MV Empire Windrush

Empire Windrush
History
Germany
Name: MV Monte Rosa (1930-1947)
Owner:
  • Hamburg-Südamerikanische-Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft (1930–40)
  • Kriegsmarine (1940–45)
Operator:
  • Hamburg-Südamerikanische-Dampfschiffahrts-Gesellschaft (1930–40)
  • Kriegsmarine (1940–45)
Port of registry: Hamburg (1930–40)
Builder: Blohm & Voss, Hamburg
Yard number: 492
Launched: 4 December 1930
In service: 1931
Out of service: 1945
Identification:
  • German Official Number 1640 (1930–45)
  • Code Letters RHWF (1930–33)
  • Code Letters DIDU (1933–45)
Fate: Surrendered as a war prize
United Kingdom
Name: HMT Empire Windrush
Namesake: River Windrush
Owner:
  • Ministry of War Transport (1945)
  • Ministry of Transport (1945–54)
Operator: New Zealand Shipping Company
Port of registry: London
Acquired: 1945
In service: 1946
Out of service: 30 March 1954
Fate: Sank after catching fire
General characteristics
Tonnage:
Length: 500 ft 3 in (152.48 m)
Beam: 65 ft 7 in (19.99 m)
Depth: 37 ft 8 in (11.48 m)
Propulsion: 4 SCSA diesel engines (Blohm & Voss, Hamburg), double reduction geared driving two propellers.
Speed: 14.5 knots (26.9 km/h)
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HMT Empire Windrush, originally MV Monte Rosa, was a passenger liner and cruise ship launched in Germany in 1930. During the 1930s, she operated as a German cruise ship under the name Monte Rosa. During World War II, she was operated by the German navy as a troopship. She was acquired by the United Kingdom as a prize of war at the end of the war and renamed Empire Windrush. In British service, she continued to be used mainly as a troopship until March 1954, when the vessel caught fire and sank in the Mediterranean Sea with the loss of four crew.

Empire Windrush is best remembered today for bringing one of the first large groups of post-war West Indian immigrants to the United Kingdom, carrying 492 passengers and one stowaway on a voyage from Jamaica to London in 1948.[1] British Caribbean people who came to the United Kingdom in the period after World War II are sometimes referred to as the Windrush generation.

Early history of the ship

Windrush was a diesel-powered motor ship, built by Blohm & Voss in Hamburg, Germany, and launched on 4 December 1930. She was one of five Monte-class ocean liners that were launched between 1925 and 1931.[2] One of her sister-ships was the Monte Cervantes, which sank near Tierra del Fuego in 1930. Of the other three Monte-class vessels, two would be later sunk by air-raids during World War II and one would be scuttled by the Allies in 1946.

Under the name Monte Rosa, she was delivered to Hamburg-Südamerikanische-Dampfschiffahrts-Gesellschaft (Hamburg South American Steam Shipping Company) in 1931, who operated her as a cruise ship. After the Nazi regime came to power in Germany, she was operated as part of the Strength Through Joy programme, which provided leisure activities and cheap holidays as a means of promoting the party's ideology.

World War II

At the start of World War II, Monte Rosa was allocated for military use. She was used as a barracks ship at Stettin, then as a troopship for the invasion of Norway in April 1940. She was later used as an accommodation and recreational ship attached to the battleship Tirpitz, stationed in the north of Norway, from where Tirpitz and her flotilla attacked the Allied convoys en route to Russia. While serving in Norwegian waters, she was attacked by Royal Air Force Bristol Beaufighters, who claimed two torpedo hits and eight hits with RP-3 rockets.[3] In June 1944, members of the Norwegian resistance movement attempted, but failed to sink her by attaching Limpet mines to her hull.[4]

Later in 1944, Monte Rosa served in the Baltic Sea, rescuing Germans trapped in Latvia, East Prussia and Danzig by the advance of the Red Army. In May 1945, she was captured by advancing British forces at Kiel and taken as a prize of war.

British service

In 1946 the ship was assigned to the British Ministry of Transport and converted into a troopship. She was renamed HMT Empire Windrush on 21 January 1947, for use on the Southampton-Gibraltar-Suez-Aden-Colombo-Singapore-Hong Kong route, with voyages extended to Kure in Japan after the start of the Korean War. The vessel was operated for the British Government by the New Zealand Shipping Company, and made one voyage only to the Caribbean before resuming normal trooping voyages.

The name derives from a series of ship names used by the British government for the ships they owned or chartered for the carriage of troops. Many of these ships were second-hand (like Empire Windrush), and were renamed when bought. The names begin "Empire", and then added the name of a river in Britain. Among others well known at the time was Empire Wansbeck, which from 1946 to 1961 took British soldiers based in Germany from Harwich. The River Windrush is a minor tributary of the Thames, flowing from the Cotswold hills down towards Oxford.

