| Career | |
|---|---|
| Name: | SS Oronsay |
| Owner: | Orient Steam Navigation Company |
| Port of registry: | United Kingdom |
| Builder: | John Brown & Company, Clydebank |
| Launched: | 14 August 1924 |
| Maiden voyage: | 07 February 1925 |
| Fate: | Torpedoed and sank off Liberia, 9 October 1942 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Ocean liner |
| Tonnage: | 20,043 gross |
| Length: | 659 ft (201 m) |
| Beam: | 75 ft (23 m) |
| Installed power: | Steam turbine engine |
| Propulsion: | 2 Screws |
| Speed: | 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) |
| Capacity: | 1,836 passengers |
For other ships called SS Oronsay, see Oronsay
SS Oronsay was an ocean liner built for the Orient Steam Navigation Company. Her maiden voyage started on 7 February 1925 from London to Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. She continued on this route (extended to New Zealand once in 1938) until the outbreak of World War II[1]. The Australian military contingent for the coronation of King George VI took passage to the UK on the Oronsay in 1937[2].
Taken-up from trade as a troopship, Oronsay took part in Operation Ariel, the evacuation of British troops from western France. On 17 June 1940, she was anchored in the Loire Estuary, embarking troops being ferried out from St Nazaire in destroyers and small boats. During an air-raid, a German bomb landed on the ship's bridge, killing several people, destroying the chart, steering and wireless rooms and breaking the captain's leg.[3] Taking on survivors from RMS Lancastria which had sunk nearby, Captain N. Savage steered the ship home with the aid of a pocket compass, a sextant and a sketch map.[4]
Then on the 14 August 1940 she sailed from Liverpool bound for Halifax with 351 evacuated children under the Children's Overseas Reception Board scheme.
On 9 October 1942, Oronsay was sailing in the Atlantic en route from Capetown to the UK via Freetown. She was carrying 50 RAF personnel, 20 rescued British seamen, and 8 DEMS gunners, with a cargo of 1,200 tons of copper and 3,000 tons of oranges. When she was some 500 miles southwest of Freetown, she was torpedoed and sunk by the Italian submarine Archimede. Only 6 crew members were lost; the survivors took to the ship's boats.[5]. 321 of them were rescued by HMS Brilliant after 12 days[6]. 26 survivors, including the ship's surgeon James McIlroy (the Antarctic explorer), were picked-up by the Vichy French sloop Dumont D'Urville, and were interned at Dakar[7].