MS Sobieski
 MS Gruziya, former MS Sobieski in Helsinki | |
| Career | |
|---|---|
| Name: | MS Sobieski |
| Owner: | Polish Ocean Lines |
| Operator: | Gdynia America Line |
| Route: | South America service |
| Builder: | Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson, Wallsend. |
| Launched: | 25 August 1938 |
| Completed: | 15 June 1939 |
| Out of service: | 1939 taken up as troopship |
| Identification: | 1947 returned to civilian service |
| Fate: | 1975 scrapped at La Spezia |
| Notes: | 1950 sold to Russia renamed Gruziya |
| General characteristics | |
| Tonnage: | 11,030 BRT |
| Length: | 155,8 m |
| Beam: | 20,4 m |
| Draft: | 8,3 m |
| Installed power: | Engines by J. G. Kincaid & Co, Greenock |
| Propulsion: | Twin screw |
| Speed: | 17 knots |
| Capacity: | 44 first-class, 250 third-class and 850 emigrants |
| Notes: | [1] |
M/S Sobieski was a Polish passenger ship built for the Polish Ocean Lines to replace the aging SS Kościuszko and SS Pulaski; a sister ship to the MS Chrobry. She was named in honour of the Polish king Jan III Sobieski.[2]
The ship was used as a troopship in the Allied evacuation of western France in 1940 (Operation Ariel), the Battle of Dakar and the campaign in Madagascar. She was also used to transport the British 18th Division to the defence of Singapore.
At the end of the war she repatriated the remnants of that division's Cambridgeshire Regiment that had survived captivity at the hands of the Japanese in Malaya and Thailand. She also returned former Changi prisoners of war (POWs) from Singapore, sailing via Cape Town and docking at Southampton during a dockworkers' strike. Disgusted, dismayed ex-POWs had to unload their own baggage, such as it was.
References
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to MS Sobieski. |
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