SS Katoomba (1913)
| History | |
|---|---|
 Australia
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| Name: | SS Katoomba |
| Operator: | McIlwraith & McEacharn |
| Route: | Sydney-Fremantle |
| Builder: | Harland & Wolff, Belfast |
| Launched: | 10 April 1913 |
| Homeport: | Melbourne |
| Fate: | Sold to Cia Maritima del Este |
| History | |
 Greece
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| Owner: | Cia Maritima del Este |
| Route: | Piraeus to Genoa, Lisbon, New York, South America, Montreal |
| Renamed: | SS Columbia, 1949 |
| Refit: | 1949 |
| Homeport: | Piraeus |
| Fate: | Scrappped, Nagasaki, 1959 |
| General characteristics | |
| Tonnage: | 8,473 gross tons |
| Length: | 466 feet (142 m) |
| Beam: | 60.3 feet (18.4 m) |
| Draught: | 34 ft 2 in (10.4 m) |
| Installed power: | Coal until 1949, then oil |
| Propulsion: | Triple screw |
| Speed: | 15 knots |
| Capacity: | 52 first class and 754 tourist class passengers |
| Notes: | One funnel, two masts |
SS Columbia was a coal (later, oil) powered steam ship which began service under the name Katoomba in 1913 as a troop transport and ended service as a passenger transport in 1959 in Nagasaki, Japan. She was refitted in 1949 to use oil rather than coal as a power source, and was at that time renamed SS Columbia. Between her refitting in 1949 and her end of service she plied routes between a number of cities, including Piraeus, Lisbon, New York, Montreal, Cherbourg, Southampton, and Bremen (among others). She was damaged in foggy weather in Quebec in 1957 and was scrapped two years later after sailing to Japan.
The British government requisitioned Katoomba in May 1918 to transport United States troops to Britain and made two trans Atlantic crossings before transfer to the Mediterranean. She was in Salonika on 11 November at the armistice and three days later left Constantinople transporting more than 2,000 troops of the Essex and Middlesex Regiments, and twenty-six of the surviving prisoners that had been taken at the siege of Kut. In six Black Sea trips, as the first British troopship to pass through the Dardanelles since the war's start, Katoomba landed 14,000 troops and returned with repatriated Turks. She went to Bombay in April 1919 and returned to Britain before returning to Australia in August. There she was refitted and returned to her owners.
The Katoomba transported over 430 Methodists and the Queen of Tonga from Sydney to Fiji in October 1935.
In 1941 Katoomba was briefly requisitioned for troop deployments transporting 1,496 troops leaving Brisbane for Rabaul on 15 March and then again with 687 troops from Sydney to Darwin before returning to commercial service.
Katoomba was transporting troops to Rabaul escorted by HMAS Adelaide when news of the attack on Pearl Harbor (8 December Australian date) and other Japanese attacks in the Pacific caused her to be held in Port Moresby. Plans to reinforce the garrison at Rabaul were abandoned, with the existing garrison sacrificed to delay Japanese advances, and Katoomba instead joined other ships in evacuating women and children from New Guinea, Papua, and Darwin. She was again requisitioned as a troopship in February 1942.
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Wikipedia