HMS Pretoria Castle (F61)

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Career

Laid down:
Launched {passenger-liner}:	12 October 1938
Commissioned {armed merchantman}:	28 November 1939
Decommissioned {for carrier conversion}:	August 1942
Commissioned {escort carrier}:	29 July 1943
Decommissioned:	26 Jan 1946
Fate:	Sold and operated as passenger liner. Scrapped July 1962.
General Characteristics
Displacement:	23,450 tons
Length:	594 ft
Beam:	76 ft
Draught:	29 ft
Propulsion:	Diesel, 16,000 bhp
Speed:	18 knots
Complement:	580
Armament:
Aircraft:	21

HMS Pretoria Castle was an armed merchant cruiser and escort aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy that saw service during World War II. She had previously been the ocean liner Pretoria Castle of the Union-Castle Line; built at Harland & Wolff shipyards in Belfast, Northern Ireland and launched in 1938.

She was requisitioned by the Royal Navy in October 1939, and converted to an armed merchant cruiser with 6-inch and 3-inch guns, entering service in November 1939. In this role she served mainly in the South Atlantic.

In July 1942 she was bought outright by the Navy for conversion to an escort carrier at the Swan Hunter shipyards in Tyne and Wear. She was commissioned in this role in July 1943 and was operated as a trials and training carrier, seeing no active combat service.

Post-war, the ship was sold back to the Union-Castle Line in 1946 and converted back to a passenger liner, being renamed the Warwick Castle and operating on routes from England to South Africa. She was eventually sold and scrapped in Barcelona in 1962.

See Pretoria Castle for other ships of this name.