HM Troopships

[Brian James]

Requisitioned for Troop Transport,SS Invicta pictured disembarking troops for the Front,Boulogne,June 13th 1917.

[Brian James]

HMT Rohilla pictured at Port Said c1912.
Rohilla was a passenger steamer of the British India Steam Navigation Company which was built for service between the UK and India,as a Troopship. After becoming a Hospital Ship in the First World War, Rohilla ran aground after hitting a mine in October 1914 near Whitby with the loss of 83 lives.

[Brian James]

Cunard Line RMS Mauretania pictured in her Troopship role in July 1918.

[Brian James]

SS Cymric pictured as she departs New York in 1903....She was a steamship of the White Star Line built by Harland & Wolff at Belfast and launched on October 12th 1897.
She had originally been designed as a combination passenger liner and livestock carrier, with accommodations for only First Class passengers. During the stages of her design layout, it became clearer to the designers at Harland & Wolff that combining passengers and livestock had become rather unpopular, so the spaces designated for cattle were reconfigured into Third Class accommodations.
She departed Liverpool on her maiden voyage on April 29th 1898, arriving in New York City on May 9th 1898. She spent the first five years of her career on the White Star Line's main passenger service route between Liverpool and New York,until 1903 when she was transferred to the less traveled Liverpool-Boston route, which she sailed on for nine years before being returned to the New York route in 1912.
During both the Boer War and the First World War she was pressed into service as a Troop and Cargo Transport. In 1914, Cymric transported British soldiers to France.
In August 1915, under the command of Captain Frank E. Beadnell, Cymric delivered 17,000 tons of ammunition from New York to Liverpool, one of the biggest shipment of such kind from the United States since the start of the war.She continued to shuttle between the Atlantic coast of the United States and Great Britain carrying cargo and passengers until her last voyage in April 1916.
On April 29th1916, Cymric finished her loading in New York and sailed for Liverpool with 112 people on board including five or six passengers (sources vary) with Captain Beadnell in command. On May 8th 1916, she was torpedoed three times 140 miles west-north-west off Fastnet Rock, Ireland by Walther Schwieger's U-20, which had sunk RMS Lusitania a year earlier.The torpedo explosion in the port side of her engine room instantly killed four crew members. Cymric sank the next day, altogether five lives were lost as one sailor fell into the sea during evacuation and drowned.Since all who died were British citizens, there were no international repercussions. While the general location of her sinking is known, Cymric's wreck has not been located.
Between 1914 and 1918 about 50 large oceangoing passenger steamships converted to war purposes as floating Hospitals and Troop Transports were sunk in the Atlantic by the German navy,SS Cymric came to be the thirty-seventh on the list.

[Brian James]

RMS Oceanic pictured departing New York in 1903.
She was a transatlantic ocean liner built at Harland & Wolff,Belfast for the White Star Line. She sailed on her maiden voyage on September 6th 1899 and was the largest ship in the world until 1901.At the outbreak of World War I she was converted to an Armed Merchant Cruiser. On August 8th 1914 she was commissioned into Royal Navy service.
On August 25th 1914, the newly designated HMS Oceanic departed Southampton to patrol the waters from the North Scottish mainland to Faroe. On September 8th she ran aground and was wrecked off the island of Foula, in the Shetland Islands.

[Brian James]

Troopship HMS Clive seen c1882.

[Brian James]

Troop Carrier HMS Princess Victoria pictured entering Boulogne c1915..She operated as a Railway Ferry between Stranraer, Scotland and Larne in Northern Ireland, requisitioned by the Admiralty as a Fleet Messenger until May 2nd 1915 then as a Troop Carrier from Southern UK ports to France. Returning to her previous work, in 1923 her ownership changed with the London, Midland & Scottish Railway of Stranraer taking over her management until she was scrapped in 1934.

[Brian James]

RMS Queen Mary pictured in Dry Dock at Southampton in 1936.

[Brian James]

MV Britannic pictured in the Thompson Graving Dock at Belfast on May 20th 1930.

[Brian James]

Original colour footage of RMS Queen Elizabeth in her Troop Transport role in 1942..https://catalog.archives.gov/id/84089