Orcades (ship, 1948)
 The Orcades in 1967
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The Orcades (III) was a 1948 passenger ship of the British shipping company Orient Steam Navigation Company , which was used in passenger and mail traffic from Great Britain to Australia and New Zealand . Up until then she was the largest ship in the history of the shipping company. She later also served as a cruise ship and was finally scrapped in Taiwan in 1973 .
The ship
The Orcades steam turbine ship was built at the Vickers-Armstrong shipyard in the English port city of Barrow-in-Furness . The 216.71 meter long and 28.49 meter wide passenger and cargo ship had a maximum draft of 9.4 meters and was a two-class ship with capacities for 773 passengers in first class and 772 in tourist class. She was the third ship on the Orient Line to bear this name. It was based on an ancient name for the Orkney Islands. The Orcades had a sister ship, the Oronsay (II) (27,632 GRT), which was built at the same shipyard and completed in 1951.
They were the first two ships that the Orient Line put into service after the Second World War, and the shipping company's largest until then. In terms of construction, the Orcades was largely identical to the Himalaya (III) of the P&O shipping company , which was constructed by Vickers-Armstrong at the same time. Their superstructures had a completely new design, however, as the bridge was amidships directly in front of the funnel and the mast was installed directly above the bridge.
The Orcades was powered by a set of six steam turbines that operated on two screws . The cruising speed was 22 knots, with the test drives in November 1948 a speed of 24.7 knots was reached. The total cost of the ocean liner to build was £ 3,418,000 .
history
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The Orcades was launched on October 14, 1947 at Vickers-Armstrong, was completed on November 14, 1948 and ran on December 14, 1948 in Tilbury on her maiden voyage via Gibraltar , Naples , Port Said , Aden and Colombo to Fremantle , Adelaide , Melbourne , Sydney and Auckland from. She was the first large passenger ship to arrive in Australia after the end of the war. Over the next six years, the ship was mainly engaged in emigrant traffic to Australia and New Zealand, during which time it carried countless emigrants. In August 1955 the Orcades ran for her first voyage to New Zealand via the Panama Canal and returned to Great Britain via the Suez Canal . During the 1956 Summer Olympics , the Orcades served as a barge in Melbourne.
In 1959 Harland & Wolff modernized the ship. A new first class swimming pool has been installed and the entire ship has been fitted with air conditioning . The passenger accommodation has been redesigned for 631 first class passengers and 734 tourist class passengers. A stovepipe was placed on the chimney to minimize the smoke escaping. This made the chimney appear even larger in its dimensions. The volume increased from the previous 28,164 GRT to 28,396 GRT. The following year, Orient Line merged with P&O and the fleets of the two companies were merged.
In 1964 the ship was renovated again and converted into a single class ship with beds for 1635 travelers. The First Class Grill Room has been converted into a 157-seat cinema . The hull , which was previously painted in the traditional corn color , was painted white. In May 1964 the Orcades started her first voyage as a single-class ship. From then on she was used for cruises in addition to her regular trips . In 1966 the ship came under the control of P&O, which had taken over the majority of the shares in Orient Line.
When the Orcades was at anchor during a cruise in Hong Kong in April 1972 , a fire broke out in the boiler room , causing great damage. Parts of the P&O ship Iberia , laid up in the UK , were dismantled and flown to Hong Kong to be used as spare parts. After the repairs, the ship continued to Australia and left Sydney on June 3, 1972 for the last time. On October 13, 1972, it was decommissioned and launched in the Solent . A few months later, the old ship was sold to the Taiwanese scrapping yard Nan Feng Steel Enterprises. It arrived in Kaohsiung on February 6, 1973, and demolition work began on March 15.