SS Ceuta

Ceuta was the name of four steamships of the Oldenburg Portuguese Line (German: Oldenburg Portugiesische Dampschiffs Rhederei).

SS Ceuta (1929)

Ceuta was a 2,719 GRT cargo ship which was built in 1929 for the Oldenburg-Portugiesische Dampfschiffs-Reederei. She was sunk during an air raid in 1943, but later raised, repaired and returned to service. She was seized as a war prize in 1945, passed to the British Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) and renamed Empire Camel.

In 1946 she was passed to the Danish Government and renamed Rinkenæs. In 1947 she was sold to the Faroe Islands and renamed Oyrnafjall. In 1956 she was sold back to the Oldenburg-Portugiesische Dampfschiffs-Reederei and renamed Safi, serving until scrapped in January 1960.

Description

The ship was built by Deutsche Werft, Hamburg. She was launched in 1929.

The ship was 283 feet 3 inches (86.33 m) long, with a beam of 45 feet 9 inches (13.94 m) and a depth of 22 feet 9 inches (6.93 m). Her GRT was 2,716 and she had a NRT of 1,603. She was propelled by a compound steam engine which had two cylinders of 18 ¹¹⁄₁₆ inches (47.5 cm) and two cylinders of 39 ³⁄₈ inches (100 cm) diameter by 39 ³⁄₈ inches (100 cm) stroke. The engine developed 1,400 horsepower (1,000 kW).

Ceuta

Ceuta (assimilated pronunciation /ˈsjuːtə/ SEW-tə, also /ˈseɪʊtə/ SAY-uu-tə;Spanish: [ˈθeuta] is an 18.5-square-kilometre (7.1 sq mi) Spanish autonomous city located on the north coast of Africa, sharing a western border with Morocco. Separated from the Iberian peninsula by the Strait of Gibraltar, Ceuta lies along the boundary between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Ceuta, along with the Spanish exclave Melilla, is one of two permanently inhabited Spanish territories in mainland Africa. It was part of Cádiz province until 14 March 1995 when the city's Statute of Autonomy was passed.

Ceuta, like Melilla, was a free port before Spain joined the European Union. As of 2011, it has a population of 82,376. Its population consists of Christians, Muslims (chiefly Arabic and Berber speakers), and small minorities of Jews and Indian Hindus. Spanish is the official language.

History

Ceuta's location has made it an important commercial trade and military way-point for many cultures, beginning with the Carthaginians in the 5th century BC, who called the city Abyla; initially, this was also its name in Greek and Latin. (It was known variously as Ancient Greek: Ἀβύλη, Ἀβύλα, Ἀβλύξ, Ἀβίλη στήλη – Abyle, Abila, Ablyx or Abile Stele – "Pillar of Abyle") and from Greek, Abyla (...Mons,...Columna, "Mount Abyla" or "Column of Abyla") in Latin. Together with Gibraltar on the European side, it formed one of the famous "Pillars of Hercules". Later, it was renamed for a formation of seven surrounding smaller mountains, collectively referred to as Septem Fratres ('[The] Seven Brothers') by Pomponius Mela, which lent their name to a Roman fortification known as Castellum ad Septem Fratres.

Ceuta (disambiguation)

Ceuta is a Spanish autonomous city located to the south of the Strait of Gibraltar, in North Africa.

Ceuta may also refer to:

Other places in the world:

Ceuta (Spanish Congress Electoral District)

Ceuta is one of the 52 electoral districts (circunscripciones) used for the Spanish Congress of Deputies - the lower chamber of the Spanish Parliament, the Cortes Generales. It has the second smallest electorate of all the 52 districts and together with the other African enclave of Melilla it is one of just two single member districts in Congress.

Boundaries and electoral system

Under Article 68.2 of the Spanish constitution the constituency must be a single member district and the boundaries must be the same as the Autonomous City of Ceuta and under Article 140 this can only be altered with the approval of congress. Voting is on the basis of universal suffrage in a secret ballot. Officially, the electoral system used is closed list proportional representation with seats allocated using the D'Hondt method. The fact that Ceuta is a single member district means that in practice it uses the same first past the post system used in many anglophone countries like the United Kingdom and USA.