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OPHIR (1891)
Service dates: 1918-1922
Official number: 98673
Shipping lines: ORIENT STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY LTD.; ANDERSON, ANDERSON & COMPANY; ORIENT LINE
Ship type:
Passenger Liner.
Career
- 11.04.1891
- Launched by Miss Green, daughter of one of the Orient Line’s managers.
- 22.10.1891
- Began two days of trials in the Clyde.
- 30.10.1891
- Handed over as Ophir for Orient Steam Navigation Company.
- 06.11.1891
- Maiden voyage London/Australia.
- 21.12.1891
- Beginning of a 65-day arbitration with the builders over her speed, consumption and lifting capacity.
- 09.11.1900
- Chartered to the Admiralty for 6 months to act as Royal Yacht.
- 27.02.1901
- Left Tilbury after extensive redecoration and refurbishing.
- 16.03.1901
- Left Portsmouth for Australia.
- 02.01.1902
- Recommenced commercial sailings.
- 03.08.1904
- Received bottom and keel damage when she struck a rock in Valders Channel.
- 05.02.1915
- Purchased by the Government and converted to an armed merchant cruiser.
- 03.03.1915
- Commissioned as an armed merchant cruiser.
- 23.04.1915
- Captured Swedish steamer Marta.
- 26.03.1916
- Began three month refit at Gibraltar.
- 12.08.1916
- Ran aground briefly at Dakar.
- 06.1917
- Paid off at Liverpool, then fitted with new boilers.
- 02.1918
- Re-commissioned as a hospital ship.
- 11.12.1918
- The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company acquired controlling interest in Orient Line.
- 02.1919
- Laid up in the Clyde.
- 1920
- Offered for sale by auction but withdrawn.
- 1922
- Sold for £6,000 and scrapped at Troon.