RMS was an ocean liner that was launched in Ireland in 1914. With changes of ownership she was renamed in 1935 and in 1940. She was scrapped in Belgium in 1955.
was launched for the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (RMSP), but requisitioned in 1915 as the armed merchant cruiser (AMC) HMS for the Royal Navy. In 1922 RMSP transferred her to the Pacific Steam Navigation Company (PSNC). She was a Royal Mail Ship until 1935, when Jugoslavenska Lloyd bought her and renamed her . In 1940 the Companhia Colonial de Navegação (CCN) bought her and renamed her .
As HMS in the First World War she served with the 10th Cruiser Squadron from 1915 to 1917, and escorted convoys between the British Isles and Sierra Leone in 1918. As RMS she sailed between New York and Chile via the Panama Canal. As she sailed between Italy and Palestine. As in the Second World War she made several transatlantic crossings, on which she carried many refugees who had escaped German-occupied Europe.
This was the third of four Royal Mail ships that were named . The first was a sail- and steamship that was built in 1865 as Rakaia, bought and renamed in 1871, and wrecked in 1882. The second was a steamship that was built in 1896, sold and renamed in 1903, and sunk by a mine in 1917. The fourth was a motor ship that was built in 1952, sold and renamed in 1969, and scrapped in 1978.
Building and introduction In 1914 Workman, Clark and Company of Belfast launched a pair of steamships for RMSP's service between England and the West Indies. Yard number 334 was launched on 6 July as Essequibo, and yard number 333 was launched on 8 September as .
s registered length was , her beam was , her depth was , and her draught was . Her tonnages were and . She had twin screws, each driven by a quadruple-expansion engine. The combined power of her twin engines was rated at 1,055 NHP, and gave her a speed of .
RMSP registered at Belfast. Her UK official number was 136346, her code letters were JHMV, and her wireless call sign was MTJ.
and Essequibo were described as "the two finest ships ever built" for RMSP's route between Britain and the West Indies. made her maiden voyage on the route, but then the Admiralty requisitioned her for conversion into an AMC. Essequibo served the route slightly longer, until after less than a year she was requisitioned for conversion into a hospital ship.
HMS Ebro was armed with six 6-inch QF guns, two 6-pounder guns, and depth charge launching apparatus. The Royal Navy commissioned her at the Royal Albert Dock, London on 15 April 1915, with the pennant number M 78.
left London on 21 April. She was off Gravesend and Sheerness in Kent until 15 May, when she left to join the 10th Cruiser Squadron at sea. She served with the squadron until December 1917, patrolling around the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and the Norwegian Sea. Her usual port for bunkering was Glasgow.
On 15 December 1917 left Glasgow for the last time. She steamed to Freetown in Sierra Leone, where she arrived on 27 December. From then until November 1918 she escorted convoys between Freetown and the British Isles, with Devonport as her usual base in home waters. She was in port in Avonmouth from 18 May to 4 June, and from 17 July to 2 August. On 24 November she reached Tilbury, the next day she reached the Royal Albert Dock, and on 6 December all of her ammunition was unloaded for her to be decommissioned.
RMS Ebro The Admiralty returned to RMSP. According to one source, on 28 October 1919 she traversed the Panama Canal for the first time, heading from the Caribbean to the Pacific, in the service of RMSP's subsidiary PSNC. Certainly by December 1919 she was working for PSNC. On 6 December she left Kingston, Jamaica, and on 11 December she reached New York. On 16 December PSNC's New York agents, Sanderson and Sons, gave a banquet for 175 shipping and railroad men aboard at Pier 42 in the North River. On 18 December she was due to start a voyage to Bermuda for Christmas. Lloyd Sanderson told diners that in the New Year, and Essequibo would start a service between New York and Valparaíso via the Panama Canal, and that by June 2020 sailings on the route should be leaving New York every fortnight. left Bermuda on 26 December, and got back to New York on 29 December.
On 7 January 1920 left New York on her first voyage to Valparaíso. Her ports of call included Mollendo in Peru on 26 January. She reached Valparaíso on 1 February. On her return voyage her ports of call included Colón, Panama on 29 February, and she got back to New York on 8 March.
On 1 June 1921 reached New York carrying $172,884 from ports on the Pacific coast of South America. That summer, transatlantic passenger ships were fully booked, and RMSP chartered back from PSNC to provide a transatlantic relief service in June or July. By 6 August she was back on her route between New York and Valparaíso.
On 15 April 1922 a lighter broke adrift in New York and struck s port side aft. Two of her hull plates were damaged and a porthole glass was broken, but she was able to leave port that day for Valparaíso. By the end of 1922 RMSP transferred ownership of and Essequibo to PSNC, in exchange for certain PSNC ships including . remained on PSNC's route between New York and Valparaíso via the Panama Canal.
When docked at Pier 42 on the North River on 19 January 1923, US Customs men seized "a large quantity" of liquor, narcotics, and several automatic firearms that were not on her manifest. In March 1924 Customs men in New York raided RMSP's and confiscated liquor and morphine valued at $16,000. William Hayward, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, sought to seize for violations of Federal law. Five members of her crew pleaded guilty to bringing liquor into the port. As a result, from April 1924 RMSP and PSNC posted two or more armed guards aboard each of their ships when they were in port in New York.
