SS Mona's Queen (1934)

TSS (RMS) Mona's Queen (III) was a ship built for the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company in 1934, and was the third vessel in the Company's history to bear the name. Her life proved short, and she was lost when she struck a mine off Dunkirk on May 29, 1940.

Construction
Mona's Queen was built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead in 1934, at a cost of £201,250. The vessel had a registered tonnage of 2,756; a depth of 17 ft; a length of 337 ft; beam of 48 ft and a speed of 22 knots. She was certified for 2,486 passengers and a crew of 83.

She was driven by two single-reduction geared turbines and produced 8500 shp; the first of the Company's ships to have water tube boilers, taking up less room than the scotch boilers previously used.

Appearance
Mona's Queen was launched painted with a white hull over green. This was a summer colour scheme adopted by the Company in the 1930s, and was also applied to her sisters RMS Lady of Mann and SS Ben-my-Chree (1927).

She was an elegant ship, straight of stem and with an elliptical stern. Her passenger accommodation was advanced for its day with 20 cabins.

Mona's Queen was the leader of the last three ships, all twin-screw, geared turbines, to be built for the Company before the Second World War. The SS Fenella (1936) and Tynwald followed her into service in 1937. All three were lost during the war.

War service and loss
Mona's Queen was requisitioned as a personnel vessel on the day war broke out. As such, she remained a merchantman with a Steam Packet Captain and crew. She spent most of May 1940 evacuating refugees from Dutch and French ports as the massive German advance swept forward to the Channel. On May 22, she left Boulogne for Dover with 2,000 British troops embarked.

Her record during the Dunkirk evacuation was short. She started under the command of Captain R. Duggan and arrived back in Dover during the night of May 27 with 1,200 troops. She was shelled by shore guns off the French coast the next day, but she escaped damage. On May 29 the troops on the Dunkirk beaches were short of drinking water, so the Mona's Queen loaded water canisters and sailed from Dover in the early morning. She hit a mine off Dunkirk harbour at 5.30am, and sank in two minutes. Captain Archibald Holkham, who had taken over as Master, and 31 members of the crew were picked up by destroyers. Twenty-four of the crew were lost.

All but ten of them had worked in the engine room. They included the Chief and Second Engineer. Seventeen of the dead were from the Isle of Man.

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; King Orry, SS Fenella (1936) and Mona's Queen.

Memorial
To mark the seventieth anniversary of her sinking, Mona's Queen's starboard anchor was raised on 29 May 2010 and subsequently returned to the Isle of Man to form the centrepiece of a permanent memorial. The anchor had become detached during the sinking, and therefore did not form part of the War Grave. Her anchor was raised by a French salvage vessel, and was shown live on BBC television. There was a 12-gun salute from HMS Monmouth (F235) as a crane lifted the anchor of Mona's Queen from the seabed.

On 29 May 2012, a memorial featuring the restored anchor from Mona's Queen, to commemorate the losses 72 years earlier on Mona's Queen, King Orry and Fenella was opened in a ceremony at Kallow Point in Port St Mary attended by representatives of local and national government, the Lieutenant Governor, the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company and the French Navy.

Trivia
Mona's Queen can be seen berthed alongside the Prince's Landing Stage in Liverpool, about to be boarded by George Formby in the 1935 film No Limit.