MANY CHANGES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 January 1939, Page 6

MANY CHANGES

LINER NALDERA TO BE BROKEN UP. “EVERYTHING BUT SUBMARINE." The passenger liner Naldera, of 16,000 tons, which was recently sold to Messrs P. and W. M’Lellan, of Glasgow, is proceeding to the breaking-up yard at Bo’ness, says an Australian exchange. It may be recalled that the Naldera was given a short reprieve from destruction when, after finishing her last voyage, she was taken up by the Government for the transport of the British Legion’s police force to be employed during the evacuation of Sudetenland, and that for some days she lay in the Thames with the police force on board.

This unusual duty was a fitting close to a career which, in the beginning especially, was remarkable in the many changes effected during her building. It has, in fact, been a long-standing joke about her that in her time she had peen everything except a submarine. The Naldera was ordered and her keel laid down in the early part of 1914. The war stopped all work on her for about three years, and the Government then ordered her to be completed as a cargo ship at a time when that type of vessel was in serious demand. The conversion waft barely completed when orders wore given to convert again for .troop carrying, and this was no sooner done than still another conversion was ordered and the vessel was gutted for reconstruction as an aircraft carrier.

The end of the war came before she could be employed in this service, but J. was not until 192(1 that the vessel, which had been handed back to the p. and O„ completed hoi' final reconstruction and went into service as a regular liner on the P. and O. routes. All this time she did not leave the Clyde, and it was only in 1920. some fix years after her keel was laid, that she finally did so. In her continuous service over since, the Naldera has been well and favourably known, and she haS many old friends who will regret her paining.