Durham Castle

DURHAM CASTLE was built in 1904 by Fairfield Ship Building & Engineering Co. at Glasgow with a tonnage of 8217grt, a length of 475ft 5in, a beam of 56ft 8in and a service speed of 14 knots.

Sister of the Dover Castle she was initially deployed as an Intermediate steamship but was transferred to the Cape - Mombasa run in 1910.

During the First World War she remained on commercial service but often acted as a troopship on the northbound passage..

In 1931 she was deployed on the East Africa via the Suez Canal service and in 1939 was put up for disposal after being replaced by the Pretoria Castle and was acquired by the Admiralty for war service as HMS Durham Castle.

On 26th January 1940, while being towed to Scapa Flow for use as a base accommodation ship, she was mined off Cromarty.

The German U-boat U-57 claimed her as her victim and as the HMS Durham Castle was clear of the British mine fields the claim is probably correct.

Master	From	To
R E Becher	2/1904	6/1905
F P Whitehead	9/1904	12/1904
F J Moseley	7/1905	6/1909
S Henderson	6/1909	8/1909
H M Cruise	9/1909	11/1909
F P Whitehead	12/1909	2/1910
T Chope	2/1910	10/1912
B A Bryan	10/1912	10/1912
T C Clinock	10/1912	6/1913
T Chope	6/1913	9/1913
W W Verrall	9/1913	12/1913
B A Bryan	12/1913	2/1914
W W Verrall	2/1914	10/1915
B Burt	11/1915	8/1917
T H Wilford	8/1917	10/1918
W W Verrall	10/1918	2/1919
W B Dyer	2/1919	4/1920
D Samuel	7/1920	10/1922
C R Jackson	11/1922	10/1926
H B Harvey	2/1927	6/1927
R G Shilston	6/1927	4/1928
G J Whitfield	5/1928	7/1928
R A Barron	8/1928	6/1929
W Goodacre	7/1929	10/1929
A H Hutchings	11/1929	11/1929
H Linklater	11/1929	8/1931
D Nicoll	2/1930
R W Goodacre	5/1931
H R Northwood	8/1931	11/1931
C Le Brocq	12/1931	10/1932
W S Colbourne	7/1932
H L Scholefield	10/1932	7/1933
W Weller	7/1933
H R Northwood	8/1933	1/1934
E H Thornton	10/1933	3/1934
E A Comley	3/1934	3/1936
C J Lovegrove	9/1935
G H Fogden	3/1936	6/1936
Laid up
F A Smyth	10/1936	8/1937
S F Newdigate	8/1937	10/1937
J C Brown	11/1937	8/1938

At anchor at Mombasa

Rock Dodging in 1934 by Capt Jack Trayner

In 1934 I was proimoted to 2nd Officer of Durham Castle.

Captain E A Comley was the skipper and the Chief Officer was Astley Race. We were engaged on the Round Africa Service, out via the Cape and home via Suez and The Mediterranean.

On my last voyage on her we left Durban one day about noon and at 0700 the next morning we hit an outlying peak just North of Cape St Lucia. The ship started to make water so the skipper turned around ran back to Durban and stayed there a week in dry dock.

He was a bit of a rock scraper was Capt Comley: One night going up the East Coast I thought we were too close in. I called the Captain and told him “We are too close in Sir, I can see the breakers.” He replied “Let me know when you can hear the blighters.” I went back to the bridge and hauled her out a point.

The Aghulas ran fast down the SE African Coast and the idea was to get between it and the shore where there was a chance of avoiding it and perhaps even picking up a Northerly eddy, but the main thing was to keep the ship off the putty.

When we left Durban after the grounding he asked me to work out his pension, saying “I’m bound to be bowler hatted over this.” But he wasn’t and stayed to get his full pension at 65.

Reproduced from Capt Jack Trayner’s autobiography with permission from his family