939, a few days before the outbreak of World War II , the Montrose left Liverpool on her last voyage as a peacetime passenger ship. She arrived back in Liverpool on September 11, 1939, completing her 152nd and final Atlantic crossing.
Sinking
The very next day, September 12, 1939, she was requested by the British Admiralty for military service and in the following weeks converted into an armed auxiliary cruiser (Armed Merchant Cruiser). The renovation was completed on November 6, 1939. Under the designation HMS Forfar (F30), the former passenger ship was now subordinate to the Northern Patrol of the Royal Navy , which operates in the waters of the North Sea and around Scotland .
On December 2, 1940, the HMS Forfar was under the command of Captain Norman Arthur Cyril Hardy with 38 officers and 154 lower Navy ranks (193 men in total) on another patrol in the North Atlantic. She had just left convoy HX-90 to join convoy OB-251 when she was hit by a torpedo from German submarine U 99 (Kapitänleutnant Otto Kretschmer ) about 500 nautical miles west of Ireland at 5:46 a.m.
The ship sank at 06.47 after four more torpedo hits at positions 54º35'N, 18º18'W. Captain Hardy, 35 officers and 136 Navy ranks were killed, a total of 172 men. Three officers and 18 ranks were picked up by the Royal Canadian Navy destroyer HMCS St. Laurent , the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Viscount and the small steamer Dunsley and brought ashore in the Scottish port town of Oban .