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SS Vega (1913)

Stockholms rederi ab Svea
History
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
Flag of the Red Cross.svgSweden (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:
  • Two coal-fired boilers,
  • triple-expansion engine
  • single propeller, 550ihp
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.


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