Wartime on the Mauretania
by Published on 12th July 2018 12:22 AM
Miss Billie Ellis was a First Lieutenant in the US Army Medical Corps during the peak years of the Second World War, in 1943. Recently, aboard the Cunard liner Queen Victoria, she recalled a voyage in another Cunarder --- long-ago and aboard the Mauretania in 1943. That 1939-built ship was then far from her luxurious self, being painted entirely in somber gray for use as an Allied troopship.
Miss Ellis shipped out in Jan 1943, but on a route far from the 35,000-ton ship’s intended, peacetime run on the Atlantic, between New York & Southampton. The 23-knot Cunard vessel was routed, in top wartime secrecy, from San Francisco. “I had been delivered to the Mauretania by a US Army tender. The Mauretania looked huge to me. Once aboard, she still retained some of her prewar grandeur --- the walnut panels that were just magnificent. Otherwise, the ship was actually stripped down except for the dining room, but there were hints of grandeur. We were a very crowded ship with 9,000 onboard. Even the drained pool was used for sleeping quarters. The officers were given the
staterooms while the troops used big, specially created dormitories. There were 6-8 nurses aboard along with 18 doctors. I was assigned to a two-berth room, but that was now sleeping six, but we still had the use of the beautiful bathroom. I remember, however, that the soap would not lather because we only had saltwater,” she recalled as we sat together, some 69 years later, in the comfort of the 90,000-ton, 12-deck high Queen Victoria’s Lido Restaurant.
(Below: In Wartime gray, the Mauretania rests at Circular Quay in Sydney, Australia, 1944.)
“It was 48 days from San Francisco all the way to Bombay. We made several stops, including Wellington in New Zealand. But no one was allowed ashore. It was all top secret. We were not even told we were headed for India,” she added. “I was one of the nurses that helped run the ship’s hospital. The hospital was always very busy and was a rather large space in one of the converted public rooms. In that area, there were actual beds instead of cots. There was also a small operating room. But it was filled with tension & worry: We had lots of medical problems. It was so busy that we did not feel the intense heat onboard. After New Zealand, we stopped at Brisbane and then Perth in Australia. We were not in a convoy or had an escort and so it was very frightening at times. Sometimes, it was said that Japanese submarines were trailing us. But we were traveling so fast that the subs, so it was also said, could not catch us. The Mauretania vibrated very much. There was no radar back then and, of course, we were blacked out all the way and radio silent. We arrived in Bombay in March.”
(Phot0 below: At Liverpool, American GI’s board the Mauretania for their return trip to New York, 1945)
After her voyage in the Mauretania, three small passenger ships took Billie Ellis to ports along the Persian Gulf, to serve troops suffering mostly from malaria and severe dysentery. One of them was the passenger ship Rohna, which belonged to the British India Line. But after 3 ½ years in the Gulf and later in Russia, she herself contracted malaria and dysentery. She was sent home from Europe by way of the North Atlantic.
“I was sent home on another big troopship, the Hermitage [the former Italian liner Conte Biancamano], which departed from Marseilles. We had many of the American soldiers that had been in the German prison camps. They were often very sick and many were so ill that they died during the voyage.”
(Photo below: The Mauretania returns Canadian troops to Halifax in this view dated August 1946.)
“We were to sail home to Boston, but were rerouted to New York,” she concluded. “As we entered New York harbor, we stood on deck in full uniform and were moved to tears as we passed the Statue of Liberty. The decks were lined from end to end with troops. Coming home on the Hermitage was very, very emotional.”
(Photos below: Summer afternoon at New York’s Luxury Liner Row, dated July 1961 – (from top right to left) Sylvania, Mauretania, Queen Elizabeth (docking), USS Intrepid, Olympia, United States, America & Independence; the Mauretania at Southampton’s Ocean Dock)
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