The Wartime Memories Project

- HMHS Kildonan Castle during the Great War -


Great War>Ships
skip to content


This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site you agree to accept cookies.


If you enjoy this site please consider making a donation.



    Site Home

    Great War Home

    Search

    Add Stories & Photos

    Library

    Help & FAQs

 Features

    Allied Army

    Day by Day

    RFC & RAF

    Prisoners of War

    War at Sea

    Training for War

    The Battles

    Those Who Served

    Hospitals

    Civilian Service

    Women at War

    The War Effort

    Central Powers Army

    Central Powers Navy

    Imperial Air Service

    Library

    World War Two

 Submissions

    Add Stories & Photos

    Time Capsule

 Information

    Help & FAQs



    Glossary

    Our Facebook Page

    Volunteering

    News

    Events

    Contact us

    Great War Books

    About


Advertisements

World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great 1914 1918 first battalion regiment

HMHS Kildonan Castle



1st August 1914 Hospital ship  

SS Kildonan Castle

SS Kildonan Castle was built in 1899 by Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. at Glasgow with a tonnage of 9652grt, a length of 533ft, a beam of 59ft 2in and a service speed of 17 knots. Sister of the Kinfauns Castle she was the last mail ship to be completed for Castle Line before the merger but commenced her career as H. M. Transport 44 for use during the Boer War.

On her maiden voyage she carried 3000 troops to Cape Town and in December 1900 was used as a prisoner of war ship at Simonstown. During 1901 she returned to Fairfield's for completion before undertaking her first commercial mail sailing on 7th December.

On 31st October 1914 she undertook an emergency sailing to Lisbon where she loaded 10,000 rifles and 1,000,000 rounds of .303 ammunition which she then took to the Cape to replenish South African troops who were quelling secessionist strikes in the Rand and Johannesburg.

On 6th October 1915 she was commissioned as a hospital ship with 603 beds.

  • Hospital Ship or Ambulance Transport Service during WW1.
  • Medical Staff strength.
  • Officers:11
  • Nurses:18
  • Other:60
  • Accommodation capacity.
  • Officers:18
  • Cots:55
  • Berths:530
  • Period of Service as Hospital Ship or Ambulance Transport.
  • Date From:6th October 1915
  • Date To:10th March 1916
  • Ships Crew details:

In the following March she was de-commissioned and converted into an Armed Merchant Cruiser and on 21st August 1916 joined the 10th Cruiser Squadron which was based at Glasgow.

In 1917, on 17th January, she embarked the British Military Mission headed by Viscount Milner at Oban and took them to Murmansk where the Mission failed to prevent the Russians from negotiating with the Germans for peace. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, when Russia signed a separate Peace Treaty with the Central Powers, was signed on 2nd March 1917 the day the Mission reached Scapa Flow.

On her return she undertook convoy duties in the North Atlantic. In December 1918 she was stood down as an AMC and transferred to the work of repatriating troops and in 1919 carried troops to Archangel to quell internal fighting and was the last ship to leave when the Allies withdrew.

She then made a single trooping voyage to Shanghai before sailing to Vladivostock where, in March 1920, she embarked 1800 Yugoslavian refugees and took them to Gravosa in the Adriatic.

At the end of that year she was refurbished and returned to the mail run where she remained until replaced by the Carnarvon Castle in 1936 and put in reserve.

When the building of the Dunbar Castle was delayed in January 1930 she was deployed on the Intermediate run until the May when she was laid up at Netley pending disposal.

She was sold in May 1931 for £11,250 and broken up at Stavanger in Norway.

John Doran


If you can provide any additional information, please add it here.



Want to know more about HMHS Kildonan Castle?


There are:1 articles tagged HMHS Kildonan Castle available in our Library

  These include information on officers service records, letters, diaries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Great War.


Those known to have served in

HMHS Kildonan Castle

during the Great War 1914-1918.

    The names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed, please Add a Name to this List

    Records of HMHS Kildonan Castle from other sources.


    • The Wartime Memories Project is the original WW1 and WW2 commemoration website.

    • 1st of September 2023 marks 24 years since the launch of the Wartime Memories Project. Thanks to everyone who has supported us over this time.

    Want to find out more about your relative's service? Want to know what life was like during the Great War? Our Library contains many many diary entries, personal letters and other documents, most transcribed into plain text.



    Looking for help with Family History Research?   

    Please see Family History FAQ's

    Please note: We are unable to provide individual research.

    Can you help?

    The free to access section of The Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers and funded by donations from our visitors.

    If the information here has been helpful or you have enjoyed reaching the stories please conside making a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting or this site will vanish from the web.

    If you enjoy this site please consider making a donation.


    Announcements

    • 28th March 2024

          Please note we currently have a massive backlog of submitted material, our volunteers are working through this as quickly as possible and all names, stories and photos will be added to the site. If you have already submitted a story to the site and your UID reference number is higher than 263784 your submission is still in the queue, please do not resubmit.

        Wanted: Digital copies of Group photographs, Scrapbooks, Autograph books, photo albums, newspaper clippings, letters, postcards and ephemera relating to the Great War. If you have any unwanted photographs, documents or items from the First or Second World War, please do not destroy them. The Wartime Memories Project will give them a good home and ensure that they are used for educational purposes. Please get in touch for the postal address, do not sent them to our PO Box as packages are not accepted.





        We are now on Facebook. Like this page to receive our updates, add a comment or ask a question.

        If you have a general question please post it on our Facebook page.


        World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great battalion regiment artillery
        Did you know? We also have a section on World War Two. and a Timecapsule to preserve stories from other conflicts for future generations.






    Want to know more about HMHS Kildonan Castle?


    There are:0 items tagged HMHS Kildonan Castle available in our Library

      These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Great War.






    Recomended Reading.

    Available at discounted prices.







    Links


      Suggest a link
















      The free section of The Wartime Memories Project is run by volunteers.

      This website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions.

      If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running.


      Hosted by:

      The Wartime Memories Project Website

      is archived for preservation by the British Library





      Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV
      - All Rights Reserved -

      We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.