RMS Walmer Castle

RMS Walmer Castle was a Royal Mail Ship of the Union-Castle Line that served on the mail route between London and Cape Town, South Africa, from 1902 until 1930. She was the second of three ships to carry the name. In 1917 the government requisitioned her as a troop transport, and she carried troops from South Africa and later in the North Atlantic, painted in a camouflaged dazzle scheme. In 1919 she made two voyages between Liverpool and New York before returning to the mail run. Her notable passengers included the poet Rudyard Kipling, who travelled the Union-Castle line twenty times, and Lord Gladstone, the first Governor General of South Africa. Lord Alfred Milner and his wife Violet also sailed on her from England to South Africa in 1924. She was retired in 1930 and replaced by the refrigerated ship Winchester Castle.