Kookaburra2011
Feb. 19, 2012. Model of extraordinary S.S. WANDILLA at Geelong Maritime Museum - 'Kookaburra.'
5523. We didn't catch the scale, but in its head-high case this large and magnificently executed model is about 3m long.
One of three identical ships completed by Wm Beardmore and Co. at Glasgow for the Adelaide Steamship Company in 1912, the 7785 grt s.s. WANDILLA serving on both sides of the World Wars before her controversial loss - aa an Italian hospital ship sunk by RAF torpedo bombers near Tobruk on Sept.10 1940.
In Australian service, WANDILLA had begun life as a passenger-freight vessel plying the Fremantle-Sydney route until May 1915 when she was requisition as an Australian Army troop transport, becoming HMAT WANDILLA, carrying Australian trroops to Europe. In July 1916, WANDILLA was converted to a hospital ship, and as such survived torpedoing by a German U-boat in February 1918 when the torpedo that struck her failed to explode.
Returned to her owners in 1919 she resumed work on Australia's dwindling ship passenger-freight services until 1921, when she was sold to the Bermuda & West Indies SS Company and renamed FORT ST GEORGE. Modified to carry mainly First Class passengers and water for hotels on Bermuda, she collided with White Star Line's RMS OLYMPIC in New York IN 1924. Eleven years later she was eventually sold, in 1935, to Lloyd Triestino, Trieste, and renamed CESAREA, and then ARNO in 1938.
It was as ARNO, the former Australian WWI trooper and hospital ship was requisitioned by the After being requisitioned as a hospital ship by the Regia Marina during World War II. It what must have been a controversial action, but has been little commented upon in Allied sources, she was sunk by aerial torpedoes from the Royal Air Force on 10 September 1942 [mis-stated 1940 in Wikipedia] while en route to Tobruk to pick up Italian wounded. The ship sunk, with the loss of four sailors and 23 nurses out 40 miles (64 km) north-east of Ras el Tin, near Tobruk.
There is a Rome-souced wartime newspaper article from Queensland's Barrier Hill Miner to be found in the National Library of Auystralia's Trove search facility, here, which states the ship's Red Cross hull signs were fully illuminated when she was attacked.
trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/48383626
Photo: by 'Kookaburra.'
Feb. 19, 2012. Model of extraordinary S.S. WANDILLA at Geelong Maritime Museum - 'Kookaburra.'
5523. We didn't catch the scale, but in its head-high case this large and magnificently executed model is about 3m long.
One of three identical ships completed by Wm Beardmore and Co. at Glasgow for the Adelaide Steamship Company in 1912, the 7785 grt s.s. WANDILLA serving on both sides of the World Wars before her controversial loss - aa an Italian hospital ship sunk by RAF torpedo bombers near Tobruk on Sept.10 1940.
In Australian service, WANDILLA had begun life as a passenger-freight vessel plying the Fremantle-Sydney route until May 1915 when she was requisition as an Australian Army troop transport, becoming HMAT WANDILLA, carrying Australian trroops to Europe. In July 1916, WANDILLA was converted to a hospital ship, and as such survived torpedoing by a German U-boat in February 1918 when the torpedo that struck her failed to explode.
Returned to her owners in 1919 she resumed work on Australia's dwindling ship passenger-freight services until 1921, when she was sold to the Bermuda & West Indies SS Company and renamed FORT ST GEORGE. Modified to carry mainly First Class passengers and water for hotels on Bermuda, she collided with White Star Line's RMS OLYMPIC in New York IN 1924. Eleven years later she was eventually sold, in 1935, to Lloyd Triestino, Trieste, and renamed CESAREA, and then ARNO in 1938.
It was as ARNO, the former Australian WWI trooper and hospital ship was requisitioned by the After being requisitioned as a hospital ship by the Regia Marina during World War II. It what must have been a controversial action, but has been little commented upon in Allied sources, she was sunk by aerial torpedoes from the Royal Air Force on 10 September 1942 [mis-stated 1940 in Wikipedia] while en route to Tobruk to pick up Italian wounded. The ship sunk, with the loss of four sailors and 23 nurses out 40 miles (64 km) north-east of Ras el Tin, near Tobruk.
There is a Rome-souced wartime newspaper article from Queensland's Barrier Hill Miner to be found in the National Library of Auystralia's Trove search facility, here, which states the ship's Red Cross hull signs were fully illuminated when she was attacked.
trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/48383626
Photo: by 'Kookaburra.'