Stockholms rederi ab Svea
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History | |
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Sweden | |
Name: | Vega |
Owner: | Svea |
Operator: | Svea |
Port of registry: | , Sweden 5447 |
Route: | Baltic and North Sea |
Builder: | Lindholmens Verkstads AB |
Cost: | SKR 375,000 |
Yard number: | 411 |
Launched: | 1913 in Gothenburg |
Completed: | April 1913 |
Out of service: | 1954 |
Captured: | 1939 and released |
Fate: | Scrapped Travemünde |
Sweden (Red Cross) | |
Acquired: | December 1939 |
In service: | December 1939 – June 1945 |
Status: | Chartered by the Red Cross 1939-1945 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type: | Steamship |
Tonnage: | 1,073 DWT |
Length: | 226 ft 4 in (69 m) |
Beam: | 25 ft 1 in (7.6 m) |
Draught: | 14 ft 4 in (4.4 m) |
Installed power: | steam engine |
Propulsion: |
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Capacity: | 66,550 cu ft |
Crew: | Maximum of 21 |
SS Vega was owned by Stockholms Rederiaktieb Svea of Stockholm, a company that had owned steamships since 1886.
Launched in Gothenburg she was delivered in April 1913. Coal fired, her bunkers had capacity for 16 days sailing at 10.6 tons a day. Four hatches, each with a steam winch, with a maximum capacity of a 3-ton lift.
Under the command of her first Captain, John Borg, she ran the route to Düsseldorf which required the ship to have a telescopic smoke stack and folding masts. The Captain changed in September 1914 to Captain G. Flygare. After World War I she sailed the Baltic/North Sea routes.
On 16 September 1939 Vega, on route from Finland to Hull was captured, along with SS Suomen Poika by German submarine U-41 on her first patrol, at position 58N 04E. Taken to Cuxhaven where, found to be carrying goods to an enemy of Germany, her general cargo and timber was confiscated and unloaded. Being a neutral ship she was released on 4 October 1939.
Vega was chartered by the International Committee of the Red Cross in late 1939 for “relief activities”, to be based at Lisbon, Portugal, where it would work with the Cruz Vermelha Portuguesa. During the war period, Vega made 44 voyages for the Red Cross under Captain Wideberg.
Thirty seven voyages from Lisbon to Marseilles between May 1941 to April 1944. Delivering supplies to the Croix-Rouge française in Vichy France in the Zone libre until November 1942, when following Case Anton, the German invasion of Southern France, Red Cross supplies were then delivered into Occupied France. Voyage No 38 was Lisbon to Toulon in November 1944 to a liberated France. Once in France, they were loaded onto railway cars and shipped to Geneva, Switzerland. Here, the International Committee of the Red Cross arranged for their shipment to PoW camps and other detention centers throughout Europe.