P&O Ocean Liner Postcards Page 2

These two ships were designed for use as a troopships as required. They were sisters of Assaye covered on P&O Liners Page 1. Sobraon had a very short life, being wrecked on her third voyage back from Shanghai to London on April 1901.

The third sister Plassy, was more successful, serving almost exclusively on Government contracts. She was broken up in Italy in 1924.

Medina was the last of the ten ships in P&O's M-Class, delivered from Caird & Co of Greenock in 1911. During construction it was decided that Medina would convey King George V and Queen Mary to India, for the Delhi Durbar, and so she was initially commissioned into the Royal Navy, and her crew were mainly naval personnel. Medina was provided with an extra mast, necessary to maintain royal flag etiquette, and she was finished with a white hull with bands of royal blue and gold, and buff funnels. Various large rooms intended for public use were redecorated as royal apartments. Medina left Portsmouth for India in November 1911, returning in February 1912. Medina returned to Cairds for refitting, and was delivered to P&O in June 1912. She had only two years of peacetime service, but remained with P&O in the war. On February 1st 1917, Medina was torpedoed by U-571 off the coast of Devon.

In 1909, P&O bought the Blue Anchor Line, which ran emigrant services from the UK to Australia via South Africa. Blue Anchor had been badly hit by the loss without trace of their largest ship, the Warateh of 9000gt. P&O paid £275000 for five ships, the line and its goodwill. P&O separately managed the line as the P&O Branch Line, and initially retained the Blue Anchor funnel colours. They invited tenders for the first two of five replacement ships in September 1910, and Caird & Co of Greenock built all five 11000gt vessels, delivered between 1911 and 1913. They were one class ships (Blue Anchor had carried some first class) and capacity was 1000 on the outward emigrant trips. 650 of the berths were temporary quarters, which could be dismantled to provide more cargo space on the return trips.

The Ballarat was torpedoed by U-32 on 25th April 1917 whilst entering the English Channel with 1400 troops from Australia. Damaged at the stern, she began taking on water. All troops were successfully transferred to the boats to be picked up by naval vessels. Ballarat was taken under tow, but sank later off the Lizard. Her sisters all survived the war, and continued in service on various secondary routes until the early 1930s, having been replaced by a new 13000gt B-Class between 1921 and 1923.

One of a series of six 9000 ton steamers built in 1913-1914 with names beginning with 'K', all of which survived the war, but were scrapped in Japan in 1931-1932. The ships were:- Kalyan (1914-32), Karmala (1) (1914-32), Kashgar (2) (1914-32), Kashmir (1914-32), Khiva (2) (1913-31) and Khyber (1) (1914-31).