RMS Alcantara (1926)

RMS Alcantara was a Royal Mail Lines ocean liner built in Belfast by Harland and Wolff, launched on 23 September 1926 and completed in February 1927 as the sister of Asturias, one of a pair of 22,200 gross register ton liners ordered for the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company South American route. As built she was a motor ship with a pair of eight-cylinder four-stroke double-acting diesel engines built by Harland and Wolff to a Burmeister and Wain design, but her cruising speed of 16.5 knots was slower than competitors on the route. In 1934 and 1935 she was re-engined at Belfast with water-tube boilers and steam turbines driving twin shafts through single reduction gearing, which raised her speed to about 19 knots. She served in the Second World War first as an armed merchant cruiser and then as a troop ship, returned to civilian service in 1948 and was scrapped in 1958.