USEFUL CAREER

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 116, 12 November 1938, Page 27

USEFUL CAREER

THE ARLANZA'S FAREWELL

After 27 years of useful service and ian interesting war career the Eoyal Mail liner Arlanza has made her last voyage and is soon to be broken up. On her return from. South America, early in September, she docked at Southampton for the last time. The Arlanza was built at Belfast by Harland and Wolff, Limited, in 1911, says the "Syren and Shipping," and for the next two and a half years she traded .successfully but uneventfully to the River Plate. When war broke out she entered upon a much more adventurous phase of her career. Only a few days after the commencement of hostilities, when homeward bound with over a thousand passengers on ] board, she was stopped by the German i armed merchant cruiser Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse near Las Palmas. The German captain on this occasion contented himself with, destroying the Arlanza's wireless, after which he allowed her to proceed. Early in 1915 she was taken over by the Admiralty and joined the famous Tenth Cruiser Squadron. After a spell of routine patrolling she was chosen to convey the Allied Military Mission to Archangel, and it was on her homeward trip, when off the Murmansk Coast, that she met her next adventure. MINED. She ran into a dense minefield and was severely damaged. With her under-water forepart almost < completely blown away, and her anchors and cables trailing on the sea-bed, she was assisted into Yukanskai by the Wilson liner Novo. Before repairs could be completed she was frozen in, and it was several months before she was able to escape and return to Belfast under her own steam. She rejoined the- Tenth Cruiser Squadron in November, 1916, and following an unsuccessful chase after the Moewe and Wolf, she was transferred to the Atlantic convoy service. After the war the Arlanza was thoroughly reconditioned and her boilers convert-1 ed from coal to oil-firing, and she reentered the Royal Mail mail and- passenger service to South America in July, 1920. . ! In the last 18 years she has carried many famous passengers across the South Atlantic, among these being the Duke of Windsor (then Prince of Wales) and the Duke of Kent (then | Prince George) a); the end of their ' South American tour in 1931.