In March 1924 Viscount Pirrie, Chairman of Harland & Wolff, voyaged from Southampton to South America with his wife Viscountess Pirrie and her sister. They travelled overland from Buenos Aires to Chile, where they embarked aboard . Pirrie caught pneumonia in Antofagasta, and his condition worsened when the ship reached Iquique. At Panama City two nurses embarked to care for him. By then he was very weak, but insisted on being brought on deck to see the canal. He admired how was handled through the locks.
On 7 June Pirrie died. His body was embalmed. On 13 June reached Pier 42 on the North River, where Pirrie's friend Baron Inverforth and his wife met Viscountess Pirrie and her sister. UK ships in the port of New York lowered their flags to half-mast, and Pirrie's body was transferred to Pier 59, where it was embarked on White Star Line's , one of the largest ships Pirrie ever built, to be repatriated to the UK.
was built as a coal-burner. By August 1924 she had been converted to burn oil.
At about 02:00 hrs on 5 July 1927, as neared New York, fire was discovered in 800 bales of cotton in her number 6 cargo hold. Her Master, Captain Ellis Roberts, ordered all her hatches battened down and all ventilators closed, both to minimise the air supply to the fire, and to prevent passengers from being aware that there was a fire aboard. The ship cleared quarantine just before 09:00 hrs and docked in the North River at 10:00 hrs.
Five minutes after the last of her passengers had disembarked, Roberts ordered number 6 hatch opened, and longshoremen wearing gas masks went below in relays to raise bales of cotton to reach the seat of the fire. The New York City Fire Department fireboats and poured water into the hold, and by 14:00 hrs the fire was extinguished. Longshoremen had removed 230 of the cotton bales. The remainder, valued at $50,000, were written off as a total loss.
On 10 August 1929 a gale hit Chile. was in Antofagasta, and she and other ships put to sea to ride out the storm. The harbour breakwater was almost totally destroyed.
By 1930 s wireless call sign was GQRL. By 1934 this had superseded her code letters.
The effects of the Wall Street crash of 1929 included a global slump in shipping. From December 1930 was laid up at Avonmouth.
Princesa Olga In 1935 Jugoslavenska Lloyd bought the ship and renamed her , after Princess Olga of Greece and Denmark, wife of Prince Paul of Yugoslavia. The ship was registered in Dubrovnik, and her call sign was YTFK. She ran a seasonal service from April to November between Trieste in Italy and Haifa in Palestine via the Corinth Canal. Her ports of call were Venice, Split, Gruž in Dubrovnik, Piraeus, and Alexandria.
Serpa Pinto
In 1940 CCN bought and renamed her , after the explorer Alexandre de Serpa Pinto (1846–1900). She was registered in Lisbon, and her call sign was CSBA.
From May 1940 served CCN's route between Lisbon and Beira in Moçambique. Later that year CCN transferred her to its route between Lisbon and Santos in Brazil. Between then and the end of the war in 1945 she made ten round trips on the Brazil route.
On 8 September the captured the Greek cargo ship in the South Atlantic. The German commander ordered the crew to abandon ship, gave them extra food and water, scuttled , and left the crew at sea in two lifeboats at position .
The two boats became separated. A month later, on 8 October, the 22 occupants of one boat sighted and signalled to her with distress rockets. rescued the survivors and landed them at Rio de Janeiro. On 3 November they embarked on another CCN ship, , to return to Europe. A UK cargo ship found the other lifeboat, and on 21 October landed its ten surviving occupants at Buenos Aires.
From December 1940 CCN changed s schedule. Her voyages between Lisbon and Brazil were to alternate with voyages between Lisbon and New York. Extra third class accommodation was installed in her cargo holds. One-way fares were $180 in third class, and from $360 to $540 in first class. On 4 January 1941 she reached New York two days behind schedule, due to several days of gales in the North Atlantic. She landed 628 passengers, of whom between 90 and 95 percent were refugees from German-occupied Europe. Passengers complained that the food on board had been very bad, the ship was under-manned, the crew was over-worked, and water had got into some of the third class accommodation during the gales.
Among the passengers were Czechoslovak, French, and German film producers, directors, and screenwriters, including the Czech Paul Schiller. Also aboard was a party of 50 German Jewish refugees on their way to join the Jewish community in Sosúa in the Dominican Republic. Porto Rico Line held its ship in New York for three hours to give the party time to make their connection. A tugboat ferried the party to .
s next North Atlantic crossing started from Lisbon on 15 March 1941. The Portuguese authorities denied CCN permission to add berths for another 170 passengers to her accommodation. Even so, she carried fourth class accommodation in three sections in her cargo holds, with improvised bunk beds between decks, for which the one-way fare was $170. The UK authorities ordered her to make an unscheduled stop for inspection. She arrived in Hamilton, Bermuda on 24 March, where the British detained her for three days. She reached Stapleton, Staten Island on 30 March carrying 640 passengers, including the Jewish sculptor Naoum Aronson; and Nessim Ovadia, Chief Rabbi of the Sephardic Jews in Paris.
On another crossing from Lisbon to New York, reached Pier 8 at Stapleton on 23 June with 685 passengers and six stowaways. Her passengers included 29 survivors from , which the had sunk in the South Atlantic two months previously. Also aboard were Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Washington Luís, former President of Brazil, and a pair of Polish teenage aristocrats bringing a Stradivarius violin that they were to deliver to Bronisław Huberman.