Ahoy - Mac's Web Log

Monday, August 09, 2010

Hi

I have just stumbled across your web site while looking or information about a ship of the same name on which my parents and I migrated from UK to Australia in 1952.

Would that ship be one and the same as that which you have described. For some reason I thought that she was a 'liberty ship'.

Thank you for any assistance
Brian

Brian,

No Somersetshire was certainly not a Liberty Ship, and I do think it is the same ship described on AHOY.

She had a mixed career, troopship, hospital ship, then post WW2 a migrant ship.

See Uboat.net HMHS Somersetshire

The 'Somersetshire'

      Built by: Harland & Wolff, Belfast
      Launched: 1921.
      Origial name:
      Original owner: Chartered to The Royal Mail Steam Packet Co.
      Gross tonnage: 7,450
      Engines: -
      Capable speed: -
      1927. Convered to a troopship with accomodation for 1,300 men.
      1939. She was requisitioned and converted into HM Hospital Ship.
      In 1942 she was torpedoed in the Mediterranean but managed to limp to Alexandria.
      1948. Migrant ship to Australia.
      1953. She briefly returned to trooping but was broken up in 1954.

      HMHS Somersetshire
            Name HMHS Somersetshire
            Type: Hospital ship

Somersetshire.

I hope this helps a little.

Best regards,
Mac.


August 10, 2010 9:17 AM
Good morning Mac,

Thank you very much for that information I feel privileged to have sailed on such a ship and I still have memories of the some of my time aboard and places we stopped at enroute.

thank you again
Brian

Brian,

I am pleased that my E-Mail was useful for you.

Times at sea tend to stay in ones memory, particularly when your voyage was to a new country, and a new experience.

Regards,
Mac.

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