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BRABANTIA
Constructed by the A.G. Weser shipyard, of Bremen, Germany, and
launched on March 30, 1914, this steamship originally sailed for
Hamburg-Amerika Linie under the name William O'Swald. An imposing
three-funneled, 19,653-ton vessel, she could transport 355 passengers in
first class, 284 in second, 469 in third, as well as 857 emigrants. In
1916, during the First World War, with Holland officially neutral, the
Germans ceded her to Royal Holland Lloyd as compensation for ships they
had mistakenly sunk. Renamed the Brabantia, in 1920 she began serving
the South America line and two years later was sold to United American
Line, renamed the Resolute, and was put to work on the line connecting
Hamburg, Southampton, Cherbourg, and New York. She was reacquired by
Hamburg-Amerika Linie in 1926 and continued sailing that route. In 1935
she was sold to the Italian government, re-christened the Lombardia, and
converted into a 4,400-soldier troopship operated by Lloyd Triestino
during the conquest of Abyssinia, present-day Ethiopia. In 1943 Allied
bombers sank her in the Port of Naples. In 1947 she was refloated and
then scrapped in La Spezia, Italy. The picture above shows the Brabantia
docked in the Port of Rio de Janeiro, between 1920 and 1922, when she
served Royal Holland Lloyd's South America line.
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