SS Almeda Star

SS Almeda Star, originally SS Almeda, was a British turbine steamer of the Blue Star Line. She was both an ocean liner and a refrigerated cargo ship, providing a passenger service between London and South America and carrying refrigerated beef from South America to London. She was built in 1926, significantly enlarged in 1935 and sunk by enemy action in 1941.

Building and early career
Cammell Laird of Birkenhead built the ship, launching her on 29 June 1926 and completing her in December. She was launched under her original name of Almeda. As originally built she was 512.2 ft long, had a beam of 68.3 ft and a draught of 28 ft. She had 32 oil-fired corrugated furnaces with a combined grate area of 560 sqft heating three double-ended and two single-ended boilers with a combined heating surface of 30600 sqft. Her boilers supplied steam at 200 lbf/in2 to four Parsons steam turbines with a combined rating of 2,078 NHP or 13,880 shp. Her four turbines were single-reduction geared onto the shafts to drive her twin propellers at about 120 RPM.

Almeda was painted in Blue Star Line's standard livery of the era. Her hull was black, her boot-topping red and her masts white. Her stokehold ventilators were black and her deck ventilators were white, and the insides of her ventilator cowls were red. She had two funnels and they were red with a black top, with a narrow white and a narrow black band and on each side a large blue star on a white disc. In her original form Almeda's funnels had a type of cowl called an "Admiralty top".

Almeda made her maiden voyage on 16 February 1927, inaugurating Blue Star Line's route between London and Buenos Aires via Boulogne, Madeira, Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro, Santos and Montevideo. Her passage was scheduled to take 18 or 19 days.

In the course of 1927 Cammell Laird completed two sister ships, SS Andalucia and SS Arandora. In 1929 Arandora was converted into a cruise ship by reducing her cargo space and enlarging her passenger accommodation, and the three sisters were renamed SS Almeda Star, SS Andalucia Star and SS Arandora Star.

Rebuilding
In 1935 Blue Star Line had Almeda Star and Andalucia Star lengthened by 66.7 ft to 578.9 ft to increase their cargo hold space. The new section in each ship was inserted forward of the accommodation block. The beam and draught remained the same but the depth was increased to 42.7 ft and the original bow was replaced with a Maierform one.

Steaming arrangements were reduced to 28 corrugated furnaces with a combined grate area of 490 sqft heating three double-ended boilers and one single-ended boiler with a combined heating surface of 26680 sqft. The combined rating of her turbines was reduced to 1,909 NHP. A change more visible externally was that the Admiralty tops were removed from Almeda Star's two funnels.

War service and sinking
After the Second World War broke out in September 1939 Almeda Star continued to sail her route independently of convoys. On 22 December 1940 she was on the River Mersey in Liverpool when she was slightly damaged in an air raid. On 15 January she sailed from Liverpool bound for the River Plate, carrying 194 passengers including 142 members of the Fleet Air Arm en route to RNAS Piarco on Trinidad. They were 21 officers and 121 ratings from 749, 750 and 752 squadrons.

At 0745 hrs on 17 January 1941 Almeda Star was about 35 nmi north of Rockall in heavy seas when GS U-96 (1940) hit her amidships with one G7e torpedo, causing Almeda Star to stop. She did not sink so U-96 fired again at 0805 and 0907 hrs, hitting Almeda Star in the stern and again amidships. The ship had launched four lifeboats but still had people on deck when U-96 surfaced and opened fire on her with her 88 mm deck gun. Between 0932 and 0948 hrs the submarine fired 28 incendiary shells, about 15 of which hit Almeda Star and started small fires aboard. The fires soon went out so at 0955 hrs U-96 hit the ship with a fourth torpedo, which exploded in her forepart. Within three minutes Almeda Star sank by her bow.

Almeda Star had transmitted one distress message and the Royal Navy responded by sending seven destroyers to search the area. They found neither survivors, boats nor wreckage: all 360 people aboard were lost.