835 Royal Naval Air Squadron Old Comrades Reunion Website

History

A SHORT HISTORY LESSON

Making History

HMS NAIRANA - THE FIRST

The Nairana (3,042 gross tons) was built in 1917 by William Denny & Bros. of Dumbarton for Huddart Parker Ltd of Melbourne. She was requisitioned by the British Admiralty and converted for use as the seaplane carrier HMS Nairana. The ship was involved when British forces raided Murmansk and Archangel in June 1918, She played an important role in the capture of Archangel during August when her seaplanes and guns attacked the fort and gun batteries guarding the Baltic port.T here were two missions - one in1918 and the other the following year
The later history of the Nairana was that after the war she was refitted at Devonport Dockyard and returned to her Australian owners. In December 1921 Huddart Parker, in conjunction with the Union Steamship Co. of New Zealand, formed a subsidiary company, Tasmanian Steamers Proprietary Ltd. of Melbourne. The Nairana was transferred to this company. She then operated as a passenger ship on the Melbourne - Launceston service. She had accommodation for 450 passengers and travelled at a speed of 20.5 knots. She was laid up at Melbourne in 1948 and sold to a firm of shipbreakers two years later. In 1951 she broke her moorings in a gale and was blown ashore. The wreckage was removed after a further two years by order of the Melbourne Harbour Trust.

The above is an excerpt from a BBC fact sheet

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835 Squadron served in HMS Furious, Activity, Battler, Chaser and Argus. Finally coming to roost in HMS Nairana from which most of her battle activities took place

HMS NAIRANA

Nairana was laid down in March, 1942, at John Brown’s shipbuilding yards on the Clyde, not as a warship but as a “cargo liner”. In June, 1942, by which time her hull had been partially constructed, she was taken over by the Navy for conversion into an ecort carrier. At much the same time two other vessels were taken over for similar conversion; these were eventually commissioned as HMS Vindex and HMS Campania. The three vessels had the same basic design. Here and there a keen eye could spot minor differences, for each bore the individual hallmark of the yard in which it was converted. The John Brown conversion was commissioned as HMS Nairana on 26th November 1943, her specification being :

The name “Nairana” was a rare type of Tasmanian eagle ; the original crest’s motto was “She swoops to Conquer” but eagles don’t “swoop”, they “stoop” so in deference to this erudition, the ship’s motto was altered to “She Stoops to Conquer”.....the plaque is in the FAA Section of the Museum at East Fortune, near Haddington, East Lothian.

Her squadron, during the war, was 835 and to quote E.E.Barringer from his book “Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea” “In the latter part of the war our fortunes were linked to those of Nairana . She was our ship. We were her squadron" As a carrier she had operated with escort groups in Mid - Atlantic, with Gibraltar convoys, Russian convoys in the worst weather possible, and shipping strikes in Norwegian fjords.

After the European War for approx 2 years she was lent to the Dutch Navy as Karel Doorman.

In 1949 HMS Nairana was converted to the MV Port Victor and finally scrapped by Shipbreaking Industries, at Faslane in August 1971.

Allied Intervention in murmansk website gives maps and photographs of the seaplanes:

www.behindthelines.freeuk.com/murmansk.htm