SS Rajputana

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The SS Rajputana was a British passenger and cargo carrying ocean liner. She was built for the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company at the Harland and Wolff docks on the River Clyde near Glasgow, Scotland in 1925. Named after Rajputana region of western India, she sailed on a regular route between England and British India.

She was requisitioned into the British Navy on the onset of WW II and commissioned in December 1939 as the armed merchant cruiser HMS Rajputana. The installation of eight six-inch guns gave her the firepower of a light cruiser without the armoured protection. She was torpedoed and sunk off Iceland on 13 April 1941, after escorting a convoy across the North Atlantic.

World War II

In the Second Battle of the Atlantic HMS Rajputana escorted several North Atlantic convoys from Bermuda and Halifax under Captain F. H. Taylor, including [BHX 42], [BHX 45], [BHX 49], [BHX 52], [BHX 54], [BHX 61], [BHX 64], [BHX 71], [BHX 83], [BHX 94], [BHX 101], [BHX 111] and [BHX 117]

Her sister ships SS Rawalpindi, SS Ranchi and SS Ranpura were also converted to armed merchant cruisers. Except for small corvettes, the converted passenger ships like the HMS Rajputana were the only armed protection for most of the early convoys. With their six-inch guns, they were the only escorts that could engage German surface ships. Very few convoys received the protection of the larger cruisers or battleships.

On 13 April 1941, four days after parting company with convoy HX 117, she was torpedoed by U-108 in the Denmark Strait west of Reykjavík, Iceland. She sunk over an hour later with the loss of 42 men, including her last civilian captain Commander C.T.O. Richardson. [link] A total of 283 of her crew were saved by the destroyer HMS Legion, some of them after spending 12 hours in overcrowded lifeboats. Among the survivors was Daniel Lionel Hanington, who later become a Rear Admiral in the Royal Canadian Navy.

Of her sister ships two survived the war. On 23 November 1939, while on "Northern Patrol" guarding the GIUK gap, HMS Rawalpindi was sunk by the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst southeast of Iceland in the Iceland-Faroe passage. [link] HMS Ranchi (F15) survived the war and was scrapped at Newport in 1953. [link] The HMS Ranpura (F93) was sold to the Admiralty in 1943 and converted to a repair ship. She served in the Royal Navy as a fleet depot ship at least until 1960. [link] She took part in the 1956 British invasion of Egypt. [link]

Famous passengers

The P&O R-class ships could carry 307 first class and 288 second class passengers.

On 12 January 1929 Lawrence of Arabia boarded the ship in Karachi, British India, arriving in Plymouth in February 1929. [link]
On his first trip to England in 1931, Meher Baba met Mahatma Gandhi on the ship.

External links

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