HMT Nieuw Amsterdam

Nieuw Amsterdam in front, Queen Mary rear 18 Feb 1943 in Fremantle.
SS Nieuw Amsterdam in her cruise ship livery
History
Name	SS Nieuw Amsterdam
Builder/Built	1937 NV Rotterdam Dry Dock Company
Type	Ocean Liner
Displacement	36,287 tons
Speed	20.5 knots

Remarks

Built for the Holland America Line for the Rotterdam, New Your route. After only seventeen voyages, Nieuw Amsterdam was laid up at Hoboken, New Jersey in 1939 after the German invasion of Poland. She would be idle for only a year, however, and was requisitioned by the British Ministry of Transport after the Netherlands fell to Hitler’s armies. She would spend the remainder of the war years as a transport for troops and prisoners of war, despite the fact she had been constructed without the consideration of ever being used in a military capacity.

Nieuw Amsterdam, with a nominal troop capacity of 6,800 and speed of over 20 knots, was among the British-controlled "monsters" – high-capacity, high-speed troop ships capable of sailing unescorted due to their speed, and thus critical to the build up in Britain for the invasion of the Continent. During the course of the conflict she transported over 350,000 troops and steamed around 530,452 nautical miles (982,397 km) before being returned to the Holland America Line in 1946. Directly after the war, she spent time repatriating Dutch citizens from the then-Dutch East Indies.

She returned to the trans Atlantic run in October 1947 and continued for another 40 years, before shifting to cruising in the Caribbean until she was sent to the breakers in 1974.

Soldiers carried

Port Tewfik to Fremantle 1-18 February 1943

• Ronald Gwynne