Royal Ulsterman

HMS Ulsterman from the air in about 1943
History
Name:	HMS Royal Ulsterman
Builder:	Harland and Wolff, Belfast
Yard number:	964
Launched:	10 March 1936
Completed:	29 May 1936
Fate:	Sunk by limpet mine, 1973
General characteristics
Displacement:	3,250 tons (gross)
Length:	328 ft (100 m) (pp) 339 ft 6 in (103.48 m) (oa)
Beam:	47 ft 9 in (14.55 m)
Draught:	14 ft (4.3 m)
Propulsion:	2-shaft Diesel BHP 7,500
Speed:	16 knots (30 km/h)
Capacity:	830 troops, six LCAs
Complement:	236
Armament:	1 x 12 pdr AA, 5 x 20mm AA

Commissioned in 1936, HMS Royal Ulsterman was a 3,250 ton passenger ship which, along with her sister-ship, Royal Scotsman, sailed the Glasgow-Belfast run for Burns and Laird Lines Ltd. During the Second World War, Royal Ulsterman served as a Royal Navy Reserve troop transport, taking part in nearly all of the major Allied amphibious operations of the European war, including the Dunkirk evacuation; Operation Neptune (the amphibious part of the D-Day landings); and the liberation of the Channel Islands.

Commissioned HMS, Royal Ulsterman landed elements of the British Expeditionary Force for operations in Norway in 1940. Subsequently, the ship delivered armaments to Harstad, high above the Arctic circle.

On 18 June, Royal Ulsterman embarked some 2,800 troops and three civilian women at St. Nazaire, transporting them to Falmouth in Cornwall. By the end of August, she had also moved French personnel to Casablanca, carried civilian refugees from the Mediterranean region to Glasgow, and landed some 700 troops at Iceland. Over the next year, Ulsterman would make regular trips between the British Isles and Iceland. During one of these runs, Ulsterman, under the command of Captain Harry Houghton, carried the three survivors of HMS Hood (the British battlecruiser sunk by the German battleship Bismarck), back to the UK.