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NELLORE (1913)
Service dates: 1913-1929
Official number: 135325
Shipping lines: P&O STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY
Ship type:
Passenger/Cargo Ship.
Career
- 05.05.1913
- Launched.
- 25.06.1913
- Registered and delivered as Nellore for The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation company. The early 1900s saw P&O’s first concerted use of comparatively large classes of sister ships. The ‘N’ class, of which Nellore was the last, was eight in number, built in two batches: Nile, Namur, Nyanza (all 1906) and Nore (1907); Nankin and Novara (both 1912), Nagoya (1913) and Nellore. The name was taken from a town in the Madras presidency of eastern British India.
- 28.06.1913
- Sailed from Greenock.
- 1916
- Caught fire whilst lying at Malta, scuttled and then beached. Subsequently refloated, repaired and returned to service.
- 29.09.1916
- Exchanged gunfire with an enemy submarine which she encountered attacking another steamer while bound from Gibraltar to Marseilles.
- 01.05.1917
- Chased by a surfaced submarine when south of Sicily bound for Marseilles.
- 15.05.1917
- Chased by two submarines between Marseilles and Gibraltar.
- 23.05.1917
- Missed by a torpedo at the entrance to the English Channel.
- 01.07.1917
- Fired on a submarine’s periscope when southwest of the Scillies bound for Gibraltar.
- 13.07.1917
- Missed by a torpedo when bound for Malta from Marseilles.
- 22.01.1918
- Had to check concussion damage - there was none - after depth charges dropped by a destroyer off her starboard side.
- 11.03.1918
- Lit up by star shells and then shelled (but missed) by a submarine west of Gibraltar.
- 11.07.1918
- Shelled but missed yet again!
- 16.10.1929
- Sold for £42,000 to Eastern and Australian Steam Ship Co Ltd, London, for their Australia/Japan service. (E&A was not at that time a P&O subsidiary although it became one in 1946).
- 1937
- Union flag painted on her sides to show her nationality during Japanese campaign in China.
- 1940/1941
- Picked up survivors of Rangitane (New Zealand Shipping Company) from Emirau Island and took them to Townsville, Queensland.
- 29.06.1944
- Torpedoed and sunk by the Japanese submarine I8 in the Indian Ocean in position 07°51’S-75°20’E. She was on a voyage from Bombay to Fremantle, Melbourne and Sydney with 157 crew and 174 passengers, 2,720 tons of general cargo plus Government stores. 6 boats were picked up by a frigate, and one was lost; 35 crew, 5 gunners and 39 passengers were lost either in the sinking or during the 28-day, 4,000km (2,500 mile) voyage to Madagascar which by the last boat only 10 survived out of the 47 who began it.