MS Belpamela

The Belpamela was built by Armstrong Whitworth in February 1928 at its High Walker shipyard as yard number 1028. She was the lead ship of an order for two identical ships (the other was the MS Belmoira). The ship was owned by Rederiet Belmoira A/S of Oslo, while it was managed by Christen Smith of Oslo. The ship was employed in the worldwide heavy lift transport. Typical cargoes consisted of locomotives and railway vehicles, but lightships, lighters and other smaller watercraft, aircraft or industrial plants of all kinds, such as oil rigs, etc. were also transported. Due to the unusual loads, newspapers, magazines and occasionally newsreels reported about the ship's operations. In October 1935 the ship was transferred to Skips A/S Belships Company Limited in Oslo, nothing changed in the management of Christen Smith. Notable cargoes include a batch of Vulcan Foundry-built China Railways KF series locomotives (including the preserved KF7) from Birkenhead to Shanghai,^[1] as well as a streamlined Coronation Scot train that the Belpamela transported from Southampton, England to Baltimore, USA in January and February 1939 for exhibition at the 1939 New York World's Fair.^[2]

In early March 1940, the Belpamela was ordered together with the Swedish steamer SS Lagaholm from Baltimore to Malmö by the Royal Navy trawlers HMT Northern Sky and HMT Northern Princess to Kirkwall to search for contraband. In the early morning of March 2, the Belpamela was fired at by U 32 with three torpedoes, all of which detonated prematurely. In a second attack at 7.15 a.m., U 32 stopped the Lagaholm and sank it with gunfire after its crew had abandoned ship and were sitting in the lifeboats. They were picked up by the Belpamela and taken to Kirkwall and North Ronaldsay. On 12 July 1940, the Belpamela came under German control.

On 2 April 1945, Scottish-based De Havilland Mosquito fighter-bombers attacked ships awaiting repairs at the Framnæs Mekaniske Værksted shipyard in Sandefjord. The MV Concordia and SS William Blumer were sunk, while the Belpamela, Hektor, Shios Espana and Kattegat were damaged. The Belpamela was towed to Oslo for repairs, where its completion was delayed until the end of the war due to sabotage by Odd Isøy, a member of the Norwegian resistance.

After the end of the war, the ship was repaired and continued its worldwide heavy lift journey. A large order from SNCF, which had ordered a total of 1,340 Mikado-type 141 R locomotives from the United States and Canadian locomotive manufacturers to make up for war losses, took up particularly large space. In April 1947 the Belpamela was on a trip from New York to Cherbourg with 17 of these locomotives,^[3][4] numbers 141.R.1220 to 141.R.1235 and 141.R.1241 from the manufacturer Montreal Locomotive Works . On the Atlantic, off the coast of Newfoundland, the ship got into severe bad weather, in which the locomotives shifted and the ship sank at 37° 44′ N, 53° 3′ W, with the loss of the lives of nine crew members.

• Hudson, Mike; Atkins, Philip (September 2007). "Locos lost at sea: the all-time definitive record". The Railway Magazine. No. 1277.
• Rowledge, J.W.P. (1987). The LMS Pacifics. Newton Abbot: David & Charles. ISBN 0-7153-8776-6.
• "Belmoira, Belpamela". derbysulzers.com. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
• "Lloyds Register 1930–31" (PDF). Southampton City Library Service. p. BEL. Retrieved 22 February 2021.

• Entry for Belpamela in warsailors.com

37°44′N 53°3′W / 37.733°N 53.050°W / 37.733; -53.050