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BOOTH
LINE STEAMER ‘HILARY’
OF 1931
Built by Cammell Laird &
Company Limited at Birkenhead.
Official Number: 162350 Signal Letters:
G Q V M
Gross Tonnage: 7,420,
Nett: 4,286.
Length: 424·2ft, Breadth:
56·2ft.
Owned by the Booth Steamship
Company Limited, registered at Liverpool
Single screw steamer,
triple-expansion engines. Speed:
14 knots.
Ordering the passenger-cargo liner Hilary
at the height of the depression was a mark of considerable faith
by the Booth Line, and the placing of the order locally on
Merseyside was much appreciated.
The
Hilary was launched
on 17th April 1931 and was completed by August. She
sailed on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Para and Manaus on
14th August. The new Hilary
could be easily recognised by
her distinctive three-note triple-chime steam whistle.
First-class
single-berth rooms were on the promenade deck, double and
three-berth on the upper deck, and there were four de-luxe rooms
with private bath and toilet. The third-class passengers were
accommodated in two and four-berth cabins on the main deck, in
compliance with Portuguese emigrant ship requirements.
The crew and stewards
were quartered forward on the main and upper decks, while the
captain and officers were in a house at the fore end of the boat
deck.
A sister ship to the Hilary
was built in 1935 – the Anselm
– slightly smaller and with a cruiser stern. However she was
lost on 5th July 1941 when she was torpedoed by U.96,
some 300 miles off the Azores.
The Hilary was aground twice in the Amazon during her early years. The
first occasion was in November 1935, some 170 miles below Manaus,
and in April 1936 she grounded two miles east of Goiabel on the
notorious Mandahy Bank. One is reminded of the story attributed
to Mark Twain, who, when asked by a passenger if he was the man
who knew where the sandbanks were, replied: “No,
I’m the man who knows where the sandbanks ain’t!”
Far more serious was
the occasion when the Hilary
ran aground on rocks near Holyhead , Anglesey, in dense fog
at 12.45am on Easter Sunday, 9th April 1939. Because
of the fog it was several hours before assistance arrived, but
her 100 passengers were eventually taken off safely. The Hilary
had sprung a leak forward, but was refloated and towed to
Liverpool. It was an unfortunate experience for her master,
Captain Lewis Evans of Pwllheli, who was due to retire at the
end of the voyage.
On the outbreak of
the Second World War, the Hilary
was initially left to her owners’ commercial service, but in
January 1941 she was sent to South Shields and there converted
for use as an armed boarding steamer. In May 1941 she sighted
two Italian oil tankers off the Azores. One of these was
scuttled before the Hilary
had a chance to put a boarding party on board, but the other,
the Gianna M was taken safely to Belfast by a prize crew from the Hilary.
In April 1942 the Hilary
ceased to operate as an armed boarding steamer and was returned
to Booth Line management, but under Ministry of War Transport
orders. On 16th October 1942 she was acting as
commodore ship of a convoy bound for New York when she was
struck by a torpedo in her engine room. Luckily for the Hilary,
the torpedo failed to explode. The story is best told in the
words of her then master, Captain A. Elliott:
“We
had been followed by enemy submarines for about 24 hours, but
had not been attacked. However, on the morning of 16th
October, at about 10.30am, we heard an explosion and felt a
rather heavy tremor in the ship, just as if some other ship in
the vicinity had been torpedoed.
“The commodore gave
an anxious look round his convoy but everything seemed very
quiet and peaceful, with the ships all plodding along in their
rightful stations. It suddenly struck me that we ourselves might
have been hit, although our engines were still turning to the
revolutions required. I thought I should send officers to check,
and I myself went down to the after end of the ship, but no
damage could be seen.
“As I came forward
again the chief engineer met me and took me down to the dynamo
platform where he showed me a large dent in the ship’s plates.
Some rivets had been sheared off, but there was no leak.
“We had been hit by
a torpedo in a very vulnerable part of the ship, but although
the pistol had gone off, the main charge of the torpedo had
failed to explode. If the mechanism had functioned there would
have been very little chance of the ship
surviving.”
In March 1943 the Hilary
was again requisitioned, this time as an infantry landing ship.
The conversion was carried out by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead.
Her passenger accommodation became mess decks, her public rooms
communication and control centres, and six landing craft
replaced her lifeboats. Armament included a 6-inch gun on her
forecastle and a number of Oerlikons; a radar tower was built on
the bridge and a searchlight platform constructed between the
bridge and the funnel. The Hilary’s funnel, masts and superstructure were all left intact and
not cut down or removed as with so many converted merchant
ships.
With her hull and
superstructure painted grey, the Hilary
sailed for the Mediterranean where she was based on Algiers, and
on 10th July 1943 she took part in Operation Husky,
the invasion of Sicily, acting as headquarters ship for Rear
Admiral Sir Philip Vian. Two months later the Hilary
was present at the Salerno landing, and in December 1943 she
returned to Portsmouth, working up for the invasion of Europe.
In June 1944 the Hilary
took part in the Normandy landings as flagship of Force ‘J’
under Commodore G.N. Oliver. On 23rd June, Admiral
Vian transferred his flag to the Hilary after his cruiser HMS Scylla
had been damaged by a mine.
The Hilary returned to the Mersey in January 1945 and was handed back to
her owners. Cammell Laird refitted her for her old commercial
trade and provided accommodation for 93 first-class and 138
tourist-class passengers. By the end of 1945 the Hilary
was once again sailing ‘1,000 miles up the Amazon’ for the
Booth Line. She retained her pre-war appearance, but in 1947 the
Booth Line houseflag was painted on each side of her funnel. In
1949 the Hilary was
converted from coal burning to oil burning, and in 1951 she was
joined on the Amazon by a new running-mate, the Hildebrand.
When she was twenty
five years old, the Hilary
was sent to Antwerp for a four-month major refit, and
re-appeared with an all-white hull, the only Booth liner ever to
be so treated. She resumed service in April 1956 with her
regular route now including calls
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