Sea stories
Reina Victoria Eugenia, the River Plate run
A Spanish mail ship built on the Tyne, with most of her berths in third class. For nearly twenty years she ran from Barcelona to Buenos Aires.
The Compañía Trasatlántica Española carried the mail between Spain and the River Plate, and its fleet was ageing. It ordered two liners from British yards: Infanta Isabel de Borbón from Denny at Dumbarton, and Reina Victoria Eugenia from Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson on the Tyne — the yard that had built Mauretania. She was launched in September 1912.
She was a ship for the many. Of her 2,066 berths, 1,640 were in third and emigrant classes; first class had 200. Her saloons were done in period styles, Louis XVI, Georgian, Jacobean, but the numbers say who she was built for.
In the spring of 1913 she left Barcelona on her first voyage: Málaga, Cádiz, Tenerife, Montevideo, Buenos Aires. With a few changes of call, that was her line for the rest of her working life. Spain stayed neutral in the First World War; in May 1918 the Royal Navy diverted her to Gibraltar to search her for German passengers of military age.
In 1931 the new Republic took the royal names off the fleet, and Reina Victoria Eugenia became Argentina. The next year the government withdrew the mail subsidy. On 8 May 1932 the service stopped and she was laid up in Barcelona.
She was still there when the Civil War reached the city. In January 1939, as Nationalist troops closed on Barcelona, air raids sank her at her moorings. She was raised after the war and broken up at Bilbao in 1945.
The registry
Compañía Trasatlántica Española Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson, Tyne Renamed Argentina, 1931 Laid up in Barcelona, 1932 the day of the launch: 26 or 28 September 1912, the sources differ [to be confirmed] the sinking in January 1939 and the scrapping at Bilbao in 1945, found in one source only [to be confirmed]
Sources
Secondary sources only, read against each other. Where they disagree the text leaves the detail out and the registry says so.
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