Astonishing saga behind ‘Empire Windrush’ and its moment of fame

By Gary Gimson

Growing up in much of the English-speaking Caribbean, many children will learn about a ship. But it’s not the ‘Santa Maria’ or even the ‘Niña’ or the ‘Pinta’. This ship is the ‘Empire Windrush’ and it’s an evocative name that has come to symbolize the emigration to the United Kingdom of people from many islands across our region.

Yet, incredibly, the history of this iconic vessel is far more dramatic than its all-to-brief association with Caribbean migration.

And far from being British, the ‘Empire Windrush’ was, in fact, German, having been built in 1930 by Blohm & Voss for shipowner Hamburg Süd. The ‘Empire Windrush’ was launched as the ‘Monte Rosa’ – the only one of five Monte-class ships ordered by the Hamburg-based shipowner to survive the Second World War.

The ‘Monte Rosa’ was initially used as a cruise ship by Hamburg Süd and later to provide German workers with holidays as part of the Nazi Party’s ‘Strength Through Joy’ program. Perhaps as a harbinger of things to come, the ship ran aground off Tórshavn, in the Faroe Islands, but otherwise led a blameless existence until 1939.

During the war, the ‘Monte Rosa’ was used by the Kriegsmarine as a troop or accommodation ship in what is now Poland and also in Norway. Like many Allied and German merchant ships of the time, the ‘Monte Rosa’ saw plenty of action. The ship led something of a charmed life, however, actually surviving the war intact, although not unscathed.

In 1944 the ‘Monte Rosa’ was attacked by British and Canadian aircraft en route from Norway to Germany and was hit by two torpedoes as well as rockets. Bloodied but unbowed, the vessel limped into the Danish port of Århus for hurried repairs. A few months later, in Oslo, the Norwegian Resistance attached limpet mines to the ship’s hull that detonated soon after leaving port. Despite being badly damaged, the Monte Rosa was able to return to Oslo, but with the loss of some 200 personnel on board.

At the end of hostilities, the British government seized the ship (along with many others) as a prize of war in the German port of Kiel and in 1947 the ‘Monte Rosa’ was renamed ‘Empire Windrush’ and joined a large fleet of commercial vessels with the same ‘Empire’ prefix. For the record, Windrush is the name of an otherwise insignificant English river, a minor tributary of the River Thames.

Like the Germans, the British used the ‘Empire Windrush’ as a troopship. At the end of the war, cargo ships were released from war duty and immediately lost their government-given ‘Empire’ moniker. But troopships continued to be involved in moving military personnel, prisoners of war and refugees for some time after 1945. In fact, the British government used several captured German passenger/troop ships for this purpose, including the renamed ‘Empire Fowey’, ‘Empire Halladale’, ‘Empire Ken’, ‘Empire Orwell’, ‘Empire Trooper’ and ‘Empire Windrush’.

Operation

As with other ‘Empire’ vessels, and despite being government-owned, the ‘Empire Windrush’ was operated day to day by commercial interests – in this case the New Zealand Shipping Company (NZSC) – and was initially deployed in the UK-to-Far East troop service (Southampton, Gibraltar, Suez, Aden, Colombo, Singapore and Hong Kong), including a supporting role in the Korean War.

Contrary to popular myth, the ‘Empire Windrush’ was not part of a regular liner operation between the Caribbean and the UK. In fact, its position in Caribbean maritime and cultural history is purely coincidental and comes from just one otherwise unremarkable but now historic voyage in 1948 from Kingston and, subsequently, Bermuda to the UK port of Tilbury. Even then, this voyage was not originally conceived to transport the peoples of the Caribbean to a new life in Europe. Far from it.

As the ship was operated by NZSC, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the ‘Empire Windrush’ was en route from Australia to the UK via the Panama Canal – the ship also called Port of Spain, Tampico and Havana – when it arrived in Kingston ostensibly to pick up on-leave British service personnel and officials. But with plenty of spare accommodation on board and in order to fill empty cabins/dormitories, an advertisement in a local newspaper encouraged Jamaicans to travel to the UK to work or to return to the armed forces.

Pioneers

As a result, the ship carried some 500 eager Jamaicans (in addition to others from elsewhere in the Caribbean and Bermuda) and these pioneers were the first of many from the region who chose, sometimes unwittingly, to emigrate to the UK (and, of course, to Canada and the United States) in the 1950s and 1960s and who have become known as ‘the Windrush generation’.

As for the ‘Empire Windrush’, its end was as ignominious as its life at sea had been eventful. After a series of breakdowns and serious mechanical problems going back many weeks, it sank off Port Said in 1954 following an explosion in the engine room while en route from Yokohama to the UK. Luckily, all but four of the nearly 1,500 passengers and crew on board survived.

An untimely and inglorious finale, then, to a vessel whose name now forms a key part of recent Caribbean history.