Guestbook

My great-aunt, Maggie Irving, was a Queen Alexandra Nurse and family lore states that she was torpedoed (and survived) in both WWI and WWII. I’d love to establish if she was on the SS Strathallan. If anybody can help with a passenger list (or any other information), that would be fantastic.

I was very interested to visit this website as I subsequently learned that my Uncle was one of the troops on this transport who abandoned ship after it was that. He died some years ago and I never had the opportunity to discuss his experiences with him. Like many he never discussed his war experience as frond crew in the airforce in North Africa.

This is a fascinating web site. My mother, 1st Lt. Antonia “Netta” Bunes, was an American Army nurse who survived the sinking. She often spoke of the event. She passed many years ago, and I wish I had written her accounts which are now vague memories. Thank you for your good work here, and thanks to all whose efforts helped the Allies to victory.

Love the website. My father David Gryffydd
Jones (April 18th 1923) was one of the survivors. Thank-you for keeping the site going-it is really appreciated

My late grandmother, Gartley Barbara Holt (nee Watters) was a Sister in the QAIMNS and was a passenger and survivor of the torpedo attack. I will get more information but she hailed from Stirling and was in her early 30s at the time of the sinking. She had recently married Major Henry Walter ‘Jim’ Holt of the Prince of Wales West Yorkshire Regiment who was stationed in India at the time of the sinking.
Barbara never learned to swim. She made it into a lifeboat with several other nurses and a couple of seamen. They were picked up after a couple of days by a British destroyer.
She didn’t talk much about the incident, she was planning on attending the last reunion in the early noughties but a fall hospitalised her and she passed away in 2005.
After WW2 she ran a nursing home in Bournemouth before retiring to first, Filey and then to Scarborough. Jim Holt died in 1974. They had separated some years before hand, Jim fought the Japanese during Slim’s offensive down the Burmese peninsular and it was a particularly vicious campaign which took its toll on him, made it difficult for him to adjust.
She had three daughters: Rosemary (my mother), and Pauline & Jennifer (twins). She had seven grandkids and knew a great grandson before she passed away.

My father and my uncle were both on the Strathallan when it was torpedoed. My father was called Matthew Hill Rankine. He was a boy soldier at Beachley Camp in Chepstow, and had just turned 18 when he was posted to North Africa. He was with my uncle, Hugh Liddle. Oddly enough, my husband’s best man’s mother was a nurse on that voyage too. I only discovered this after my father died (in 1989).

I am trying to get information about the US Army nurses that were aboard the Strathallan. She was Second Lieutenant Helen C. Baniak. Any information about the US Army Nurses will be greatly appreciated. Thank you !

Have photos &c of 1938 Port Moresby cruise but fairly personal. Would anyone like to see?

Hi Les,

Did you have a chance to read the chapter I sent?

Reading a note in the guestbook from someone who wondered about the U.S. nurses on the Strathallan, I thought there were a couple of references in this chapter which might interest her.

Heydon

My father sailed on the SS Strathallan for North Africa via Cape Town , late March/early April 1941 as a RASC officer. I have one or two photographs of him on board and two or three menus from the ship.

Someone inquired as to why one of the QAs was buried in Oran. My mother was in the QAs and I believe was on the ship although I have not been able to find a passenger list. She told me they were landed in Oran after being rescued, but there had been an outbreak of bubonic plague in Oran which may have been the source of her illness. While maybe not relevant, it is interesting to note that the celebrated French writer, Albert Camus, wrote a novel built around the plague outbreak (“La Peste”).

What wonderful stories of this brave ship and the men and women who served on her, excellent website. I came across it while researching my grandfather’s service in WW2 – he was a soldier en route to North Africa in the same convoy as Strathallan when she was torpedoed. I have been trying to find the commodore’s report of convoy KMF 5 / KMF 5A at The National Archive but with no luck (everything up to KMF 4 and from KMF 6!). Do you or any of your subscribers by any chance know The National Archive reference? Many thanks and good luck with the website!

My father was in the same convoy as the Strathallan on the Empire Pride. He boarded his troop ship in Liverpool on 10 December 1942 where there were many other ships along the quayside. I have struggled to find out whether the Strathallan took on troops initially in Liverpool as records on the internet seem to show it departed from the Clyde two days later. I cannot work out whether the Strathallan joined the convoy from Liverpool. My father says that one of the reasons they were not attacked in the Atlantic was because of an atrocious storm. I have found the Met office records of that storm. He remembers the sinking of the Strathallan but knew about it only when they landed in Algiers. A torpedo was fired at the Empire Pride but missed. I am writing a book about my father’s life and family history which includes his war years. It may be called Resilience because this is what all those who sailed in that convoy had and all the other convoys.

I have found my fathers (FCB Black) small leather suitcase with the P&O label still stuck on it stating the ship, the SS Strathmore. Is there any way in which to discover when he took the trip? He worked for the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in Manila and Shanghai before the war and in Calcutta during the war and I know on one occasion he travelled out by ship, possibly to Manila.

I have found an extract from my Grandfathers diary he was aboard the Strathallan and jumped down onto Pathfinder I have a berthing card. Deck F. 11a Hammock but I dont know which boat this was from his Name was Lesley Martin he with the No 3 Ambulance car corps

My Grandmother, Elizabeth (Betty) Swinnerton (Nee Smith) was on board.

My father was on the S S Strathallen when she was torpedoed. I believe he had to get into a life boat. Is there a list of troops on the ship? His name was Edward Ronald Hewlett. I dont know which regiment he was in. He was fluent in French and German and I think he may have been used as a translator or in interviewing prisoners.