SS Viking (1905)

Viking was a steel, triple-screw, turbine-driven passenger steamer built by Armstrong Whitworth at the Walker Shipyard on the Tyne for the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, which she served from 1905 to 1954. She was launched on 9 March 1905, was the first turbine-driven vessel in the company history, and was meant to beat the Midland Railway turbine steamer Manxman on the Fleetwood to Douglas run. She was 350 feet long, certificated for 2,000 passengers with a crew of 80, and three sets of Parsons turbines gave her a service speed of 22 knots, though she was known to reach 24. She burned about 60 tons of coal on a round trip and became the last coal-burning passenger ship in the fleet. The Admiralty bought her in 1915 and converted her to the seaplane carrier HMS Vindex, from which the first wheeled aircraft took off from a ship deck. She returned to the company in 1919, carried troops in the Second World War, evacuated 1,800 Guernsey schoolchildren in 1940 and was broken up at Barrow in 1954.