MV Empire Windrush

HMT Empire Windrush, originally MV Monte Rosa, was a passenger liner and cruise ship launched in Germany in 1930. During the 1930s, she operated as a German cruise ship under the name Monte Rosa. During World War II, she was operated by the German navy as a troopship. She was acquired by the United Kingdom as a prize of war at the end of the war and renamed Empire Windrush. In British service, she continued to be used mainly as a troopship until March 1954, when the vessel caught fire and sank in the Mediterranean Sea with the loss of four crew.

Empire Windrush is best remembered today for bringing one of the first large groups of post-war West Indian immigrants to the United Kingdom, carrying 492 passengers and one stowaway on a voyage from Jamaica to London in 1948.British Caribbean people who came to the United Kingdom in the period after World War II are sometimes referred to as the Windrush generation.

Early history of the ship

Windrush was a diesel-powered motor ship, built by Blohm & Voss in Hamburg, Germany, and launched on 4 December 1930. She was one of five Monte-class ocean liners that were launched between 1925 and 1931. One of her sister-ships was the Monte Cervantes, which sank near Tierra del Fuego in 1930. Of the other three Monte-class vessels, two would be later sunk by air-raids during World War II and one would be scuttled by the Allies in 1946.