HMS Halladale (K417): From Convoy Escort to Cross-Channel Car Ferry

Built on the Clyde

HMS Halladale was ordered on 2 October 1942 and built by A. and J. Inglis Ltd at Glasgow, laid down on 25 June 1943, launched on 28 January 1944 and commissioned on 11 May that year, a River-class frigate designed specifically for the long-range convoy escort work that had proven so vital, and so costly, during the Battle of the Atlantic.

Under the command of Lieutenant Commander Joseph Eric Woolfenden, who held command from April 1944 through to October 1945, she worked up with anti-submarine drills off Tobermory that May and June, exercising alongside HMS Una and HMS Duncan on 31 May and 1 June, then with HMS Una and HMS Bulldog on 7 June, the standard proving ground for newly commissioned escort vessels throughout the war.

Woolfenden handed over command to Lieutenant John Valentine Brothers on 1 October 1945, who saw Halladale through her final two months in commission before she paid off that December.

Escorting Troops From Aden

HMS Halladale's operational service took her well beyond home waters. On 9 August 1944 she left Aden as one of five warships escorting the combined convoys AB 43 and ABK 43, a convoy heavy with history: alongside the destroyers HMAS Norman and HMS Penn and fellow frigates HMS Helford and HMS Trent, she shepherded ten troop transports that included several famous pre-war ocean liners pressed into trooping service, among them the Union-Castle liner Dunnottar Castle, the P&O liner Mooltan and her fleet-mates, the sister ships Strathnaver and Strathaird, and the Dutch liner Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, travelling alongside the submarine depot ship HMS Wolfe.

A second, smaller convoy, ABK 43, sailed in company under its own separate escort of HMS Tay and HMS Kale, carrying three further transports bound for Karachi. The two convoys travelled together until 12 August, when ABK 43 detached out in the Arabian Sea; both arrived safely two days later, AB 43 at Bombay and ABK 43 at Karachi, a long and demanding voyage through waters that, while somewhat removed from the main Atlantic and Mediterranean battlegrounds, still carried genuine risk from enemy submarines and required exactly the kind of steady, watchful escort work the River class had been designed to provide.

An Unlikely Second Career

HMS Halladale was held in reserve at Portsmouth from 1947, and sold in April 1949 to Townsend Brothers Ferries Ltd for £15,000, a truly striking transformation for a wartime escort frigate.

She was converted into a car ferry at the Cork Dockyard Company in Ireland at a cost of £77,000, considerably more than her original purchase price, and entered service on the Dover to Calais route on 6 April 1950 as TS Halladale, replacing the ferry Forde, initially carrying 368 passengers and 50 to 60 vehicles across the Channel.

HMS Halladale's ferry career was, by all accounts, an eventful one: following a refurbishment at Immingham that increased her capacity to 650 passengers and 40 cars, she ran aground on a mud bank leaving Calais harbour in a squall on 10 April 1950, only weeks into her new career, then collided with the German motor vessel Hans Hoth off Dover's Eastern Entrance on 14 May 1951 and was sent to Tilbury for repairs.

Barely six weeks later, on 27 June 1951, she redeemed herself rather spectacularly, becoming the first drive-on, drive-off cross-Channel steamer, unveiling Calais's newly built car ramp in front of Dover Harbour Board dignitaries and East Kent Road Car Company representatives, who watched an eight-ton bus driven down the 120-foot ramp and back aboard without a hitch, a proper vindication of the roll-on, roll-off concept Townsend Brothers had bet £77,000 on.

The good publicity didn't stop the mishaps for long: she clipped the Belgian ferry Prinses Josephine Charlotte on 29 June 1952, struck her own loading ramps after a bow rudder failure on 29 June 1958, and ran into the end of Dover's southern breakwater in thick fog in April 1959, a somewhat less distinguished record than her wartime service.

She nonetheless remained in continuous cross-Channel service until her final Dover to Calais crossing on 5 November 1961, a long and useful run for a converted warship who, whatever trouble she found with ramps and breakwaters, never once needed to fire a shot in anger during that entire second career.

From the Baltic to the Caribbean

HMS Halladale's working life continued well beyond her Channel ferry years: sold to the Finnish operator W. Rostedt on 4 January 1962, she served on Baltic routes between Turku and Stockholm, first as Norden and then, from that June, as Turist Expressen, before being acquired that November by the Venezuelan operator Ferry Boats Margarita and renamed Ferrymar III for service out of Margarita Island.

She was last seen semi-dismantled in Curacao around 1987 to 1988, closing out a remarkable career that had carried her from escorting Indian Ocean troop convoys to ferrying holidaymakers across the Baltic and Caribbean, a far cry from the waters where she began her working life.