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Widecombe-in-the-Moor
SS Braemar Castle
From DVD: RND Royal Naval Division. From 1916 63rd (RN) Division. W.W.1. 1914-1919. Antwerp, Gallipoli, Western Front. Magazine Issues 1-24, pages 1 to 2443. Copyright © Leonard Sellers 1998, Produced and designed at 17a Bellhouse Road, Eastwood, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, SS9 5NL.
This extract is from Issue Number 19 pages 1885 - 1886
SHIPS THAT TRANSPORTED THE R.N.D. H.M.T. BRAEMAR CASTLE
Post Card the property of Len Sellers, dated 6pm 18th Sept 1907. States :-- Arrived on board we sail at 3 O'Clock, don't answer it, it will get lost. --
Commissioned in 1898, with a top speed of 15 knots (6266 gross tonnage). It was a four n-lasted intermediate ship, built by Barley Curle & Co. She was given quadruple- expansion engines having a single screw propulsion system. The ship was fitted out for lst & 2nd class passengers. She became a successful ship and would most likely have been followed by further ships of the same type, had the Union Castle Line merger not have taken place. Used on the Cape Run until 1909, she was then chartered by the Government and used in 1915 as a transport for the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force.
On the 6 February 1915 she sailed for Gallipoli with 1041 passengers in the form of the Royal Naval Division's H.Q. 3rd Brigade, No 4 Sec Signal Company and the Plymouth Battalion, R.M.L.l. With her was H.M.T. Cawdor Castle with 1008 members of the Chatham Battalion.
The Braemar Castle took part in the raid of the 4th March, at Kum Kale, a village situated on the Asian shore, alongside the Dardanelles. Later, she was converted into a Hospital Ship. However on 23rd November 1916 the ship, bound from Salonika to Malta with sick and wounded, suffered an explosion under its port side. lt had struck a mine, when passing Joannis Point, one mile east of the island of Tinos. She was beached and waited to be repaired in 1918 at Spezia. There followed in 1920 use as an Allied Base Hospital at Murmansk . At this stage in her life the vessel lay for nearly a year, providing increased accommodation. To keep out the cold her decks were boarded in, and in consequence the men called her "Noah's Ark". For nearly 12 months, she lay packed in ice. Everyday, parties of Russian refugees were set to work to break the ice, which threatened to "pinch" the ship. Later, she made further intermediate sailing's in its owner's service, but in 1921 reverted to a troop carrier, until it was decided in 1924, that she had ended her usefulness, so the vessel was scrapped in Italy. Many distinguished persons sailed in her including Sir Ernest Shackleton the explorer.
References: -
Research at Greenwich Maritime Museum, library.
"The Cape Run" by W.H. Mitchelle & L.A. Sawyer. Published by Terence Dalton, Suffolk in 1984. ISBN 0 86138 (>304. Pages 21 & 170.
"Union Castle Chronicle" by Marischal Murray. Published by Longman's Green & Co. in 1953. Page 174.
Public Record Office, Kew. ADM 1 37/3642. Loss of Hospital Ship, Braemar Castle on 13/11/16.
Roll of Honour :- The only death of the crew recorded is that of G. S. Holbeck a Sub Lieutenant R.N.R. who died in Hasler Hospital.
Detail from "Union Castle And The War" 1914 - 1919. By E. F. Knight, 1920. Published by The Union-Castle Mail Steamship Co. Ltd. 3-4 Fenchurch Street, London E.C.
The information on this page was last modified on August 02 2017 10:39:28.