Deck 5 Opening Salvo - MV Melbourne Star & MV Pietro Orseolo

It's a long time coming, but the British are finally getting a merchant freighter. Since the British had the largest merchant fleet in the world at the start of the war it only seemed fitting. The challenge was to find a group of frieghters that were built in numbers of five or greater. Prior to WWII that is hard to do since a lot of merchant ships were "one-off" designs or built only in pairs. We also wanted to have a freighter that was a little more "survivable" given the current "challenged" selection available for convoy scenarios in the game. After purchasing a few books including Lloyd's of London registry of all global merchant ships at the start of the war we landed on MV Melbourne Star. I also bought an obscure book on the "Blue Star Line at War" that gave incredible accounts of those ships in the war.



The Blue Star Line was created early in the 20th century to supply British butcher shops with a steady supply of imported meat. Particularly beef from South America. The "Imperial Star" class built in the 1930's were refrigerated and had twin screws for high speed (for a merchant ship anyway) to move meat product quickly across the oceans. She had a very distinguished career in WWII until she was finally torpedoed and sunk in April 1943. Her most well known achievement was being one of the five ships to survive Operation Pedestal and reach Malta. Here is an excellent web site if you want to learn more about her.

www.melbournestar.co.uk/index.html

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Since we were doing an "new and improved" merchant freighter for the Allies we decided we should do one for the Axis as well. Back to Lloyd's Registry to find a suitable "modern" Axis freighter built in numbers of five or greater. A long tedious search came up with only a few German and Italian classes built in such numbers. Since the Germans already had a generous allocation of units in the deck we decided to go for an Italian freighter. The Italian convoys to supply North Africa were also more well known of course. It turns out the Italian government anticipated the need for more merchant shipping and subsidized the construction of new freighters in the years leading up to the war. One of the most famous (in Italy anyway) was MV Pietro Orseolo. One of six to ten (depending how you group them) ships contracted for in the late 1930's, she was modern and reasonably fast for her time, but smaller than Melbourne Star. Pietro was in Japan when Italy entered the war and had to run the blockade to return home. She was so successful she continued to be used for blockade running. When Italy surrendered Pietro fell into German hands and continued until she was sunk by RAF Coastal Command aircraft in 1943. Some histories say she was torpedoed by the submarine USS Shad, but that has since been determined to be incorrect.



Here is more information on Italian merchant ship construction program if you are interested.

rommelsriposte.com/2009/04/22/the-italian-liberty-ships/

www.regiamarina.net/detail_text_with_list.asp?nid=53&lid=1

Hopefully both ships will put a little more "life" into convoy scenarios. If not, they at least look cool.

Many thanks also go to Squint181 for creating beautiful models of these two ships from the very limited photographs and references I sent to him!

www.shapeways.com/product/DA4J4B7GM/mv-melbourne-star-1-1800?optionId=61245283&li=marketplace

www.shapeways.com/product/4C67HBM3W/pietro-orseolo-1-1800?optionId=64175849&li=marketplace