M/S Tiradentes

To Tiradentes on the "Ships starting with T" page.

Misc. War Details:

(More voyages will be added).

In service between Australia and Egypt, as well as in the Atlantic.

Tiradentes is listed among the ships in the Gibraltar-U.K. Convoy HGF 29 in May-1940, bound for Falmouth with wheat and fruit.

The following month she was briefly in Convoy OA 162, which left Southend on June 5-1940 and dispersed 2 days later. Her destination is given as New York - ref. external links below.

Listed in the Bermuda portion of Convoy HX 102 in Jan.-1941, but returned to port. Shows up again in the Halifax-U.K. Convoy HX 105 later that month, cargo of steel and general for Belfast, station 93.

The captain had a tendency to not follow cruising orders, but staked out his own and, as it turned out, safer routes across the oceans. On many occasions the normal convoy routes lost several ships, whereas he reached his destination safely every time. He also followed the example of the German raiders and camouflaged his ship by equipping her with American nationality markings, and sailing with all the lights on, continuing this until the US entered the war a year later. This, of course, had to be done as secretely as possible, and he always waited until the ship had left port before putting up this disguise, and took everything down before arrival. On one such voyage, however, he was caught and reported to the Naval Intelligence Officer, whose comment was: "We are only interested in seeing the ship safely in port".

According to the first external website that I've linked to below, she took part in Convoy SL 146/MKS 37 in Jan./Febr.-1944, as did Boreas, Norfalk and Troubadour. The Gibraltar portion is also available in my own Convoys section at Convoy MKS 37.

A year later, in Jan.-1945, she was scheduled for the New York-U.K. convoy Convoy HX 330, but did not sail. She was also cancelled from Convoy HX 331, but joined the slow Halifax-U.K. Convoy SC 165, bound for London with a general cargo and mail.

POST WAR:

Sold on Aug. 23-1950 to H. Vogemann, Germany and renamed Vogtland. Sold in 1956 to the Ministry of Transport, London and loaded at Cairnryan with a cargo of bombs. Scuttled in the North Atlantic on May 30-1956.

Related external links:
SL/MKS Convoys - The site also has a section for the OB (& OA) convoys as well as the Russian convoys, and a very useful Multi-Convoy Web Search feature - here's the main page. Tiradentes is listed in Convoy OA 162 and SL 146/MKS 37.

OA & OB convoys

The Australian War Memorial has a picture of this ship. It can be found by running a search through their collection search page, using "Tiradentes" as keyword, and "Second World War" in the other field.

Back to Tiradentes on the "Ships starting with T" page.

The text on this page was compiled with the help of: Wilh. Wilhelmsen fleet list and "Skip og menn", Birger Dannevig, which has quite a bit of information on this ship's war voyages..