Strathnaver
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The Strathnaver (I) was named after a Scottish place in 1931 posed in service passenger ship of the British shipping company Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P & O), which for the passenger and mail services from the UK to Australia was built. During the Second World War , the ship served as an Allied troop transport . In 1962 the Strathnaver was scrapped in Hong Kong after more than 30 years of service .
The ship
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The 22,270 GRT motor ship Strathnaver was built in January 1930 at Vickers-Armstrong Ltd. in Barrow-in-Furness and launched there on February 5, 1931. The function of godmother was Lady Janet Mackay Bailey, the second daughter of James Mackay, 1st Earl of Inchcape , the chairman of P&O. The Strathnaver was the first of five ships of the so-called Strath class. The others were the Strathaird (1932), the Strathmore (1935), the Stratheden (1937) and the Strathallan (1938). The sister ships had yellow chimneys and were otherwise completely painted in white, which is why they were called The White Sisters (Eng. "The white sisters").
The Strathnaver had two masts , two propellers, and three chimneys, the first and third of which were mock-ups. The 194.64 meter long and 24.43 meter wide ship was powered by two turbo-electric steam turbines, which enabled a maximum cruising speed of 22 knots. The passenger accommodations were designed for 500 first class passengers and 670 tourist class passengers.
On August 26, 1931, the ship successfully completed its test drives and on September 2, 1931, it was handed over to P&O. On October 2, 1931, the Strathnaver ran from London on her maiden voyage to Sydney via Marseille , Suez , Bombay and Colombo . The Strathnaver and her identical sister ship Strathaird entered service just in time for the Earl of Inchcape's death in May 1932. The two ships created a new standard of passenger transport on the Australian route and were also the first ships in the P&O fleet to have a hull painted white instead of a black one (which later became a tradition at P&O). Together with the Viceroy of India , which was put into service in 1929 , both ships were also used for cruises between their regular crossings and enjoyed great popularity.
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On May 13, 1932, a dinner was given on board the ship in Tilbury , which was broadcast live on the radio by the BBC . On September 11, 1937, the Strathnaver collided with the quay wall in Tilbury and then had to be repaired, which interrupted its schedule. In 1938, refrigeration equipment was installed on board the ship for the transport of frozen meat, as already existed on the younger ships of the Strath class.
War effort
Like many other British merchant ships, the Strathnaver was used for military service during World War II. On January 7, 1940, the British government requested it to be used as a troop transport and henceforth carried soldiers from Australia and New Zealand to the Middle East and the Red Sea . On November 11, 1942, she brought soldiers ashore in Algiers as part of Operation Torch . The following day she transported survivors of the P&O ship Cathay and the Karanja of the British India Steam Navigation Company from Bejaia to Algiers, both of which had been bombed and sunk near Bejaia. In May and June 1943, the Strathnaver was part of training maneuvers in the Red Sea in preparation for the Allied invasion of Italy .
In early 1944 she was involved as a landing ship in Operation Shingle . During her service in World War II, the Strathnaver covered 350,000 miles and carried 128,792 people. On October 10, 1946, she collided in the docks of Southampton with the small cargo ship Fluor , which went down.
Late years
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In November 1948, the British government dismissed the Strathnavers after more than eight years. She was the last Strath-class ship that P&O got back after the war. At Harland & Wolff in Belfast , the ship was made afloat again for commercial liner traffic, with the two dummy chimneys removed. On December 6, 1948, the Strathnaver P&O was handed over and on January 5, 1950, she left for her first post-war voyage. On June 16, 1953, the ship was chartered again by the government to take government guests to Spithead for Elizabeth II's Coronation Fleet Review . In June 1954 the Strathnaver and the Strathaird were rebuilt again and converted into single-class ships with space for 1250 tourists in the tourist class. On October 25, 1960, the Strathnaver rescued the second officer of the Egyptian freighter El Gamil , which had sunk two days earlier in the southern Red Sea. Of the 24 crew members, he was the only survivor.
In 1960 P&O merged with the Orient Steam Navigation Company to form P&O Orient Lines. Since the post-war emigration boom to Australia and New Zealand had declined noticeably in the early 1960s, the new owners decided to withdraw the Strathnaver and Strathaird . In addition, the new ship Canberra (45,270 GRT) was put into service in 1961 , which made the two old Strath ships superfluous. On December 11, 1961, P & O-Orient Lines announced the decommissioning of the Strathnaver . On February 12, 1962, the ship was sold to the Shun Fung Ironworks Company in Hong Kong and on March 1, 1962, the Strathnaver left London for Hong Kong, where it arrived on April 3, 1962 for scrapping.
Trivia
In November 2012, a message in a bottle was found at Ninety Mile Beach in New Zealand , which was probably thrown into the sea by Australian Herbert Ernest Hillbrick in 1936. The message in a bottle contained a handwritten note on P&O notepaper, dated March 17, 1936, with a picture of the Strathnaver .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ The New Zealand Herald , Beachcomber finds note at sea for 76 years
- ↑ tagesschau.de ( Memento of November 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), bottom: stranded after 76 years