Talamba
 The Talamba as a hospital ship
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The Talamba (I) was a 1924 passenger ship of the British shipping company British India Steam Navigation Company , which transported passengers and cargo between various ports in India and Japan . During the Second World War , the Talamba served as a hospital ship and received the tactical code 43 until it was sunk on July 10, 1943 near Sicily during a German air raid.
The ship
The 8,018-ton, from steel -built steamship Talamba was at Hawthorn Leslie and Company in the English town of Hebburn on Tyne built and ran on 16 July 1924 by the stack. On October 2, 1924, the 137.4 meter long and 18.4 meter wide ship was completed. The Talamba had three chimneys, two masts and two propellers and was powered by two four-cylinder triple expansion steam engines. The top speed was 16 knots. She was the last of three sister ships to be completed . The other two were the Tairea (I) (7,934 GRT) and the Takliwa (7,936 GRT), both of which were registered in Glasgow while the Talamba was registered in London . She was a three-class ship (56 first class, 72 second class, 2,777 third class). The crew consisted of 175 people.
The three sister ships were the only ones in the history of the British India Steam Navigation Company to have three funnels, the last being a dummy. This should impress the clientele.
The ship entered service for Calcutta and Japan in 1924 , operated by Apcar & Co., which had been integrated into the British India Steam Navigation Company in 1912. On a trip to Singapore in 1926 it had the light cruiser HMS Carlisle come to the rescue, as Chinese deportees the bridge tried to storm. She was one of 27 ships that ran aground on September 2, 1937 in a typhoon in Hong Kong in the Lei Yue Mun Canal. In 1939 she carried troops from India to Great Britain and was added to the Liner Division that same year.
From 1941 the Talamba was used as a hospital ship with 485 beds and a 110-person staff. On January 15, 1941, she took part in the evacuation of Singapore and was then used in Colombo and the Mediterranean . She also helped rescue the survivors of the British battleships Repulse and Prince of Wales , which were sunk by Japanese aircraft on December 10, 1941 near Kuantan .
On July 10, 1943, the Talamba itself fell victim to an air raid. She was attacked by a German fighter-bomber while she was taking on board soldiers who had been injured during the Allied landing in Sicily ( Operation Husky ). The ship sank at position 36 ° 55 ' N , 15 ° 13' E , but before that all wounded and medical personnel could be picked up by other ships, including the sister ship Tairea and the troop transport Bergensfjord . Five machinists were killed in the attack.