Fleet tenders were British
merchant ship
A merchant ship, merchant vessel, trading vessel, or merchantman is a watercraft that transports cargo or carries passengers for hire. This is in contrast to pleasure craft, which are used for personal recreation, and naval ships, which are u ...
s fitted with a wooden
superstructure
A superstructure is an upward extension of an existing structure above a baseline. This term is applied to various kinds of physical structures such as buildings, bridges, or ships.
Aboard ships and large boats
On water craft, the superstruct ...
to resemble
battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...
s or
aircraft carrier
An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a ...
s during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. They were built to fool German reconnaissance planes, and known as fleet tenders to conceal their purpose.
Three ships were converted in 1939 and another,
HMS ''Centurion'', in 1941. The three converted in 1939 were 7,900-tons merchant ships:
*
SS ''Pakeha'', fleet tender A, as battleship
HMS ''Revenge''
*
SS ''Waimana'', fleet tender B, as battleship
HMS ''Resolution''
*
SS ''Mamari'', fleet tender C, as carrier
HMS ''Hermes''
They had been the oldest ships in service with the
Shaw, Savill & Albion Line
Shaw, Savill & Albion Line was the trading name of Shaw, Savill and Albion Steamship Company, a British shipping company that operated ships between Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
History
The company was created in 1882 by the ama ...
. After conversion, they were initially anchored at
Scapa Flow
Scapa Flow viewed from its eastern end in June 2009
Scapa Flow (; ) is a body of water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, sheltered by the islands of Mainland, Graemsay, Burray,S. C. George, ''Jutland to Junkyard'', 1973. South Ronaldsay and ...
.
Major warships had been kept away from the anchorage following the loss of in October 1939 when penetrated the harbour defences. After the fleet tenders were improved, they were used as decoys before the first capital ships returned in March 1940. In August 1940, the Commander-in-Chief Home Fleet, Admiral
Charles Forbes, ordered them relocated to
Rosyth
Rosyth ( gd, Ros Fhìobh, "headland of Fife") is a town on the Firth of Forth, south of the centre of Dunfermline. According to the census of 2011, the town has a population of 13,440.
The new town was founded as a Garden city-style suburb ...
where they were maintained on a "care and maintenance" basis. The three ships never left the home waters of the United Kingdom, and became obsolete in 1941. SS ''Mamari'' was wrecked off
The Wash
The Wash is a rectangular bay and multiple estuary at the north-west corner of East Anglia on the East coast of England, where Norfolk, England, Norfolk meets Lincolnshire and both border the North Sea. One of Britain's broadest estuaries, it i ...
and then attacked by
German torpedo boats. SS ''Pakeha'' and SS ''Waimana'' were converted back to merchants and returned to cargo use, but renamed the ''Empire Pakeha'' and ''Empire Waimana'' under the
Ministry of War Transport
The Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) was a department of the British Government formed early in the Second World War to control transportation policy and resources. It was formed by merging the Ministry of Shipping and the Ministry of Transport ...
.
HMS ''Centurion'' was a
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
-era battleship, disarmed under the
Washington Naval Treaty
The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was a treaty signed during 1922 among the major Allies of World War I, which agreed to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction. It was negotiated at the Washington Nav ...
. In September 1940, when acting as a repair ship at
Devonport Naval Base
Devonport Naval Base is the home of the Royal New Zealand Navy, located at Devonport, New Zealand on Auckland's North Shore. It is currently the only base of the navy that operates ships, and has been in use as a navy base since 1841. The b ...
, she was fitted with wooden turrets and guns following a report on the planned
Operation Sealion
Operation Sea Lion, also written as Operation Sealion (german: Unternehmen Seelöwe), was Nazi Germany's code name for the plan for an invasion of the United Kingdom during the Battle of Britain in the Second World War. Following the Battle ...
by the German Naval Group West that two British battleships were close to the invasion routes, when in fact there was only one. In May 1941 she was given a more detailed conversion and fitted with a dummy after-funnel, mainmast and main armament to resemble the modern
HMS ''Anson''. She left home waters to sail around the
Cape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope ( af, Kaap die Goeie Hoop ) ;''Kaap'' in isolation: pt, Cabo da Boa Esperança is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa.
A common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is t ...
to
Bombay
Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...
, and in June 1942 acted as a decoy in a convoy to
Malta
Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
(
Operation Vigorous
Operation Vigorous (known in Italy as 1942, "the Battle of mid-June 1942") was a British operation during the Second World War, to escort supply convoy MW11 from the eastern Mediterranean to Malta, which took place from 11 to 16 June 1942. Vigor ...
). She was finally expended in June 1944 as a
blockship
A blockship is a ship deliberately sunk to prevent a river, channel, or canal from being used. It may either be sunk by a navy defending the waterway to prevent the ingress of attacking enemy forces, as in the case of at Portland Harbour in 1914; ...
off the
Normandy
Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...
coast as part of the
Gooseberry shelter for
Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach was one of five beach landing sectors designated for the amphibious assault component of operation Overlord during the Second World War. On June 6, 1944, the Allies invaded German-occupied France with the Normandy landings. "Omaha" r ...
.
Notes
References
Now It Can Be Told! - How the Navy's Phantom Fleet Hoaxed the Hun The War Illustrated
''The War Illustrated'' was a British war magazine published in London by William Berry (later Viscount Camrose and owner of ''The Daily Telegraph''). It was first released on 22 August 1914, eighteen days after the United Kingdom declared war ...
, September 14, 1945.
{{Warship types of the 19th & 20th centuries
Ship types