HMHS Newfoundland
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| History | |
|---|---|
 United Kingdom
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| Name: |
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| Owner: | Johnston Warren Lines (1925–40) |
| Operator: | Furness, Withy & Co (1925–40) |
| Port of registry: |
 Liverpool
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| Route: | Liverpool — St John's, Newfoundland — Halifax, Nova Scotia — Boston, MA (1925–?) |
| Builder: | Vickers, Sons & Maxim, Barrow-in-Furness |
| Yard number: | 617 |
| Launched: | 24 January 1925 |
| Completed: | June 1925 |
| Out of service: | 13 September 1943 |
| Identification: |
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| Fate: | Damaged by a Luftwaffe bomb 40 miles off Salerno on 13 September 1943. |
| Status: | wreck |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | |
| Tonnage: | 6,791 GRT; 3,828 NT |
| Length: | 406.1 ft (123.8 m) |
| Beam: | 55.4 ft (16.9 m) |
| Draught: | 31.8 ft (9.7 m) |
| Installed power: | 1,047 NHP |
| Propulsion: | Vickers quadruple expansion steam engine |
| Speed: | 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph) |
| Notes: | sister ship: RMS Nova Scotia |
HMHS Newfoundland was a British Royal Mail Ship that was requisitioned as a hospital ship in the World War II. She was sunk in 1943 in an air attack in the Mediterranean.
Vickers, Sons & Maxim, Ltd of Barrow-in-Furness built Newfoundland for Furness, Withy & Co of Liverpool. Her 1,047 NHP quadruple expansion steam engine was fed by five 215 lbf/in2 single-ended boilers with a total heating surface of 16,095 square feet (1,495 m2). Her boilers were heated by 20 oil-fuelled corrugated furnaces with a grate surface of 377 square feet (35 m2).
Newfoundland worked Furness, Withy's regular transatlantic mail route between Liverpool and Boston via St John's, Newfoundland and Halifax, Nova Scotia. In May 1926 she was joined by a sister ship, RMS Nova Scotia.
Newfoundland spent the first part of World War II on her peacetime route, carrying wounded troops from the UK to Canada, and bringing the rehabilitated troops back home.
In April 1943 Newfoundland repatriated some Allied servicemen from Lisbon to Avonmouth, England. Among them was Flight Lieutenant John F. Leeming RAF, who had been captured with Air Marshal Owen Tudor Boyd (as his Aide-de-Camp) in 1940. His escape plan from Vincigliata PG 12 prisoner of war camp in Italy was by cleverly faking a very bad nervous breakdown case. He succeeded so well that the international medical board, with Swiss and Italian doctors, unhesitatingly accepted his case. As he describes in his book:
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