RMS Dunottar Castle - Troop Ship

Troop Ship

In November 1899, the Dunottar Castle was requisitioned as a troop ship during the Second Boer War. She carried General Redvers Buller and 1,500 troops to Cape Town for Boer War duties and on the following voyage carried Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener. During the war, she made frequent trips between England and the Cape Colony and carried some of the most famous Boer War warriors of the time, including two famous scouts, Major Frederick Russell Burnham and Col. Robert Baden-Powell, as well as a young war correspondent for the Morning Post by the name of Winston Churchill.

In 1904, the Dunottar Castle was laid up at Netley in Southampton Water, but by 1907 she was being chartered to the Panama Railroad Co. for their New York to Colon (Panama Canal) service. In 1908 she was chartered to Sir Henry Lunn Ltd for cruises to Norway and the Mediterranean, and in 1911 she took guests to the Delhi Durbar of King George V.

Union Castle became part of the Royal Mail Group in 1912, and the Dunottar Castle was sold to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company in 1913 as the Caribbean. In 1914, the HMS Caribbean was requisitioned for World War I, initially as a troopship to bring soldiers from Canada to Europe and later as an Armed Merchant Cruiser. But after it was found that she was unsuitable to carry gun mountings, she was converted into a dockyard workers accommodation ship on May 1915.