User:Harvey Milligan/TSS Lady of Mann

Lady of Mann (I)

Dimensions
No. 145307. Steel; twin-screw geared turbine. Tonnage 3104; length 360'; beam 50'; depth 18'6".

Construction
Lady of Mann (I) was built by Vickers Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness in 1930, at a cost of £249,073. Certificated to carry 2873 passengers and 81 crew, she was comissioned to operate on the Island's busy Douglas - Liverpool; Douglas - Fleetwood routes, and had a maximum speed of 23 knots. Her hull was at first the Company's conventional black, but was changed to white and green, only to revert to black after her war service.

Service life.
The year 1930 saw the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company celebrate it's centenary, and to mark this, the Lady of Mann was to be the largest ship ever built for it to that date. She was launched by the Duchess of Atholl, the Lady of Mann, after whom she was named.

The Lady of Mann exceeded 22 knots on her trials, and her speed was often over 23 knots on regular service. She was driven by two sets of single-reduction geared turbines; steam pressure 220 pounds p.s.i., and developed a shaft horsepower of 11,500. The ship was oil-fired by cylindrical scotch boilers.

Her initial work was on the Douglas - Fleetwood service where she took the place of the TSS Viking.

War Service
The Lady of Mann had a very eventful record during the war; she served at Dunkirk under Captain T.C. Woods and then at the evacuation of the north-western French ports. After this she spent four years on transport work from Lerwick. She then went south and was engaged in the D-Day landings on the Cherbourg peninsula.

Her Dunkirk record was spectacular. Requisitioned as a personnel ship at the outbreak of war, she had a good turn of speed, and was able to get in and out of the Dunkirk bombardments and lift 4,262 men back to the relative safety of Dover and Folkstone. She remained for six hours in Dunkirk harbour on May 31, 1940, despite having been damaged by shellfire from shore batteries on her approach and being bombed by enemy aircraft. She emerged from the bombing with little damage and claimed one enemy aircraft shot down. She was back at Dunkirk in the early hours of June 1 and took off 1,500 casualties. The following day, June 2, she again steamed into Dunkirk but was ordered back for lack of troops, as by this time the evacuation was drawing towards its close. She picked up 18 French soldiers from a small boat on her way back and landed them in England. On the night of June 3, she made her last trip to the shattered harbour. She berthed alongside the East Pier at a little after midnight on the morning of June 4, and left for England after embarking another 1,244 troops in little over an hour. Later that afternoon, Operation Dynamo ended.

Twelve days later, the Lady of Mann was in action once more. She became part of the force of personnel ships assigned to Operation Ariel, the evacuation from the ports of north-west France. She was at Le Havre, Cherbourg and Brest, embarking troops as the enemy advanced in a vast encircling movement. She was one of the last three ships to leave Le Havre, and it was estimated she had 5,000 troops on board as she pulled out under air attack.

From the following August until April, 1944, the Lady of Mann preformed troop transport duties, mainly between Invergordon, Aberdeen and Lerwick and to the Faroes. At times she was also engaged ferrying troops and air force personnel from the RMS Queen Mary, which served throughout the war as a troop transport ship. The Queen would arrive in Belfast from Canada or the United States, turn around quickly and set off again westwards. The Steam Packet Company ship, was one of several that serviced the big Cunarder, taking troops on the final leg of their sea voyage to Greenock.

The Lady of Mann was then taken over by the Admiralty and converted to an LSI (H) - a Landing Ship Infantry (Hand Hoisting). She carried six landing assault craft, 55 officers and 435 men. On D-Day, June 6th, 1944, she was the headquarters ship of the senior officer of the 512th Assault Flotilla, responsible for the landings in the Juno area near Courselles. Later in the month, while still on the Normandy operations, she was retired for repairs and then went back to her duties as a personnel carrier. She served as such for the remainder of the war, carrying on for some months afterwards moving troops and bringing out displaced persons. She was mostly Channel plying to Ostende and the Hook from such ports as Dover and Harwich.

Post War
She returned to her home port, Douglas, on March 9th, 1946, when she was given a civic reception. A local paper that week said that during her war service the Lady of Mann had carried more than 200,000 troops. Two months later, she was reconditioned and after her proud war service, Lady of Mann returned to her duties with the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company.