SS Lurline (1932)

SS Lurline was the third Matson Lines vessel to hold that name and the last of four fast and luxurious ocean liners that Matson built for the Hawaii and Australasia runs from the West Coast of the United States. Lurline's sister ships were SS Malolo, SS Mariposa and SS Monterey. Lurline served as a troopship in World War II operated by War Shipping Administration agents serving Army troop transport requirements. Bought by the Chandris Lines in 1963 as the RHMS Ellinis the ship became one of the most important luxury cruise ships on the Australian and New Zealand services. She operated in Australasia and Oceania until 1980.

SS Lurline was christened on 12 July 1932 in Quincy, Massachusetts, by Lurline Matson Roth for the Matson Lines' Pacific services. Lurline was the last of the four American-built Matson "White Fleet" liners designed by William Francis Gibbs; Roth, the daughter of the Matson Lines' founder, previously had christened a namesake 1908 steamship Lurline as a young woman of 18. On 12 January 1933, SS Lurline left New York City bound for San Francisco via the Panama Canal on her maiden voyage, thence to Sydney and the South Seas, returning to San Francisco on 24 April 1933. She then served on the express San Francisco to Honolulu service with her sister "White Fleet" ship Malolo.

Aviator Amelia Earhart was carried by Lurline from Los Angeles to Honolulu with her Lockheed Vega airplane secured on deck during December 22–27, 1934. The voyage prepared her for the record-breaking Honolulu-to-Oakland solo flight she made in January 1935.

Lurline was halfway from Honolulu to San Francisco on 7 December 1941, carrying a record load of 765 passengers, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The ship's alleged reception of radio signals from the Japanese fleet became part of the Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory. She arrived safely on December 10, travelling in a zigzag path under radio silence and blacked out at night, and soon returned to Hawaii with her Matson sisters Mariposa and Monterey in a convoy laden with troops and supplies.^{[citation needed]}

On 30 April 30 1942, the SS Lurline, along with a convoy of seven Matson Line ships including USS Hugh L. Scott, boarded the 32nd Infantry Division at Pier 42 in San Francisco. The convoy (SF 43) was escorted by the cruiser USS Indianapolis and two corvettes. Four days out of San Francisco, the Lurline ship's crew discovered the division's mascot, a dog named Vicksburg. She was named for the town in which she was born and the location of the final major campaign of the American Civil War. Vicksburg was killed in a road accident in Southport, Australia on 8 October 1942.

Taking a southerly route to avoid the Japanese Navy, the ship stopped at Wellington and then Auckland, New Zealand. The ship departed Auckland and entered a zone where two freighters had been sunk by Japanese submarines in recent days. The soldiers stayed fully dressed and wide eyed for the two days to Sydney.

They arrived in southern Australia at Port Adelaide on 14 May 1942, having traveled 9,000 miles (14,000 km) in 23 days.

She spent the war providing similar services, often voyaging to Australia, and once transported Australian Prime Minister John Curtin to America to confer with President Roosevelt. Wartime events put Lurline at risk. Royal Australian Air Force trainee pilot Arthur Harrison had been put on watch without adequate training. "A straight line of bubbles extending from away out on the starboard side of the ship to across the bow. I had never seen anything quite like it, but it reminded me of bubbles behind a motorboat. I called to the lad on watch on the next gun forward. A few seconds later the ship went into a hard 90° turn to port. We RAAF trainees received a severe reprimand from the captain for not reporting the torpedo. Anyway, it was a bad miss."