RMS Norham Castle | |
History | |
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United Kingdom | |
Name | Norham Castle |
Owner | Union-Castle Line |
Operator | D Currie & Co, London |
Port of registry | London |
Builder | John Elder & Co., Glasgow |
Yard number | 270 |
Launched | 26 February 1883 |
Completed | 16 May 1883 |
Identification | 87101 |
Fate | Broken up in Italy in 1932 |
Notes | Sold to France in 1903 and renamed Martinique |
General characteristics | |
Tonnage | |
Length | 380 ft. 6 in. |
Beam | 48 ft 2 in (14.68 m) |
Depth | 31.4 ft. |
Installed power | 600 nhp |
Propulsion |
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Speed | Cruising: 12 kn (22 km/h; 14 mph) |
Capacity |
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The RMS Norham Castle was a Royal Mail Ship and passenger liner of the Union-Castle Line in service between London, England and Cape Town, South Africa between 1883 and 1903.
In her first year the ship was in the Java Sea in the western Pacific Ocean when the island of Krakatoa exploded in August 1883. A series of eruptions emitted vast quantities of smoke and ash and plunged the area into darkness, and waves destroyed a lighthouse and other structures. Shortly after 10:00 in the morning of 27 August the final explosion destroyed the island with a blast that was heard and felt thousands of miles away. The pressure wave from that blast ruptured the eardrums of over half of the crew of Norham Castle. [1]
In 1897 the ship was reviewed by Queen Victoria at Spithead during her Diamond Jubilee celebration, and was later used by the Prince of Wales when he started a grand yacht race from her deck. [2] Also, in April 1897, Sir Alfred Milner traveled aboard the Norham Castle from Southampton to Cape Town, to take up the reins as the new High Commissioner of South Africa. [3] [4] [5]
The ship was sold to the French line Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (General Transatlantic Company) in 1903, and renamed the Martinique. She served the Bordeaux, France –West Indies route until 1931.
Krakatoa, also transcribed Krakatau, is a caldera in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra in the Indonesian province of Lampung. The caldera is part of a volcanic island group comprising four islands. Two, Lang and Verlaten, are remnants of a previous volcanic edifice destroyed in eruptions long before the infamous 1883 eruption; another, Rakata, is the remnant of a much larger island destroyed in the 1883 eruption.
Alfred was sovereign Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha from 1893 to 1900. He was the second son and fourth child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He was known as the Duke of Edinburgh from 1866 until he succeeded his paternal uncle Ernest II as the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in the German Empire.
Louis Botha was a South African politician who was the first prime minister of the Union of South Africa – the forerunner of the modern South African state. A Boer war veteran during the Second Boer War, he eventually fought to have South Africa become a British Dominion.
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner, was a British statesman and colonial administrator who played a very important role in the formulation of British foreign and domestic policy between the mid-1890s and early 1920s. From December 1916 to November 1918, he was one of the most important members of Prime Minister David Lloyd George's War Cabinet.
The National Democratic and Labour Party, usually abbreviated to National Democratic Party (NDP), was a short-lived political party in the United Kingdom. Its predecessors were the British Workers' National League, and the Socialist National Defence Committee.
George Geoffrey Dawson was editor of The Times from 1912 to 1919 and again from 1923 until 1941. His original last name was Robinson, but he changed it in 1917. He married Hon. Margaret Cecilia Lawley, daughter of Arthur Lawley, 6th Baron Wenlock, in 1919.
The Union-Castle Line was a British shipping line that operated a fleet of passenger liners and cargo ships between Europe and Africa from 1900 to 1977. It was formed from the merger of the Union Line and Castle Shipping Line.
Violet Georgina Milner, Viscountess Milner was an English socialite of the Victorian and Edwardian eras and, later, editor of the political monthly National Review. Her father was close friends with Georges Clemenceau, she married the son of Prime Minister Salisbury, Lord Edward Cecil, and after his death, Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner.
