SS Vyner Brooke

SS Vyner Brooke

History
Sarawak
Name:	Vyner Brooke
Namesake:	Sir Charles Vyner Brooke
Owner:	Sarawak Steamship Co
Port of registry:	Kuching
Route:	Kuching – Singapore
Builder:	Ramage & Ferguson Ltd, Leith, Scotland
Yard number:	264
Completed:	February 1928
Identification:	call sign VSBJ (1934–42)
Fate:	sunk by aircraft, 14 February 1942
General characteristics
Tonnage:	1,679 GRT tonnage under deck 1,133 713 NRT
Length:	240.7 ft (73.4 m)
Beam:	41.3 ft (12.6 m)
Draught:
Depth:	16.1 ft (4.9 m)
Decks:	one
Installed power:	297 NHP
Propulsion:	3-cylinder triple-expansion engine; twin screw
Speed:	12 knots (22 km/h)
Capacity:	44 1st-class passengers 200+ deck passengers
Notes:	royal yacht

SS Vyner Brooke was a Scottish-built steamship that was both the royal yacht of Sarawak and a merchant ship frequently used between Singapore and Kuching. She was named after the 3rd Rajah of Sarawak, Sir Charles Vyner Brooke.

Description

Ramage and Ferguson of Leith, near Edinburgh, Scotland built the ship, completing her in February 1928. She had six corrugated furnaces with a combined grate area of 124 square feet (12 m²) that heated two single-ended boilers with a combined heating surface of 4,390 square feet (408 m²). These fed steam at 180 lb_f/in² to a three-cylinder triple expansion steam engine built by Ramage and Ferguson. The engine was rated at 297 NHP and drove twin screws.

She was 1,679 GRT and had cabins on the upper deck for 44 first-class passengers. She carried lifeboats, rafts and lifebelts for 650 people and could carry at least 200 deck passengers.

Sinking and massacre

Main article: Bangka Island massacre

On 14 February 1942 in World War II, while evacuating nurses and wounded servicemen away from Singapore she was bombed by Japanese aircraft and sunk. Survivors who reached Bangka Island east of Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies were massacred by the Imperial Japanese Army.