SS ''Vyner Brooke'' was a Scottish-built steamship that was both the

royal yacht A royal yacht is a ship used by a monarch or a royal family. If the monarch is an emperor the proper term is imperial yacht. Most of them are financed by the government of the country of which the monarch is head. The royal yacht is most often ...

Sarawak Sarawak (; ) is a state of Malaysia. The largest among the 13 states, with an area almost equal to that of Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak is located in northwest Borneo Island, and is bordered by the Malaysian state of Sabah to the northeast, ...

and a merchant ship frequently used between

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

and

Kuching Kuching (), officially the City of Kuching, is the capital and the most populous city in the state of Sarawak in Malaysia. It is also the capital of Kuching Division. The city is on the Sarawak River at the southwest tip of the state of Sara ...

. She was named after the 3rd Rajah of Sarawak, Sir

Charles Vyner Brooke Vyner, Rajah of Sarawak, GCMG, full name Charles Vyner de Windt Brooke (26 September 1874 – 9 May 1963) was the third and last White Rajah of the Raj of Sarawak. Early life The son of Charles Brooke and his wife Margaret de Windt ( Ranee ...

. At the outbreak of war with Japan the ship was requisitioned by the Royal Navy, armed, and sunk in 1942.

Description

Ship designed by naval architect F.G Ritchie OBE, of Ritchie & Bisset, Singapore. Ramage & Ferguson of

Leith Leith (; gd, Lìte) is a port area in the north of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, founded at the mouth of the Water of Leith. In 2021, it was ranked by ''Time Out'' as one of the top five neighbourhoods to live in the world. The earliest ...

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

's harbour area, built the ship, completing her in February 1928. The launch by Her Highness the Ranee was scheduled for 10 November 1927 at Leith. The ship sailed from Leith for Singapore on 17 April 1928. ''Vyner Brooke'' was flush decked with 'tween decks, all steel sheathed in with six watertight bulkheads. The main deck was as clear as possible of structures for deck passenger use with accommodations forward for crew and aft for stewards, clerks and ship's boys. The refrigeration plant, designed to keep the cold store two degrees below freezing, was located on the main deck. Cabins amidships on the upper deck provided for 44 first-class passengers with a by saloon forward of the cabins. A staircase at the after end of the saloon led to a shade deck and two de luxe cabins and a private sitting room. The ship was equipped with wireless and carried lifeboats, rafts and lifebelts for 650 people and could carry at least 200 deck passengers. She was had six corrugated furnaces with a combined grate area of that heated two single-ended Barclay, Curle & Co. boilers with a combined heating surface of . These fed steam at 180 lb_f/in² to a three-cylinder

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 he ...

built by Ramage and Ferguson. The engine was rated at 297 NHP and drove twin

screws A screw and a bolt (see '' Differentiation between bolt and screw'' below) are similar types of fastener typically made of metal and characterized by a helical ridge, called a ''male thread'' (external thread). Screws and bolts are used to f ...

. Cargo was handled by two three ton cranes at each hatch with a heavy, twenty ton derrick.

Royal Navy Requisition

At the beginning of the war in the Pacific ''Vyner Brooke'' was requisitioned by the Royal Navy, painted gray and armed with a four-inch deck gun forward, two Lewis guns aft and depth charges. The ship's Australian and British officers were mostly Malay Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and had been asked to remain aboard the now HMS ''Vyner Brooke''. The ship's company, under the command of her peacetime captain, Richard E. Borton, was augmented by reservists, some survivors of HMS ''Prince of Wales'' and HMS ''Repulse'' and European and Malay professional sailors.

Sinking and massacre

On 14 February 1942 in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, while evacuating nurses and wounded servicemen away from

she was bombed by Japanese aircraft and sunk. Some of the survivors who reached Bangka Island east of Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies were massacred by the Imperial Japanese Army. Others were imprisoned in Palembang and Muntok POW camps.

Description

Royal Navy Requisition

Sinking and massacre

References

Further reading