of Barrow-in-Furness built Newfoundland for Furness, Withy & Co of Liverpool. Her 1,047 NHPquadruple expansion steam engine was fed by five 215 lbf/in2 single-ended boilers with a total heating surface of. Her boilers were heated by 20 oil-fuelled corrugated furnaces with a grate surface of.
Newfoundland spent the first part of World War II on her peacetime route, carrying wounded troops from the UK to Canada, and bringing the rehabilitated troops back home. In April 1943 Newfoundland repatriated some Allied servicemen from Lisbon to Avonmouth, England. Among them was Flight Lieutenant John F. Leeming RAF, who had been captured with Air Marshal Owen Tudor Boyd in 1940. His escape plan from Vincigliata PG 12 prisoner of war camp in Italy was by cleverly faking a very bad nervous breakdown case. He succeeded so well that the international medical board, with Swiss and Italian doctors, unhesitatingly accepted his case. As he describes in his book: harbour, 1943.
Hospital ship
After the Allied invasion of Italyin September 1943, HMHS Newfoundland was assigned as the hospital ship of the Eighth Army, and was one of two hospital ships sent to deliver 103 American nurses to the Salerno beaches on 12 September. The hospital ships were attacked twice that day by dive bombers, and by evening they were joined by a third hospital ship. Concerned by a number of near misses, it was decided to move the ships out to sea and anchor there for the night. All three ships were brightly illuminated and carried standard Red Cross markings to identify them as hospital ships, and their protection under the Geneva Convention. At 5:00 a.m. on 13 September while under the command of Captain JohnEric Wilson O.B.E, Newfoundland was hit by a Henschel Hs 293 air-launched glide bomb offshore of Salerno. The bomb was launched by a Dornier Do 217 bomber belonging to KG 100. It struck on the boat deck, abaft of the bridge. The ship was only carrying two patients and 34 crew members. Communications were lost but, more importantly, the fire fighting equipment was completely shattered. came alongside to rescue the patients, and also put a party on board to help with damage control. By now the ship had caught fire. There was another explosion and it became clear that the oil tanks had also caught fire. The injured crew left the boat and 12 crew members battled the fire for a further 36 hours. The ship was beyond repair and was towed further out to sea and intentionally scuttledthe day after the attack by the destroyer. Of the people on board, six of the British staff nurses and all of the medical officers had been killed.One of the medical officers was Hartas Foxton 1889 - 1943 who had been a GP in Uttoxeter until the War.
