RMS Magdalena (1889)

RMS Magdalena was an ocean liner completed in 1889 by Robert Napier and Sons at Glasgow in Scotland for Royal Mail Steam Packet Company.

As well as being a mail ship and liner, Magdalena was employed as a troopship in World War I.

Service history
Her maiden voyage on 2 August 1889 was a charter by the Mayor and Corporation of the City of London in which they attended the Royal Naval Review at Spithead. The review had been ordered by Queen Victoria in honour of her nephew, Kaiser Wilhelm II; Magdalena was the only merchant ship to take part.

The RMSPC then employed Magdalena on the South American route. By 1905, she was deemed to be too small for the route and was used mainly on the West Indies service. On 12 June 1912, while en route to Barbados, Magdalena went to the assistance of a sailing barque that had been becalmed; her crew had been living on a single biscuit each per day for 40 days. At the end of 1912, Magdalena took the England Cricket Team on a successful tour of the West Indies.

In 1915, she was taken up by the Admiralty as a troopship and became HMT Magdalena. She was employed moving Australian troops across the Mediterranean and bringing West Indian troops to Europe. An influenza outbreak on board in January 1917 forced the ship into quarantine in Barbados. In August 1918, the Magdalena brought the Gold Coast Regiment home at the close of the East African Campaign. At the end of the war, she was laid-up and scrapped in 1921.