Cunard Line
Who was the owner of RMS Scythia in early 1930s?
RMS Scythia RMS Scythia was a Cunard ocean liner . She sailed on her maiden voyage in 1921 , and became a troop and supply ship during the Second World War . Scythia was the longest serving Cunard liner until 4 September 2005 , when her record was surpassed by . History . After heavy losses during the First World War , Cunard Line embarked on an ambitious building programme . It decided to build intermediate , ships rather than the large liners it had previously employed . Scythia was the first ship in this new fleet , and building began in 1919 . Scythia was built for the services between Liverpool and Queenstown in the British Isles to New York and Boston , in the United States . A luxury liner designed to appeal to American tourists , in the mid-1920s , she began sailing from New York to the Mediterranean . Scythia was requisitioned at the end of 1939 , left Liverpool on 24 September 1940 with 48 children bound for Boston , sponsored by readers of the Boston Evening Transcript newspaper , part of a wider British evacuation programme under the Childrens Overseas Reception Board . She became a troop ship on 1 November 1940 , and sailed from Liverpool to the Middle East carrying the 1st Kings Dragoon Guards . She then saw service carrying evacuees from Liverpool to New York . In 1942 , Scythia took part in the Allied invasion of French North Africa . On 23 November she was struck by an aerial torpedo . Her crew managed to get her to harbour at Algiers , and she suffered only five casualties out of a complement of 4,300 men . Scythia was salvaged and taken to New York for repair in January 1943 , and afterwards ferried American troops to Europe . At the end of the war she took many US troops back from Europe , many of them accompanied by their new brides , before sailing to India to bring home UK troops from the war in the East . She was also a war bride ship taking Canadian war brides and their children from Liverpool to Pier 21 in Halifax in the early part of 1946 . One of her last missions as a troop ship was to bring the 1st Kings Dragoon Guards home to Liverpool , on 11 March 1948 . Later in 1948 , Scythia was handed to the International Refugee Organisation to take refugees from Europe to Canada . In 1950 she became a passenger ship again , sailing from Britain to Canada and later to New York . Again in 1957 the Scythia was used to transport Hungarian refugees to Canada ( departed Southampton England 19 Jan 1957 ) , landing in Halifax , Nova Scotia at Pier 21 ( Canadas equivalent to Ellis Island in New York ) . Her final route was around the North Sea . In 1958 , after 37 years of service , Scythia was delivered to the shipbreakers at Inverkeithing by her final Master , Geoffrey Thrippleton Marr . External links . - Cunard.com Cunard Heritage Scythia II 1921–1958