West Indian immigrants

In 1948, Empire Windrush was en route from Australia to England via the Atlantic, docking in Kingston, Jamaica. At that time, there were no immigration restrictions for British subjects of one part of the British Empire moving to another part. The arrival of the boat immediately prompted complaints from some members of parliament, but legislation controlling immigration was not passed until 1962. Among the passengers were calypso musicians Lord Kitchener, Lord Beginner, Lord Woodbine and Mona Baptiste, alongside 60 Polish women displaced during the Second World War.[5] There were several stowaways. One, Averill Wauchope, was a "25-year-old seamstress" who was discovered seven days out of Kingston. A whipround was organised on board ship, raising £50 – enough for the fare and £4 pocket money for her. Nancy Cunard, heiress to the Cunard shipping fortune, who was on her way back from Trinidad, "took a fancy to her" and "intended looking after her".[6]

The arrivals were temporarily housed in the Clapham South deep shelter in south-west London, less than a mile away from the Coldharbour Lane Employment Exchange in Brixton, where some of the arrivals sought work. Many only intended to stay for a few years, and although a number returned the majority remained to settle permanently.

Sinking

An aerial photograph of the burning Empire Windrush, March 1954

Windrush set off from Yokohama, Japan in February 1954 on what proved to be her final voyage. She called at Kure and was to sail to the United Kingdom. Her passengers including recovering wounded United Nations veterans of the Korean War, some soldiers from the Duke of Wellington's Regiment wounded at the Third Battle of the Hook in May 1953, and also military families. However, the voyage was plagued with engine breakdowns and other defects and it took ten weeks to reach Port Said, from where the ship sailed for the last time.[7]

An inquiry later found that an engine room fire began after a fall of soot from the funnel fractured oil-fuel supply pipes. The subsequent explosion and fierce oil-fed fire killed four members of the engine room crew. The fire could not be fought because of a lack of electrical power for the water pumps because the back-up generators were also not in working order and the ship did not have a sprinkler system. The lack of electrical power also prevented many lifeboats from being launched and the remainder were unable to accommodate all the survivors, who were mostly clad in their nightclothes.

Despite these difficulties, all 1276 passengers were saved.[7] The rescue vessels took them to Algiers, where they were cared for by the French Red Cross and the French Army. Assistance was given by MV Mentor, MV Socotra, SS Hemsefjell and SS Taigete.[8] A Shackleton from 224 Squadron, Royal Air Force assisted in the rescue.[9]

The burned-out hulk of Empire Windrush was taken in tow by the Bay-class anti-aircraft frigate HMS Enard Bay of the Royal Navy's Mediterranean Fleet, 32 miles northwest of Cape Caxine. HMS Enard Bay attempted to tow the ship to Gibraltar in worsening weather, but Empire Windrush sank in the early hours of the following morning, Monday, 30 March 1954. The wreck lies at a depth of around 2,600 metres (8,500 ft).[10]

Legacy

Windrush Square, London (2006)

In 1998, an area of public open space in Brixton, London, was renamed Windrush Square to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the arrival of Windrush's West Indian passengers. To commemorate the "Windrush Generation", in 2008, a Thurrock Heritage plaque was unveiled at the London Cruise Terminal at Tilbury.[11] This chapter in the boat's history was also commemorated, although fleetingly only, in the Pandemonium sequence of the Opening Ceremony of the Games of the XXX Olympiad in London, 27 July 2012. A small replica of the ship plastered with newsprint was the facsimile representation in the ceremony.

Propulsion

Official number and code letters

Official Numbers were a forerunner to IMO Numbers. Monte Rosa had the German Official Number 1640. She used the Code Letters RHWF until 1933[12] and then DIDU until 1945.[13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ David Kynaston, Austerity Britain 1945–1951, London: Bloomsbury, 2007, p. 275; ISBN 978-0-7475-9923-4.
  2. ↑ "Monte class ocean liner (ger.)". wrecksite.eu. Retrieved 7 October 2014.
  3. ↑ Eric Grove (2002). German Capital Ships and Raiders in World War II: From Scharnhorst to Tirpitz, 1942-1944. Psychology Press. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-7146-5283-2.
  4. ↑ Michael Tillotson (5 January 2012). SOE and The Resistance: As Told in The Times Obituaries. Bloomsbury. pp. 62–. ISBN 978-1-4411-1971-1.
  5. ↑ "Polish Community Focus". Web.archive.org. 2010-01-08. Archived from the original on 2010-01-08. Retrieved 2015-05-17.
  6. ↑ Kynaston (2007), p. 276.
  7. 1 2 Dockerill, Geoffrey, "On Fire at Sea" essay in compilation The Unquiet Peace: Stories from the Post War Army, London, 1957.
  8. ↑ Mitchell, W. H., and Sawyer, L. A. (1995). The Empire Ships. London, New York, Hamburg, Hong Kong: Lloyd's of London Press Ltd. p. 477. ISBN 1-85044-275-4.
  9. ↑ "Constant Endeavour". Aeroplane. No. February 2010. p. 60.
  10. ↑ "MV Empire Windrush [+1954]". wrecksite.eu. Retrieved 7 October 2014.
  11. ↑ "The Empire Windrush". Thurrock-history.org.uk. Retrieved 2015-05-17.
  12. ↑ "LLOYD'S REGISTER, NAVIRES A VAPEUR ET A MOTEURS (RHWF)" (PDF). Plimsoll Ship Data. Retrieved 2 May 2009.
  13. ↑ "LLOYD'S REGISTER, NAVIRES A VAPEUR ET A MOTEURS (DIDU)" (PDF). Plimsoll Ship Data. Retrieved 2 May 2009.

Bibliography

External links

Coordinates: 37°00′N 2°11′E / 37.000°N 2.183°E / 37.000; 2.183

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