RFA ''Fort Langley'' (A230) was a stores ship of the

Royal Fleet Auxiliary The Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) is a naval auxiliary fleet owned by the UK's Ministry of Defence. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service and provides logistical and operational support to the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. The RF ...

. The ship was launched on 31 October 1944 as ''Montebello Park'' by Victoria MD in

Victoria, British Columbia Victoria is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of British Columbia, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific Ocean, Pacific coast. The city has a population of 91,867, and the Gre ...

, Canada. She was completed on 18 May 1945 as ''Fort Langley'' for the

Ministry of War Transport The Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) was a department of the British Government formed early in the Second World War to control transportation policy and resources. It was formed by merging the Ministry of Shipping and the Ministry of Transpor ...

as an Air stores issuing ship under the management of Alfred Holt and Company. Transferred to the RFA in May 1954, she was decommissioned in February 1970, and laid up at Devonport. ''Fort Langley'' arrived at

Bilbao Bilbao is a city in northern Spain, the largest city in the Provinces of Spain, province of Biscay and in the Basque Country (greater region), Basque Country as a whole. It is also the largest city proper in northern Spain. Bilbao is the List o ...

for scrapping on 21 July 1970. Fort and Park ship were the Canadian equivalent of the American

Liberty ship Liberty ships were a ship class, class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Although British in concept, the design was adopted by the United States for its simple, low-cost cons ...

s. All three shared a similar design by

J.L. Thompson and Sons J.L. Thompson and Sons was a shipyard on the River Wear, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, Sunderland, which produced ships from the mid-18th century until the 1980s. The world-famous Liberty Ship was among the designs to be created, produced and manuf ...

Sunderland Sunderland () is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. It is a port at the mouth of the River Wear on the North Sea, approximately south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne. It is the most p ...

, England. Fort ships had a

triple expansion steam engine A compound steam engine unit is a type of steam engine where steam is expanded in two or more stages. A typical arrangement for a compound engine is that the steam is first expanded in a high-pressure (HP) cylinder, then having given up heat ...

and a single screw

propeller A propeller (often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon a working flu ...

References

Ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary 1944 ships Ships built in Victoria, British Columbia {{UK-aux-ship-stub