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| Pennant photo courtesy of Chis Northcott who had both his grandfather and great uncle serving on her together |
SS Razmak was built at Greenock yard for P&O by Harland and Wolff, launched in 1924 and completed on 26 February 1925.[1] She was designed for service between Bombay and Aden and spent several years in the Mediterranean Sea. When demand on her original route dried up, she was offered for sale and transferred to the antipodes. The Union Steam Ship Company, part of the P & O group, took her on in 1930 as their second SS Monowai and she ran a subsidized service from Wellington to Vancouver via several Pacific stops. From 24 November 1932 she ran mostly from Wellington to Sydney.
Conversion to armed merchant cruiser[edit]
Guns suitable for Monowai had been ordered and stored at the Devonport Naval Base in Auckland. Monowai was requisitioned by the Royal New Zealand Navy on 21 October 1939 and was prepared for mounting the guns. Then followed a period of indecision, and in February 1940 work on her was suspended for over four months. After construction was completed in August 1940, she was commissioned.
The Japanese submarine I-20 conducted an unsuccessful attack on her on 16 January 1942.[4]
Monowai was the first of two ships with this name to serve in the Royal New Zealand Navy. She was named after the New Zealand glacial lake Monowai. Monowai is a Māori word meaning "channel full of water".
Conversion to LSI[edit]
As surplus, in 1943 she was transferred to Liverpool in the United Kingdom and handed over to the British Ministry of War Transport. Monowai went to Glasgow for conversion to an "Landing Ship, Infantry (Large)" or LSI(L). From June 1943 to February 1944 she was refitted with completely different armament, capacity for up to 1,800 fully equipped troops, and 20 Assault Landing Craft. She was used during the Normandy landings.
In the later period of the war she was used as a troopship transporting soldiers and after the end of the war in repatriation.
Post war[edit]
On 31 August 1946 she was returned to her owner. She resumed merchant service in January 1949 after extensive repair. In 1960 she was sold for breaking up in Hong Kong.
| History | |
|---|---|
 New Zealand | |
| Name: | SS Razmak |
| Namesake: | Razmak in the Northwest Frontier |
| Builder: | Harland and Wolff |
| Yard number: | 659[1] |
| Laid down: | 1923 |
| Launched: | 16 October 1924 |
| Completed: | 26 February 1925[1] |
| In service: | 1925 |
| Out of service: | 1930 |
| New Zealand | |
| Name: | SS Monowai |
| Namesake: | Lake Monowai.[Note 1] |
| In service: | 1930 |
| Out of service: | 1939 |
 New Zealand | |
| Name: | HMNZS Monowai |
| Acquired: | 21 October 1939 |
| Commissioned: | 30 August 1940 |
| Decommissioned: | 18 June 1943 |
| Identification: | F59 |
| United Kingdom | |
| Name: | HMS Monowai |
| Acquired: | 1943 |
| Commissioned: | 18 June 1943 |
| Decommissioned: | August 1946 |
| Fate: | scrapped 1960 |
| New Zealand | |
| Name: | SS Monowai |
| Acquired: | Returned to owners 1946 |
| Fate: | Sold for breaking up 1960 |
Monowai – the ship that rescued Anne Frank's father
The Monowai photographed in Milford Sound during a summer cruise in 1933.
The Monowai's mission of mercy
New Zealand has a small connection to the poignant story of Anne Frank, via her father, Otto, and the merchant ship TSS Monowai.
On 22 April 1945, shortly before the end of the war in Europe, the Monowai sailed from England for Odessa on the Black Sea carrying 1600 Soviet citizens who had been captured serving with the Germans in France. The ship then embarked Jewish Holocaust survivors from Western Europe - including Otto Frank - who had been liberated from the Auschwitz death camp by the Soviet army. On 21 May it sailed from Odessa for Marseille, arriving on the 27th.
In The Footsteps of Anne Frank (1959), Ernst Schnabel wrote that: 'The Monowai flew the New Zealand flag, and had come all the way from New Zealand so that a few survivors from Europe could return home.' The men slept in hammocks, while the women were accommodated in cabins. Otto was impressed by the ship's comfort, the abundant food and the kindness of its crew.
By this time Otto had discovered that his wife, Edith, had died at Auschwitz, but he knew nothing of the fate of his two daughters, Anne and Margot. On board the Monowai, he wrote to his mother in Switzerland:
My entire hope lies with the children. I cling to the conviction that they are alive and that we’ll be together again, but I’m not promising myself anything.
In July, back in Amsterdam, he learned the devastating news that both girls had died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, just weeks before the camp’s liberation. Otto lived until 1980, by which time Anne Frank’s remarkable teenage diary had become an icon of 20th century literature.
Wartime service
Best known in peacetime as a trans-Tasman liner, the Union Steam Ship Company's Monowai served throughout the Second World War in various roles.
From 1940 to 1943 the steamer flew the white ensign as an armed auxiliary cruiser with the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy (from 1941 the Royal New Zealand Navy), manned by a mixture of naval regulars, reservists and merchant seamen. In 1942 HMNZS Monowai fought off an attacking Japanese submarine near Fiji. The following year – with many Kiwi officers, engineers and crew still aboard – the ship reverted to the red ensign, as a troop transport for the British Ministry of War Transport.
Te Puea's gift
Throughout its war service, the Monowai carried on its bridge a model of the legendary Maori canoe Tainui and a ceremonial cloak presented by Waikato leader Te Puea Herangi. Captain G.R. Deverell and his successor, G.B. Morgan, were said to have donned the cloak whenever the ship was in danger of attack.
During the D-Day landings of 6 June 1944 the Monowai served as an assault landing ship, transporting Canadian troops to Juno Beach. In 1945, after crossing the English Channel 45 times with a total of 73,000 Allied troops on board, it was deployed as a repatriation ship for refugees and former prisoners of war.
After a second voyage to and from Odessa in June 1945, the Monowai shipped Indian troops home from the Middle East. When Japan surrendered in August, it was dispatched to Singapore as a ‘mercy ship’ to repatriate British prisoners. On 13 September the vessel sailed with 650 service personnel and 199 civilians on board, arriving in Liverpool on 8 October.
Numerous other repatriation voyages followed, before the worn-out Monowai was finally handed back to the Union Company in 1946; after a major refit, it returned to the Tasman run in 1949. The veteran ship was withdrawn from service in 1960 and scrapped in Hong Kong.
Further information:
- TSS Monowai, 1925-1960 (NZ Maritime Record)
- Carol Ann Lee, The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, Viking, London, 2002
- Ernst Schnabel, The Footsteps of Anne Frank, Longmans, London, 1959
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