HMT Empire Windrush

HMT Empire Windrush was a passenger motor ship that was launched in Germany in 1930 as the MV Monte Rosa. She was built as an ocean liner for the German shipping company Hamburg Süd. They used the ship to carry German emigrants to South America, and as a cruise ship. During World War II, she was taken over by the German navy and used as a troopship. During the war, she survived two Allied attempts to sink her.

After World War II, the United Kingdom seized the ship as a prize of war and renamed her HMT Empire Windrush. She remained in British service as a troopship until 1954.

In 1948, Empire Windrush arrived at the Port of Tilbury coast near London, carrying 1,027 passengers and two stowaways who embarked at Trinidad, Jamaica, Mexico and Bermuda. While the passengers included people from many parts of the world, the great majority were West Indian.

Empire Windrush was not the first ship to carry a large group of West Indian people to the United Kingdom, as two other ships (the SS Ormonde and the SS Almanzora) had arrived the previous year. But her 1948 voyage became very well-known and a symbol of post-war migration to Britain. British Caribbean people who came to the United Kingdom in the period after World War II, including those who came on other ships, are often referred to as the Windrush generation.

On 28 March 1954, while in the western Mediterranean Sea, an explosion and fire in the engine room killed four people. The fire could not be controlled and the ship was abandoned; the other 1494 passengers and crew were all rescued. The empty ship remained afloat and on-fire for nearly two days, eventually sinking during an attempt to salvage her.