Bronze Age Gold from Wales

Port broadside view of S.S. HELLENIC PRINCE at Barry Docks.

S.S. HELLENIC PRINCE. Built at Cockatoo Dock & Engineering Co., Sydney, NSW (completed December 1928) , she entered service as HMAS ALBATROSS in 1929. After mediocre peacetime duties, (including spending the last 5 years at anchor) she joined the British Navy in 1938 as a carrier for six Walrus sea-planes. In 1946 the Admiralty sold ALBATROSS to a British company for conversion to a luxury passenger cruiser. High costs caused abandonment of the scheme and they decided to use the ship as an off shore cabaret venue (ss PRIDE OF TORQUAY) at Torquay. However, her dignity was restored when the Anglo-Greek shipowners Yannoulatos bought her for £185,000. The deal was completed on the day Prince Charles was born (14 November 1948) and in his honour her new owners renamed the ship HELLENIC PRINCE. Yannoulatos Group sent her to Barry, where she was converted to a modern passenger vessel at a cost of £200,000. In late 1949 she was chartered by the International Refugee Organisation as a refugee transport ship, and on 5 December 1949 she returned to Sydney, after more than eleven years, carrying 1,000 displaced persons. The vessel was scrapped at Hong Kong on 12 August 1954. (Information from the website - SearchShips History)