SS Orcades (1948)

The Orcades in 1967

Registration Number: 182883 IMO number: 5264247

The Orcades (III ) was a 1948 put into service passenger ship in the British shipping company Orient Steam Navigation Company, which was used in passenger and mail traffic from the UK to Australia and New Zealand. She was the largest ever ship in the history of the shipping company. Later, she also served as a cruise ship and was eventually scrapped in 1973 in Taiwan.

The ship

The steam ship Orcades was built at the shipyard Vickers - Armstrong in the English port of Barrow-in- Furness. The 216.71 meters long and 28.49 meters wide passenger and cargo ship had a maximum draft of 9.4 meters and was a two-class ship with capacity for 773 passengers in first class and 772 in economy class. She was the third ship of the Orient Line, which bore this name. It was based on an ancient name for the Orkney Islands. The Orcades had a sister ship, the Oronsay (II ) ( 27 632 GRT), which was created at the same shipyard and was completed in 1951.

They were the first two ships that provided the Orient Line after the Second World War service, and the then largest shipping company. The Orcades was structurally almost identical to the Himalayas ( III) the shipping company P & O, which was constructed at the same time at Vickers - Armstrong. But your deck superstructures had a completely new design, because the bridge sat amidships in front of the chimney and the mast was installed directly on top of the bridge.

The Orcades was powered by a set of six steam turbines, which worked on two screws. The travel speed was 22 knots, with a top speed of 24.7 knots was achieved during the tests in November 1948. The construction costs of the ocean liner totaled 3.418 million pounds sterling.

History

The Orcades expired on October 14, 1947 at Vickers - Armstrong from the stack, was completed on November 14, 1948 and ran on 14 December 1948 in Tilbury on her maiden voyage on Gibraltar, Naples, Port Said, Aden and Colombo to Fremantle, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland. She was the first large passenger ship that arrived in Australia after the war. The ship was chief over the next six years in the transport emigrants to Australia and New Zealand working and upgraded at this time countless emigrants. In August 1955, the Orcades ran to her first trip to New Zealand via the Panama Canal from the Suez Canal turned over back to the UK. During the Olympic Summer Games 1956 in Melbourne Orcades served as an accommodation ship.

1959 took place upgrades to the ship at Harland & Wolff. It was a new swimming pool for the first class built and the whole ship was equipped with air conditioning. The passenger accommodations were redesigned for 631 passengers, First Class and 734 passengers in economy class. On the chimney, a furnace tube was placed to minimize the exiting smoke. This had the chimney still larger in dimension. The volume increased by the conversions of previously 28 164 28 396 GRT on GRT. The following year, the Orient Line merged with P & O and the fleets of the two companies were merged.

1964, the ship was again renovated and converted into a Einklassenschiff with beds for travelers in 1635. The Grill Room First Class was converted into a cinema with 157 seats. The areas that traditionally corn -colored painted hull was painted white. In May 1964, the Orcades launched their first trip as Einklassenschiff. From then on, it was also used in addition to their regular trips for cruises. In 1966 the ship came under the control of P & O, which took over the majority of the shares of the Orient Line.

When the Orcades was in April 1972 during a cruise in Hong Kong at anchor, broke out in the boiler room of a fire, which caused extensive damage. Parts of the P & O ship Iberia, which was launched in the UK, were dismantled and flown to Hong Kong to serve as spare parts. After the repairs, the ship sailed to Australia and left Sydney on 3 June 1972 for the last time. On October 13, 1972, was decommissioned and placed in the Solent. A few months later the old ship to the scrap yard Taiwanese Nan Feng Steel Enterprises was sold. On February 6, 1973, arrived in Kaohsiung, where on March 15 began the demolition work.