SS Fenella (1936)

TSS (RMS) Fenella (II) No. 145310 was a pre-war passenger steamer built by Vickers Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness in 1936, for service with the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company. She was sunk by air attack during the evacuation of Dunkirk in May 1940. Fenella's sister ship Tynwald, was also lost during the war.

Dimensions
Identical to her twin sister Tynwald, Fenella had a registered tonnage of 2376; a beam of 46'; length 314'6" and a depth of 18'. Both Tynwald and Fenella were designed with a service speed of 21 knots, accommodation for a crew of 68, and certificated to carry 1968 passengers. Both vessels were fitted with twin-screw geared turbines, and had water tube boilers with a steam pressure of 250 psi, and two sets of single-reduction turbines, developing 8500 shp.

Both Fenella and Tynwald were launched at Barrow on the same day, 16 December 1936.

Service life
Smaller than their immediate predecessors, they were designed specifically for winter work and were the first ships in the company to have cruiser sterns. Both ships worked on the heavy seasonal traffic on the main Douglas-Liverpool route, and both were much appreciated by passengers, especially in winter weather.

War service and loss
Requisitioned in the first week of the war as a personnel carrier, Fenella's first few months were relatively uneventful. Then, on 28 May 1940, Fenella joined no less than seven of her Steam Packet sisters and made passage to Dunkirk.

On 29 May 1940, under the command of her Master, Captain W. Cubbon, Fenella made her first trip into the evacuation area. She started to embark troops from the East Pier, and had 650 on board when she came under heavy fire in the third massed air attack of that day. She was hit by three bombs in quick succession, the first bomb hitting her directly on the promenade deck, the second bomb hitting the pier, blowing lumps of concrete through the ship's side below the waterline, and the third exploded between the pier and the ship's side, wrecking the engine room.

The Fenella was subsequently abandoned and later sank. The troops were disembarked onto the pier, where they were picked up by the famous old London pleasure steamer, the Crested Eagle. This too, was subsequently bombed and beached.

The survivors of the Fenella's crew were later picked up by the Dutch skoot, the Patria, which was under Royal Navy command. Others of the crew had succeeded in getting ashore on to the pier and had been taken on to the Crested Eagle, only to receive a direct hit.

The Fenella had gone into the harbour with a crew of 48, all Steam Packet men and most of them Manxmen. Four men had been left behind on leave. In all, 33 men succeeded in getting back to Dover, where one died of wounds. Many had been wounded, some seriously.

Some weeks later, a postcard was received from junior steward T. Helsby, who was 19 years of age, and came from Liverpool. He had last been seen, terribly burned, as the Fenella was foundering after the bomb attack. It transpired that he had been taken prisoner of war — the only Steam Packet Company man to be taken prisoner in all the operations of its ships in wartime — and was in a hospital in occupied Belgium. The German surgeons did an expert job on him, and he was repatriated before the end of the war, and eventually re-joined the Steam Packet.

Operation Dynamo, whilst widely regarded as the Steam Packet's "finest hour", also saw its blackest day. Three vessels were lost from the fleet on 29 May; Mona's Queen, King Orry and Fenella.

Ultimate fate
The sinking of the Fenella was later followed by a theory that the ship had been raised by the enemy, fitted with new engines, and was used under the name Reval. Much later, the belief grew that she had been taken over by the Russians, following the collapse of Germany.

F B O'Friel, has arrived at what is probably the authentic version after help from a correspondent who searched the German Navy files at Freiburg. From the papers unearthed, it seems certain that the wrecked Fenella was eventually removed piecemeal from the harbour as scrap. The Germans had classified her as Wreck No. 11. Near her, had been Wreck No. 8, the steamer Bawtry. This ship was raised in March 1941, and was later repaired at Antwerp upon the completion of which, she was declared a 'prize of war'. She was taken over by a Kiel shipping firm in 1943 under the name of Rival, only to be completely destroyed in the massive RAF air raid on Hamburg on the night of 31 December 1944.