SS Iberia (1954-1973)

[ranwhenparked]

Prior to the introduction of jet airliner service, the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O Lines) served as the primary connection between the United Kingdom and ports in Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific. P&O's chief competitor was Orient Line, which P&O themselves controlled beginning in 1919, but were blocked from fully merging with due to antitrust concerns.

During World War II, P&O lost a total of 179 ships to enemy action, including 4 ocean liners (the vast majority of the losses consisting of freighters and smaller combination passenger-cargo vessels).

Postwar, the company embarked on a major rebuilding campaign, including 4 new ocean liners to directly replace wartime losses. Vickers Armstrong & Company in Barrow-in-Furness, England delivered the sisters Himalaya and Chusan in 1949-1950, at 28,000 and 24,000 tons, respectively, which were followed by another pair of sisters of somewhat improved design, commissioned from Harland & Wolff in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Harland & Wolff began construction on Arcadia on June 28th, 1951, followed by Iberia on February 8th, 1952. Arcadia launched on May 14th, 1953, and was delivered to P&O on January 20th, 1954, setting out on her maiden voyage on February 22nd.

Iberia launched January 21st, 1954, and set out on her maiden voyage on September 15th. The delivery of Iberia marked the end of P&O's postwar recovery program, and the last new ocean liner delivered to the company before the advent of jet air travel.

Arcadia measured 721 ft (220m) long and 29,734 gross tons, while Iberia came in at 719 ft (219m) and 29,614 tons. Both featured two single reduction geared steam turbines, developing 42,500hp, for a top speed of 24.9 knots, and a cruising speed of 22. Arcadia offered accommodations for 1,405 passengers (670 First Class, 735 Tourist Class), plus 716 crew, and the slightly smaller Iberia accommodated 1,414 (679 First, 735 Tourist) and 711 crew. Both also had holds for 27,800 cubic feet (7864 cubic meters) of general cargo.

Together, Arcadia and Iberia sailed the London, UK-Sydney Australia route via the Suez Canal,with intermediate stops in Funchal, Gibraltar, Port Said, Port Suez, Aden, Bombay, Colombo, Fremantle, Adelaide, and Melbourne, with the total voyage taking 34 days one-way.

Of the two, Iberia showed signs early on of being the unlucky one – on her maiden transit through the Suez Canal, she ran aground at Port Said, which only delayed things by a few hours, before re-floating.

Next, off the coast of Ceylon en route to Australia on May 27th, 1956, Iberia collided with the Panamanian oil tanker Stanvac Pretoria, creating a large gash in Iberia's port side superstructure, which required 17 days of repairs in Sydney before returning to London.

During 1958, the British government permitted P&O Lines and their affiliate, Orient Line, to start up a joint venture service, sailing transpacific from Australia to Canada, as neither line was currently operating that route individually. Iberia and her near-sister Chusan became part of the fleet of the new Orient & Pacific Line – P&O Lines would operate the ships on their normal route from London-Sydney, then they would continue on under Orient & Pacific from Sydney to Vancouver via Auckland and San Francisco.

During 1960, P&O Steam Navigation finally received approval to acquire the remainder of Orient Line, and P&O Lines, Orient & Pacific Line, and Orient Line were consolidated under the P&O-Orient Lines name.

The following year, Iberia was sent to the Thornycroft shipyard in Southampton for a major refurbishment that added central air conditioning throughout.

However, after that work was carried out, Iberia seemed to suffer one major problem after another – in 1961, just a few months after re-delivery, Iberia lost all electrical power off the coast of Auckland, New Zealand and had to be towed into port for emergency repairs. 1962 saw two separate accidents in the Suez Canal – running aground northbound, damaging the port propeller, and a southbound incident in which a lifeboat broke free of its mounting and killed a crew member. Still later that year, salt water intrusion caused a failure of one of the ship's generators, stranding Iberia in Auckland for a week until permission was granted to sail on to Honolulu where a replacement generator was available.

1964 saw the ship's port side stabilizers fail in heavy seas in the Indian Ocean, nearly causing her to capsize, while 1966 saw her turbine couplings break down off the coast of Kobe, Japan, requiring more emergency repairs. That year, P&O Steam Navigation re-branded P&O-Orient back to P&O Lines, ditching the last reminder of their former competition.

In 1968, Iberia suffered another generator failure from salt water intrusion, this time in port at Funchal. After repairs, P&O abandoned transpacific service, switching Iberia to a new truncated route from Southampton-Sydney, but, on her first run on the new route, the ship suffered her worst accident yet – a fuel line broke in the boiler room, starting a fire, which lead to another total electrical failure and to the turbines shutting down. Iberia spent the remainder of 1968 into 1969 laid up, and returned to service only to suffer another stabilizer breakdown.

At that point, P&O had had enough. Airline competition on the UK-Australia route was getting more and more intense, the ocean liner services were falling into the red, and the cruise industry was too new and too small to absorb all the surplus, out of work ocean liners being laid up around the world. Cuts had to be made to the fleet, and, in light of Iberia's poor mechanical record, she was an obvious choice to go. Iberia was withdrawn from service in 1972, after just 18 years of use.

P&O made some attempt to sell what was still only a middle-aged ship, but, given the wide availability of similar age ocean liners with better mechanical histories, there simply wasn't any interest. Iberia was beached in Kaohsiung, Taiwan for demolition in October, 1973.

Her near-sisters, Chusan and Himalaya, met similarly early ends at the breakers in 1973 and 1975, respectively, while Arcadia was adapted for use as a cruise ship and remained in service until 1979, when, she, too, was sold for scrap at a relatively young age, again, due to lack of demand on the global cruise market.

[Chariotoflove]

@ranwhenparked
That’s either one incredibly unlucky ship, or a poorly constructed one.

[EssExTee]

@ranwhenparked said in SS Iberia (1954-1973):

Stanvac Pretoria

That ship's an interesting anomaly. She appears almost identical to a T2 tanker in photographs, and the specs I can find say she is exactly one right down to the length, beam, displacement, and shipyard... except she was built five years after the last T2.

The designs and specs for the class were drawn up by the US Maritime Commission for the war effort and given to shipyards to follow, but what happened after the war? Were private shipyards allowed to keep using the plans? Did Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation crib the design off the US government? Interestingly, MARCOM itself was abolished barely a month before Stanvac Pretoria was launched in 1950.

[Vondon302]

@ranwhenparked These are always fun to read btw. Keep em coming.

[ranwhenparked]

@Chariotoflove it's just odd that the issues really started after that early '60s refit, what the hell did Thornycroft do to it, and how would simply installing air conditioning cause all that?

[Chariotoflove]

@ranwhenparked said in SS Iberia (1954-1973):

@Chariotoflove it's just odd that the issues really started after that early '60s refit, what the hell did Thornycroft do to it, and how would simply installing air conditioning cause all that?

I’m always amazed at what getting into the mechanics for one job ends up doing to other systems in the house, or the car. I’d imagine it’s the same in a ship. Sure does sound like they messed it up pretty bad. But maybe there were lurking things from manufacture?