Milner's Kindergarten is the informal name of a group of Britons who served in the South African civil service under High Commissioner Alfred, Lord Milner, between the Second Boer War and the founding of the Union of South Africa in 1910. It is possible that the kindergarten was Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain's idea, for in his diary dated 14 August 1901, Chamberlain's assistant secretary Geoffrey Robinson wrote, "Another long day occupied chiefly in getting together a list of South African candidates for Lord Milner – from people already in the (Civil) Service". They were in favour of the unification of South Africa and, ultimately, an Imperial Federation with the British Empire itself. On Milner's retirement, most continued in the service under Lord Selborne, who was Milner's successor, and the number two-man at the Colonial Office. The Kindergarten started off with 12 men, most of whom were Oxford graduates and English civil servants, who made the trip to South Africa in 1901 to help Lord Milner rebuild the war torn economy. Quite young and inexperienced, one of them brought with him a biography written by F.S. Oliver on Alexander Hamilton. He read the book, and the plan for rebuilding the new government of South Africa was based along the lines of the book, Hamilton's federalist philosophy, and his knowledge of treasury operations. The name, "Milner's Kindergarten", although first used derisively by Sir William Thackeray Marriott, was adopted by the group as its name.
Krakatoa, East of Java is a 1968 American disaster film starring Maximilian Schell and Brian Keith. During the 1970s, the film was re-released under the title Volcano. The story is loosely based on events surrounding the 1883 eruption of the volcano on the island of Krakatoa, with the characters engaged in the recovery of a cargo of pearls from a shipwreck perilously close to the volcano. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Special Visual Effects.
Sir Donald Currie was a Scottish shipowner, politician and philanthropist.
The Round Table movement, founded in 1909, was an association of organisations promoting closer union between Britain and its self-governing colonies.
Krakatoa, in the Sunda Strait in Indonesia, has attracted a significant literature and media response to the 1883 eruption and subsequent events in the vicinity.
The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait occurred from 20 May until 21 October 1883, peaking in the late morning hours of 27 August when over 70% of the island of Krakatoa and its surrounding archipelago were destroyed as it collapsed into a caldera.
Fair Wind to Java is a 1953 American adventure film in Trucolor from Republic Pictures, produced and directed by Joseph Kane, that stars Fred MacMurray and Vera Ralston. With special effects by the Lydecker brothers, the film was based on the 1948 novel of the same name by Garland Roark.
Kaisow, a composite clipper, was built by Robert Steele & Company at Greenock and launched on 19 November 1868.
The RMS Saxon was a Royal Mail Ship that went into service with Castle Line in 1900 on the passenger and mail service run between Britain and South Africa. She was the 4th ship by this name, the first being a coal carrier dating back to the Crimean War. After the Boer War, the Saxon was one of nine ships that made up the Southampton-Cape Town Mail Run. In May 1901, the High Commissioner of South Africa, Lord Alfred Milner, traveled aboard the Saxon on his way back to Southampton, England. He traveled on the same route aboard the Saxon in 1925, shortly before his death.
The RMS Kildonan Castle was a Royal Mail Ship and passenger liner that went into service with Castle Line, and its successor, the Union-Castle Line. She was built to run the mail route from Southampton, England to Cape Town, South Africa starting in 1900. However, she began her life early, in December 1899, being requisitioned by the government to carry 3,000 troops to Cape Town at the start of the Boer War, and was temporarily used in South Africa to house POW's. She returned to England in 1901 for an outfitting to carry passengers and mail. She was one of nine ships on the England-South Africa run. At the outbreak of World War I, she replenished the South African Army with arms and ammunition. She also served as a hospital ship during the Dardanelles Campaign, outfitted with 603 beds, and converted in March 1916 to an armed merchant cruiser. In January 1917, she took Lord Milner and 51 VIP delegates from England, France and Italy to Murmansk, Russia, on the Petrograd Mission. She then undertook convoy duties in the North Atlantic, returning to her normal South African mail run after the war.
The RMS Walmer Castle was a Royal Mail Ship of the Union-Castle Line in service between London, England and Cape Town, South Africa between 1902 and 1930. She was the second of three ships by this name. Her service was interrupted in 1917 when she was requisitioned by the government to serve as a troop transport, transporting troops from South Africa and later in the North Atlantic, painted in a camouflaged dazzle scheme. In 1919, she made two voyages between Liverpool and New York before returning to her mail run.
J. Frederick "Peter" Perry (1873-1935) was a British colonial employee best known for his work as a member of Milner's Kindergarten in South Africa, immediately after the end of the Second Boer War.