HMS Nairana was a passenger ferry that was requisitioned by the Royal Navy as a seaplane carrier in 1917. She was laid down in 1914 as TSS Nairana for the Australian shipping line Huddart Parker, but construction was temporarily suspended after the outbreak of the First World War. The ship was converted to operate wheeled aircraft from her forward flying-off deck as well as floatplanes that were lowered into the water. She saw service during the war with the Grand Fleet, and in 1918–19 supported the British intervention in the Russian Civil War. Nairana was returned to her former owners in 1921 and refitted in her original planned configuration, then spent the next several decades ferrying passengers and cargo across Bass Strait between Tasmania and Melbourne, where she was nearly capsized twice by rogue waves. Nairana was the only Bass Strait ferry not requisitioned for military service in the Second World War, and so became the sole passenger ship with service to Tasmania during the conflict. She was laid up in 1948, wrecked in a storm three years later, and scrapped onsite in 1953–54. (Full article...)
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