S.S. Lurline-- Part 3: Troop and Supply Transport During War

While en route to San Francisco from Pearl Harbor before the attack, the Lurline allegedly got radio signals from the Japanese fleet and this became part of the Pearl Harbor Advance-Knowledge Conspiracy Theory.  The Lurline made her arrival safely traveling at maximum speed.  She soon returned to Hawaii with her sister ships the Mariposa and Monterey as part of a convoy loaded with  troops and supplies.

She spent the war doing similar service, often going to Australia, and once transported the Australian  Prime Minister John Curtin to America to confer with President Roosevelt.

This was very dangerous service because of Japanese submarines.

One Royal Australian  Air Force trainee pilot named Arthur Harrison remembered being put on watch without adequate training.    He looked off in the distance and saw:  "A straight line of bubbles extending from away out on the starboard side of the ship to across the bow.  I  had never seen anything quite like it, but it reminded me  of the bubbles behind a motorboat.  I called to a lad on watch on the next gun forward. A few seconds later the ship went into a hard 90 degree turn to port.  We RAAF trainees received a severe reprimand from the captain for not reporting the torpedo.  Anyway, it was a bad mess."

The Lurline was returned to the Matson Line in 1946 and soon returned to its pre-war status as the top liner in the Pacific Ocean.  However, later competition from jet airliners spelled the end of its usefulness.  It was scrapped in Taiwan in 1987.

--GreGen

S.S. Lurline-- Part 1: Fast Ocean Liner That Carried Ray Merrick to War

From Wikipedia.

Last month, I wrote about World War II veteran Ray "Pops" Merrick, a member of our Fox Lake, Illinois, American Legion who was posted during the war over in the India-Burma area and part of the effort to keep the Chinese Nationalist forces fighting the Japanese over "The Hump."

He went across the Pacific Ocean onboard the S.S. Lurline and had some vivid memories of the voyage.  Not ever hearing of this ship, I decided to do some more research on it.

The SS Lurline was the third vessel in the Matson Lines to have this name and was the last of its four  fast and luxurious  ocean liners built for their Hawaii and Australia runs from the U.S. West Coast.

Its sister ships were the SS Malolo, SS Mariposa and SS Monterey.  All became fast troopships during the war., operated by the War Shipping Administration.

After the war, it went back to taking passengers around the Pacific until put out of service in 1980 and scrapped in 1987.

--GreGen