Casgliadau Arlein

Three quarter port bow view of H.M.S ARIFEX, at Cardiff, c.1947/1948.

H.M.S. ARIFEX. Built by Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson Ltd. at their Wallsend-on-Tyne yard for Cunard and launched on 6 February 1924 as R.M.S. AURANIA, continuing with Cunard White Star Ltd., from 1933. She was requisitioned by the Admiralty on 30 August 1939 and converted to serve as an armed merchant cruiser, involving the fitting of a number of guns (completed in October 1939). She entered service protecting trade convoys in the North Atlantic. AURANIA was straggling behind Convoy SL89 with four others when she was attacked by U-123 on 21 October 1941. Two torpedoes hit her and the ship began to flood causing a list to port. The ship's cargo of empty drums acted to keep her afloat, and the vessel eventually reached Rothesay Bay four days later. The Germans claimed that she had been sunk, but she was laid up until March 1942 when she was bought outright by the Admiralty and converted to a Heavy Repair Ship. Work began that December and lasted until July 1944. Commissioned in August 1944 as HMS ARTIFEX, she joined the British Pacific Fleet in early 1945. ARTIFEX was assigned to the training establishment HMS Caledonia at Rosyth after the war and was used to train artificer apprentices until 1955, when she was reduced to the reserve fleet as a tender. ARTIFEX was sold for scrapping to the British Iron & Steel Co. (BISCO) in December 1960 and left Rosyth under tow on 7 January 1961, bound for the shipbreakers at Spezia, Italy.