RMS Strathnaver

Career (United Kingdom)
Class and type:	Strath class ocean liner
Name:	RMS Strathnaver SS Strathnaver
Operator:	Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company
Builder:	Vickers-Armstrong
Yard number:	664
General characteristics
Tonnage:	22,500 gross tons
Speed:	Service:

RMS, later SS, Strathnaver was a Royal Mail Ship and ocean liner operated by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company and launched in 1931. Strathnaver was the first of a series of Strath class ocean liners built in the 1930 by the Vickers-Armstrong shipyard, in Barrow-in-Furness, then in Lancashire. Strathnaver was the sister ship of the RMS Strathaird, with both ships serving the Australian mail route. The ships became known as The White Sisters, being the first P&O liners to be painted with white hulls and yellow funnels,

Strathnaver was the first Strath class liner to be built, followed by Strathaird. Two further Strath class ships, slightly larger and with only one funnel, the Strathmore and the Stratheden, joined Strathaird and Strathnaver on the Sydney run from the mid 1930s. A fifth ship, the Strathallan, was completed in 1938, requisitioned as a troopship only a year later, and sunk in the Mediterranean in 1942 taking troops to the landings in North Africa, though with more than 5,000 people on board casualties are thought to have numbered only a dozen or so.

Increasing unreliability of the older pair of Strath liners led P&O to replace them both with the SS Canberra.