RMS Scythia
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The RMS Scythia (II) was a 1921 posed in service Transatlantic - passenger ship of the British shipping company Cunard Line , the passenger and mail service between the UK and the USA was used. She served as a transport ship in World War II and was scrapped in 1958.
Early years as a passenger steamer
After the heavy losses in World War I , the Cunard Line decided on an extensive development program at the end of the war. Medium-sized liners of around 19,000 GRT were to be built, rather than ocean liners like those previously operated by the shipping company. Ship names were assigned that had already appeared in the Cunard fleet. The first of these ships to be completed was the 19,730 GRT Scythia , construction of which began in 1919. It was built in the English port city of Barrow-in-Furness at the Vickers Ltd. shipyard . , which a few years later became part of Armstrong-Whitworth & Co., Ltd. has been.
The 190.19 meter long and 22.49 meter wide ship was powered by six steam turbines that acted on two propellers , made 12,500 WPS and ensured a speed of 16 knots (29.6 km / h). 350 passengers in the first, 350 in the second and 1,500 in the third class could be carried. The steel-built ship had two masts and a chimney. The Scythia had two sister ships, the RMS Laconia (II) (19,680 GRT), which was built by Swan Hunter , and the RMS Samaria (II) (19,602 GRT), which was built by Cammell, Laird & Company .
On March 23, 1920, the Scythia ran at Vickers Ltd. from the stack. Godmother was a Mrs. S. Maxwell, the wife of a Cunard director. The steamer was built for passenger traffic from Liverpool via Queenstown to New York and Boston . On August 20, 1921, the ship left Liverpool on its maiden voyage. The Scythia remained in this service throughout the 1920s and 1930s. From February 1924, she also took cruises from New York to the Mediterranean, which was intended to appeal primarily to American tourists.
On September 30, 1923, she collided with the Cedric of the White Star Line in fog in Queenstown Harbor . None of the ships were seriously damaged, but the Scythia had to abandon her voyage and return to Liverpool for inspection. In April 1928, King Amanullah Khan and Queen Soraya Tarzi of Afghanistan , who were visiting Great Britain on a European tour , arrived on board the Scythia in Liverpool. Another accident occurred on July 7, 1934, when the Scythia collided with the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company's Viking ferry while leaving Liverpool . There was no significant damage so she could resume her journey.
World War II and the time after
After her last voyage on the Liverpool-New York service on August 5, 1939, the Scythia was requested by the Royal Navy and converted into a troop transport . Her first voyage for this purpose began on October 1, 1940, when she brought the 1st King's Dragoon Guards, a cavalry regiment of the British Army , from Liverpool to the Middle East . She then brought refugees from Liverpool to New York.
In 1942 the ship took part in Operation Torch in North Africa . On November 23, 1942, the Scythia with 4,300 people on board was hit by an air torpedo in an air raid, killing five people. The crew managed to bring the ship to the port of Algiers on their own. After repairs in New York in January 1943, the Scythia was used to transport US troops to Europe. After the war ended, she brought American soldiers back home before being sent to India to repatriate British troops to Britain.
In 1946 the Scythia also made several trips from Liverpool to Halifax as a so-called war bride ship , as ships were called that brought the wives and children of Canadian soldiers from Europe to Canada. One of the last trips as a troop transport took place on March 11, 1948, when the Scythia drove to Liverpool with the members of the 1st King's Dragoon Guards on board. In the same year she was handed over to the International Refugee Organization , for which she transported refugees from Europe to Canada from October 1948 and made several crossings from Cuxhaven via Le Havre to Québec .
In November 1949, the passenger accommodation at John Brown & Company was rebuilt, so that from then on there was space for 248 passengers in first class and 630 in tourist class. On August 17, 1950, the Scythia set off on her first post-war voyage as a passenger ship from London to London and Québec. On April 10, 1951, the ship was transferred to the route Southampton - Le Havre - Québec. After a last voyage from Liverpool via Queenstown to New York on October 5, 1957, the Scythia ran from Québec to Rotterdam on October 24, 1957 for her first voyage in service with the Canadian government .
The last departure of the steamer took place on December 11, 1957 in Halifax to Le Havre, Rotterdam and Southampton. The ship was then sold to the British Iron and Steel Corporation for demolition and brought to Inverkeithing under the command of its last captain, Geoffrey Thrippleton Marr (1908–1997) , where it was delivered to Thomas W. Ward Shipbreakers Ltd. on January 23, 1958. was scrapped.
Web links
- Short description of the ship in The Ships List (lower half)
- Website with data on Cunard ships ( Memento from January 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive )