I recently and by accident found out that the ship I came to Australia on in 1955 has a great history. I remember my parents saying it was to be her last voyage but my memory tells me she did one more before being retired. Based on what is written here she was either restored or another ship built with same name ......So glad my parents made the decision to immigrate to Aus.....................Mary HMS OTRANTO HMS Otranto was an Orient Steam Navigation Company liner and was built by Workman Clark, Belfast in 1909 for the London to Australia route but also did cruses to Norway and the Mediterranean on occasion. She had a displacement of 12,124 gross tons and 535.3 x 64.0 x 38.6ft . She had 12,000 ihp quadruple expansion engines giving her a top speed of 18 knots. The Orient Line also had three other sister ships to the Otranto, they were the Osterley, Orsova and Otway. When war was declared in 1914 the British Admiralty requisitioned the Otranto for use as an Auxiliary Cruiser and armed her with four 4.7 guns. She spent the last months of 1914 in the South Atlantic off the West Coast of South America looking for the German Cruiser Squadron commanded by Admiral von Spee. It was the lookouts from the Otranto that first spotted the German fleet. She reported to Admiral Cradock in his flagship, HMS Good Hope and then made her escape as she was no match for the German guns. The Battle of Coronel took place on 1 November 1914 with the loss of the British ships HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth with very heavy loss of life. September 25th saw the Otranto leaving America with a full load of troops on which, would be her last trip across the Atlantic. On 6 Oct. 1918, during a heavy storm while carrying troops from America to Glasgow and Liverpool, HMS Otranto collided with the P&O liner H.M.S. Kashmir also carring American troops, in Machir Bay off the North coast of Islay, Scotland, drifted ashore and became a total wreck. The loss of life was heavy - 431 drowned, including 351 American soldiers - though there were 367 survivors in all. Although the destroyer H.M.S. Mounsey managed to take off several hundred soldiers and crewman 431 died. The dead were buried with military honors in a cemetery in Kilchoman on Islay.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 00:56:01 +0000
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