Union-Castle Line's 25,550-ton Athlone Castle was one of the fast new ships of the 1930s.

She and a sister liner, Sterling Castle, had diesel engines driving twin propellers and were capable of around 21 knots, compared to 15 knots of the earlier mail liners.

This enabled them to cut more than a day off the time for the 6,000 mile Southampton to Cape Town passage and establish a new speed record for the first time in over 40 years.

The faster service had barely got into its stride before the Second World War broke out and the vessel was called up for service.

Athlone Castle successfully completed several long-distance trooping voyages and was then allocated to the North Atlantic to help in transporting American troops for the D-Day build-up.

During the war the liner sailed more than 500,000 miles, carrying nearly 150,000 troops and vast quantities of stores.

Athlone Castle returned to commercial service in 1947 at a time when demand for passage by sea to South Africa was enormous.

On departure days people who had been unable to book waited for hours on the quayside hoping to be taken on board if a passenger failed to turn up. Occasionally one or two were lucky, but the majority waited in vain.

A Harland and Wolff ship, Athlone Castle was launched in 1935 by Alice Countess of Athlone. On her way up channel for the first time a year later the vessel exchanged signals with another new liner out on a pleasure cruise, the 81,000-ton Queen Mary.

In 1965 the liner was withdrawn to make way for the new faster ships, and was broken up in Taiwan.