Swire Group is a highly diversified global conglomerate with its parent company being John Swire & Sons Limited that holds controlling stakes in a range of businesses trading in the UK, USA, Australia, Papua New Guinea, East and West Africa, and across Southeast Asia. The Group's businesses are arranged into groups: property, aviation, beverages and food chain, marine services, and trading and industrial.
The third USS Dale (DD-290) was a Clemson-class destroyer in the United States Navy. She was named for Richard Dale.
Taikoo Dockyard and Engineering Company was a dockyard in what is now Taikoo Shing, MTR Tai Koo station and part of Taikoo Place of Quarry Bay on the Hong Kong Island in Hong Kong. It predates the era before the reclamation of Victoria Harbour.
Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij, was a Dutch shipping line in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. It traded form 1888 to 1966. It was the dominant inter-island shipping line in the Dutch East Indies in the last half-century of the colonial era.
The American-Hawaiian Steamship Company was founded in 1899 to carry cargos of sugar from Hawaii to the United States and manufactured goods back to Hawaii. Brothers-in-law George Dearborn and Lewis Henry Lapham were the key players in the founding of the company. The company began in 1899 with three ships, operated nine by 1904 and was operating seventeen by 1911 with three on order.
SS Tasman was a 4,922 gross register tons (GRT) Dutch steamship built by Earle's Shipbuilding and Engineering Company Limited, Hull in 1921 for Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij (KPM), Batavia. With outbreak of the World War II in the Pacific and the fall of the Dutch East Indies, Tasman was one of 21 KPM vessels that sought refuge in Australia. These ships became the core of the initial Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) command's permanent local fleet under U.S. Army control. After general service as a transport, the ship was converted to a hospital ship at Melbourne. The ship, under the Dutch flag and Dutch certification under the Hague Convention, served the remainder of the war as a Dutch hospital ship.
The terms Allied Chinese Ships and Allied China Fleet refer to 32 vessels of the Hong Kong-based China Navigation Company requisitioned by the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy during World War II. Following the Battle of Singapore in early 1942, many of the requisitioned ships joined the Allied retreat to Australia. Six were acquired by the Royal Australian Navy; four of these were commissioned as auxiliary warships, while two served as Victualing Supply Issuing Ships.
The Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, Limited (ICSNC), was established in 1873 as a subsidiary of Hong Kong based Jardine, Matheson & Co., one of the largest trading companies in the Far East at that time.
HMAS Whang Pu (FY-03) or SS Wang Phu was a 3,204 ton riverboat of the China Navigation Company that was commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) in the Second World War. Her Chinese name translates to "Happy Times". She was one of a group of vessels called the "China Fleet" requisitioned for the RAN in similar circumstances.
Coast Farmer, gaining the name in 1937 and previously bearing the names Point Arena (1928) and Riverside Bridge (1920), was a U.S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation Design 1023 ship ordered under the name Minnewawa and built as hull #103 by Submarine Boat Company, Newark, New Jersey in 1920 Coast Farmer is noted as being a part of the Pensacola Convoy landing the supplies and troops intended for the Philippines in Darwin, Australia after being diverted on the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The ship became even more notable being the first of only three ships successfully running the Japanese blockade into the Philippines; leaving Brisbane February 1942. Coast Farmer was torpedoed and sunk off Jervis Bay, New South Wales on 20 July 1942.
Dona Nati was one of three identical cargo ships built in 1939 by Cantieri Riuniti dell'Adriatico, San Marco, Trieste, Italy, for the De La Rama Steamship Company, Inc., Iloilo, Philippines, intended for service between the Philippines West Coast and North America. The ship was engaged in normal commerce until it became a key player in events in the Philippines after December 7, 1941, and the Japanese invasion of the islands. Dona Nati had arrived in Manila along with the ships President Grant, John Lykes, Cape Fairweather, and American Leader in a convoy escorted by the USS Boise (CL-47) on December 4, 1941. She had escaped to Australia where she became particularly notable as being one of only three ships to successfully run the Japanese blockade in attempts to supply the forces cut off in the Philippines. The ship was retained under Army control and on April 28, 1943, was one of twenty-eight vessels forming the fleet available to the Southwest Pacific command under General MacArthur.
SS Shuntien was a 3,059 GRT coastal passenger and cargo liner of the British-owned The China Navigation Company Ltd (CNC). She was built in Hong Kong in 1934 and sunk by enemy action in the Mediterranean Sea with great loss of life in 1941. A Royal Navy corvette rescued most of Shuntien's survivors, but a few hours later the corvette too was sunk and no-one survived.
Registan, built 1910, was the first name for a ship serving fifty years under the later names Guantanamo, USS Guantanamo (ID-1637), Comerio, Vittorin, Grey Lag and finally Hai Lung until scrapping in 1960. The ship transported gunpowder and munitions during World War I as USS Guantanamo and as a cargo ship during World War II for the War Shipping Administration (WSA). After 12 October 1943 the ship was assigned to the Southwest Pacific Area command's permanent local fleet as the United States Army transport Grey Lag with that fleet's number X-101. In April 1945 she was one of the transports towing large barges from Australia and New Guinea to the Philippines after that concept to mitigate shipping shortages had been proven feasible. In 1946 the ship was sold to the Republic of China and renamed Hai Lung.
SS Karsik was a German-built cargo steamship. Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau (Deschimag) built her as Soneck for Deutsche Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft "Hansa" in 1938.
SS Japara was a freighter of 3,323 GRT built by Mach. Fabr. & Scheepswerf P. Smit Jr., Rotterdam in 1930 and operated by Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij (KPM) in the Dutch East Indies trade. The 1930 Japara was operating with the United States Army permanent local fleet of the U.S. Army Forces in Australia (USAFIA) from 1942 until 1945 even while the larger ship, 9,312 GRT MS Japara (1938), was active in Army service oceanwide. Japara of 1930 played an important logistics role in the New Guinea Campaign.
John Samuel Swire (1825–1898) was a British businessman. He grew his family business, the Swire Group, and expanded the cotton and sugar trade with China. He established the Taikoo Sugar Refinery in Hong Kong and The China Navigation Company on the Yangtze river. He was the instigator and founding chairman of the China and Japan Conference. This shipping cartel existed from 1879 to 2008 and was a major component of the shipping industry from the Far East to Europe.
SS Lake Elsmere was an Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC) Design 1074 cargo ship built for the United States Shipping Board (USSB) during the massive shipbuilding effort of World War I.
MVEmilia was a passenger/cargo ship that operated in the intracoastal waterways of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. She was sunk in March 1942 by a Japanese destroyer.
HMS Ladybird started life as MV Wusueh, a ferry built for the lower reaches of the Yangtze River between Shanghai and Hankow, operated by the China Navigation Company (CNCo), run by the British businessman John Samuel Swire.
SSVizcaya (ex-Chusan) was a steel-hulled, steam freighter that operated in the Commonwealth of the Philippines. She was scuttled at Manila in December 1941.
