SS Columbia (1913)

The SS Columbia was a coal (later, oil) powered steam ship which began service under the name Katoomba in 1913 as a troop transport and ended service as a passenger transport in 1959 in Nagasaki, Japan. She was refitted in 1949 to use oil rather than coal as a power source, and was at that time renamed SS Columbia. Between her refitting in 1949 and her end of service she plied routes between a number of cities, including Piraeus, Lisbon, New York, Montreal, Cherbourg, Southampton, and Bremen (among others). She was damaged in foggy weather in Quebec in 1957 and was scrapped two years later after sailing to Japan.

World War I service
The British government requisitioned Katoomba in May 1918 to transport United States troops to Britain and made two trans Atlantic crossings before transfer to the Mediterranean. She was in Salonika on 11 November at the armistice and three days later left Constantinople transporting more than 2,000 troops of the Essex and Middlesex Regiments, and twenty-six of the surviving prisoners that had been taken at the siege of Kut. In six Black Sea trips, as the first British troopship to pass through the Dardanelles since the war's start, Katoomba landed 14,000 troops and returned with repatriated Turks. She went to Bombay in April 1919 and returned to Britain before returning to Australia in August. There she was refitted and returned to her owners.

World War II service
In 1941 Katoomba was briefly requisitioned for troop deployments transporting 1,496 troops leaving Brisbane for Rabaul on 15 March and then again with 687 troops from Sydney to Darwin before returning to commercial service.

Katoomba was transporting troops to Rabaul escorted by HMAS Adelaide (1918) when news of the attack on Pearl Harbor (8 December Australian date) and other Japanese attacks in the Pacific caused her to be held in Port Moresby. Plans to reinforce the garrison at Rabaul were abandoned, with the existing garrison sacrificed to delay Japanese advances, and Katoomba instead joined other ships in evacuating women and children from New Guinea, Papua, and Darwin. She was again requisitioned as a troopship in February 1942.

Katoomba was one of two Australian transports, the other being MV Duntroon, that were substituted for the SS Mariposa to transport a U.S. Army fighter group's ground troops and equipment to India. The troops and crated P-40 pursuit aircraft had arrived in a convoy from San Francisco escorted by USS Phoenix (CL-46) with Mariposa and the United States Army Transport USAT Willard A. Holbrook that were intended to continue on to India; however, Mariposa was withdrawn and the Australian transports substituted. The Phoenix with Duntroon, Katoomba and Holbrook departed Melbourne 12 February as convoy MS.5 for Colombo, Ceylon by way of Fremantle. There the USS Langley (CV-1) and MS Sea Witch (1940) with aircraft for Java joined and the convoy departed Fremantle on 22 February. The ill fated Langley and the Sea Witch left the convoy to proceed independently to Java while the remaining ships continued under escort by Phoenix until that cruiser was relieved by HMS Enterprise (D52) on 28 February about 300 miles west of Cocos Island. The convoy arrived at Colombo on 5 March.



On the return voyage from India the ship transported Second Australian Imperial Force (2nd AIF) troops being returned to Australia from the Middle east for operations in the south west Pacific.

In 1945, commendations were announced for men that volunteered to fight a fire in August 1943 when a falling sling of ammunition caused an explosion aboard in Port Moresby. First mate J. S. Burns, Able Seamen J. P. Shearer, J. W. Thrussell, and J. F. Robertson went below to fight the resulting fire despite the hold being filled with ammunition.

Later in March, the transport loaded 2nd AIF troops at Bombay being returned from the Middle East for the defense of Australia.

The ship was caught up in Australian labor union actions when engine room firemen caused a three-week delay in the ship's sailing from Brisbane to return troops from Bougainville. There were reports that angry troops threatened to toss the firemen overboard when the ship did arrive.

As SS Columbia
After being returned to her owners in 1946, Katoomba was sold to Goulandris Bros in Greece in July and renamed SS Columbia in 1949. She was retired from service in June 1950, laid up at Piraeus in March 1958 and scrapped at Nagasaki in 1959.