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AMRA (1938)

Service dates: 1938-1966

Official number: 166600

Shipping lines: BRITISH INDIA STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY LTD.

Ship type:


Passenger/Cargo Ship.


Career

30.04.1938
Launched by Lady Willingdon.
31.07.1938
Ran trials.
10.11.1938
Delivered as Amra for British India Steam Navigation Company Ltd. She was the first of three A-class vessels to be launched for the Calcutta/Rangoon service along with her sisters Aska and Aronda.
18.11.1938
Maiden voyage from London to Calcutta.
1940
Spent two periods that year as a Personnel Ship.
28.12.1940
Requisitioned as a Hospital Ship (No.41: 385 beds, 107 medical staff), being converted at Bombay and seeing her first service between Somaliland and East and South Africa.
1940
Supported the Somali and Abyssinian campaigns, ferrying the casualties from Mogadishu and Massawa to Mombasa and Durban.
1943
Moved into the Mediterranean, evacuating wounded from the Sicily in July and was at the Salerno landings in September.
1946
Completed her wartime service.
Post-war
Moved to the Bombay/East and South Africa service, though in later years she often turned round at Mombasa or Dar-es-Salaam.
03.1951
Completed a six-month conversion of her boilers from coal to oil firing at Durban.
1955
Passenger accommodation now 222 cabin passengers and 737 bunked passengers.
02.12.1965
Arrived at Keelung for demolition by Chou’s Iron & Steel Company Ltd, Taipei. Her bell was later installed in the church at Sharjah shared by the Royal Air Force and the Trucial Oman Scouts.


Ship technical details (PDF)