Prince David
1930
(Albatros AL-130)
- Type: Passenger
- Displacement: 6,892 grt / 1050 dwt
- Dimensions: 384-6 x 57-1 x 16-9 ft.
- Machinery: Steam turbine, twin screw = 20 knots
- Passengers: 404 (334 first class, 70 third class)
- Crew:
- Builder: Cammel, Laird, Birkenhead, England, 1930
- Service: One of three sisters, Prince David, Prince Henry, and Prince Robert, ordered in 1929 from Cammell Laird by Canadian National Railways' subsidiary CN Steamships. Operated as small luxury liners, with accomodations for 300 passengers, on Canadian West Coast. During the depression, PD and PH moved to the Canada-West Indies service.
All three were converted to armed merchant cruisers for Royal Canadian Navy at Halifax in 1940 like Prince Henry.
Initially patrolled in the West Indies, then transferred to Canada's West Coast after Pearl Harbor and covered convoys to Alaska and the Aleutians. In 1943 PD and PH were converted to LSI(M) or Landing Ship Infantry Medium at Vancouver with capacity for 550 soldiers, six LCA and two LCM, while Prince Robert was converted to an anti-aircraft escort.
PD participated in the Normandy D-Day landings at Juno beach, 6 Jun 1944, and in the Dragoon landings in Southern France, 15 Aug 1944. In the fall of 1944 she was involved in the reoccupation of Greece that followed German evacuation and the subsequent beginning of the Greek Civil War. On 9 Dec she struck a mine near Piraeus; after temporary repairs, she returned to Esquimalt for refit, but was laid up instead. Sold to Charlton Steam Shipping Co. Sep 1946 and converted in Britain in 1947 for the immigrant trade to Australia; renamed Charlton Monarch. Broken up at Swansea 1951.
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