Wanganella (ship)
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The Wanganella was a passenger ship put into service in 1933 by the Australian shipping company Huddart Parker Ltd. From 1941 to 1946 she served as the hospital ship AHS Wanganella (Australian Hospital Ship Wanganella ) under the Australian flag. After the war it was used again as a passenger ship and later as a floating hostel. In 1970 the Wanganella in Kaohsiung (Taiwan) was scrapped.
Construction and early years
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The 9,599 GRT motor ship was built at Harland & Wolff in Belfast , Northern Ireland , and was launched there on December 17, 1929. It was built for the Royal Mail Line's passenger and mail traffic to West Africa and named Achimota . The 144.5 meter long and 19 meter wide ship was powered by two eight-cylinder diesel engines from Burmeister & Wain , which made 6,750 break horsepower (BHP) and enabled a speed of 17 knots. However, the Royal Mail Line came through the global economic crisis in a financial emergency and had 1931 bankruptcy login. The Achimota was then sold in September 1932 by the Melbourne-based Australian shipping company Huddart Parker Ltd. Bought. Huddart Parker renamed the ship Wanganella (after a municipality in the Australian state of New South Wales ) and used it in passenger and postal services between Australia and New Zealand . She mainly commuted between Melbourne and Sydney in Australia and Auckland and Wellington in New Zealand. She was a Trans-Tasman Passenger Liner as she crossed the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand (Trans Tasman Express Service). This took the Wanganella three and a half days.
On November 29, 1932, the Wanganella ran after its completion in Belfast for Australia and reached Sydney after a journey of 31 days. The ship's arrival was announced by the Sydney Morning Herald on January 2, 1933 . The Harland & Wolff shipyard commissioned its chief engineer Leonard Septimus Brew to bring the Wanganella to Sydney. Brew was surprised that the pilot who escorted the Wanganella into Sydney Harbor was his brother Albert Brew, whom he had not seen for about 20 years.
On January 12, 1933, the Wanganella left Sydney on her maiden voyage to New Zealand. It could carry 304 passengers in first and 104 in second class. The ship remained in transtasmanian passenger traffic until 1941. The Wanganella was by far one of the largest and most luxurious ships on this route. The focus was on the elegant first-class Main Lounge on the promenade deck with its wooden panels, columns, lush curtains and the glass dome that reached up to the level of the boat deck. The room was covered with Persian rugs and furnished with a piano and upholstered sofas. The lounge was joined aft by the library and the writing room. This was followed by the smoking room, which was dominated by dark furnishings and silk wallpaper and equipped with an English fireplace. From the smoking parlor one had a view of the aft deck and the veranda café. The domed, white, first-class dining room was on C-deck.
On December 28, 1937, the Wanganella collided with a trawler on the New South Wales coast . On June 19, 1940, she took part in the rescue of passengers and crew members of the passenger steamer RMS Niagara (13,415 GRT) of the New Zealand Union Steam Ship Company , which ran and sank off Auckland on a mine laid by the German auxiliary cruiser Orion .
Hospital ship in World War II
In 1941 the ship was requested by the Royal Australian Navy and converted into a hospital ship in Melbourne. As such, the Wanganella could accommodate 434 patients, increasing to 550 in 1943. The crew was reduced from 160 people from pre-war times to 123 people. The medical staff (doctors, surgeons, nurses, etc.) amounted to 110 people. On July 12, 1941 she was officially put into service as AHS (Australian Hospital Ship) Wanganella with the identification 45. Her first trip took her to Singapore via Melbourne and Fremantle . The second voyage as a hospital ship took them to Suez . When she was anchored there in Port Tawfiq, there was an air raid on the port by German fighter-bombers. Some bombs fell in the immediate vicinity, but the Wanganella was not hit. The Georgic the White Star Line was not so lucky; she was hit several times and caught fire.
On April 14, 1944, the Wanganella was in the port of Bombay when the cargo steamer Fort Stikine exploded there and caused a major fire (this incident became known as the Bombay Explosion or Bombay Docks Explosion ). The waves caused by the explosions made the ship lurch strongly; as it was at a safe distance, however, unlike other ships, it was not hit by rubble. Because there were hundreds of injuries, the ship's management was asked to help with the care. The Wanganella therefore stayed in the port of Bombay for a week and her medical staff worked for days without a break.
From May 19, 1941 to 1945, the Wanganella sailed to Borneo , the Middle East , New Guinea , the Solomon Islands and the South Pacific , covering a total of 251,011 nautical miles (464,872 km) and transporting 13,385 wounded. At the end of 1945 it was again Huddart Parker Ltd. transferred and comprehensively renovated. The new passenger capacity was now 316 passengers in first and 108 in second class.
Post-war years
On January 19, 1947, on her first civilian crossing after the war, the Wanganella stranded with about 400 passengers on board shortly before midnight on Barrett Reef on the west side of the entrance to Wellington Harbor . Passengers and crew were evacuated the following day; there were no injuries. The ship was stuck on the reef for a total of 18 days. The necessary repairs kept the Wanganella off their regular schedule for 22 months. Further restrictions came in the first half of 1951 when the Wanganella suffered the aftermath of a New Zealand dockworkers strike. This 151-day rebellion of New Zealand dock workers against their employers, which went down in history as the 1951 New Zealand Waterfront Dispute , is considered to be the largest workers' strike in New Zealand's history to date .
On October 27, 1961, Huddart Parker Ltd. and thus also the Wanganella from McIlwraith McEachern Ltd. accepted. She sold this company after just a few months, after suffering an engine damage on March 26, 1962 on the way to Auckland and an engine room explosion on June 12, 1962 in Sydney . Both times the ship had to be repaired at great cost. On August 15, 1962, the Wanganella was therefore taken over by the Hang Fung Shipping and Trading Company from Hong Kong , which used it between New Zealand, Australia and Hong Kong, but also as a cruise ship in the Pacific . During the 1950s and 1960s, the number of transtasman ship passengers decreased massively due to increasing air traffic. In addition, machine problems were becoming more and more common with the Wanganella . For these reasons, it was decided in 1963 to have the ship scrapped.
Shortly before the planned scrapping, however, it was acquired by the US company Utah Constructions, which were currently working on the construction of the Manapouri power station . From 1963 to 1969, the Wanganella was moored in Doubtful Sound , a fjord on New Zealand's South Island . During this time it served as accommodation for mining and road construction workers. In 1969 the Australian Pacific Shipping Company acquired the 40-year-old ship. However, after six years of decommissioning, their old machines no longer worked successfully and the ship could no longer be used, the Wanganella was finally sold for demolition in 1970. Initially sold to Hong Kong, it was immediately sold to the Taiwanese demolition company Shyeh Sheng Fuat Steel and Iron Works Ltd. resold and scrapped in Kaohsiung .