The PS Portsdown

P.S. She was a passenger ship constructed by Caledon Shipbuilding in Dundee for Southern Railway and was lost by a naval mine in 1941. In 1940, she was one of the civilian ships that helped evacuate British soldiers from Dunkirk.

During World War II, both the Portsdown and her sister ship, the Merstone, were kept on the Portsmouth to Ryde route. On 1 June 1940, however, she was put to duty as a navy transport ship and sailed unarmed to Dunkirk, where she loaded troops onto her own boats off the beach and pressed her bow into the sand to save others. She brought 618 soldiers back to Ramsgate. On September 20, 1941, in Spithead, the Portsdown collided with a mine, resulting in the death of 23 persons.

• https://dalyhistory.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/ss-portsdown/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_Portsdown_(1928)