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NARKUNDA (1920)
Service dates: 1920-1942
Official number: 142496
Shipping lines: P&O STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY
Ship type:
Passenger Liner.
Career
- 1914
- Ordered. Work on her, and her earlier half-sister Naldera, P&O’s first 3-funnelled ships, was suspended at the outbreak of War and delayed by Government indecision on how to employ them; by 1917 Narkunda was expected to be completed as a cargo liner, in 1918 as an armed merchant cruiser.
- 25.04.1918
- Launched.
- 30.03.1920
- Ran trials and delivered as Narkunda for The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company at a cost of £1,550,110. As completed for P&O her passenger facilities were somewhat different from Naldera’s; a range of cabins was added on either side of the promenade deck forward of the bridge and were very popular, despite having ‘thwartship bunks’. She had a celebrated painted frieze by Professor Gerald Moira in her first class dining saloon. Named after a small hill station in India.
- 24.04.1920
- Maiden voyage to Bombay.
- 1927
- Converted to oil burning.
- 1931
- Transferred to Far East run.
- 1935
- Second class cabins converted to Tourist class.
- 16.07.1939
- Fire reported in No.6 hatch on her arrival at Colombo en route for Australia. A gas explosion resulting from fermentation in the cargo killed 2 quartermasters, the yeoman of mails and a lascar seaman, injured 23 crew, and damaged 350 tons of cargo; the fire was put out after 4¼ hours with the help of the local tugs Hercules and Goliath.
- 31.05.1940
- Arrived at Southampton having been unable to land passengers at Marseilles and been fired at by an unidentified vessel off Gibraltar.
- 04.1941
- Requisitioned as a troopship.
- 01.1942
- Employed in the evacuation of Singapore.
- 08.1942
- Involved in exchange of Japanese diplomats for British civilians in the neutral port of Lourenco Marques, Mozambique.
- 14.11.1942
- Bombed and sunk by German aircraft off Bougie, Algeria, passing Cape Carbon (36°52’N-05°01’E). She had just landed troops for the North African campaign and was about to return to the UK when the attack came out of cloud cover and she was hit heavily on the port side and astern. 31 crew were killed. The survivors were picked up by the minesweeper HMS Cadmus and returned to Britain by P&O’s Stratheden and Orient Line’s Ormonde.