P&O’s FAR EAST SERVICE

Apart from the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company’s (P&O) frontline express service to Australia, several other secondary but no less important routes were operated by the company, including the so-called slow-steaming ‘Branch Line Service’ between London and Australia via Cape Town, catering for Third and Steerage classes, as well as a dedicated service to India and the Far East Service.

The latter operated out of London and ran to Port Said, Aden, Bombay, Colombo, Penang, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Kobe and Yokohama. Up to the late 1920s, the Far East Service was operated by six 9,000gt steamers, which had entered service in 1914-15 and were capable of 14 knots, carrying about 80 First and 68 Second class passengers. They were coal-fired reciprocating steam-driven vessels which, by the late 1920s, were totally outmoded, and so in 1929 P&O elected to build two new 14,000gt replacements.

The general arrangement of the new ships was based on the successful // vessels of 1925 but with singler-eduction steam turbine machinery of 15,500shp, instead of the reciprocating machinery, which raised their speed from 17 to 18 knots. Originally to be named and , the ships were ordered from Alexander Stephen & Sons on the Clyde. Before their launch, however, the ships’ names were changed to and ; the former began her maiden voyage on 16 October 1931, and her sistership followed in early December 1931.