SS Khedive Ismail
The SS Khedive Ismail was a steamship sunk with great loss of life in 1944. On 6 February 1944 Convoy KR-8 sailed from Kilindini Harbour at Mombasa, Kenya to Colombo, Ceylon. The convoy consisted of five troop transports (Khedive Ismail, City of Paris, Varsova, Ekma & Ellenga), escorted by the heavy cruiser HMS Hawkins and the destroyers HMS Petard and HMS Paladin.
In the early afternoon of Saturday 12 February 1944, a Japanese submarine sank the Khedive Ismail with two torpedoes. No fewer than 1,297 people, including 77 women, lost their lives in the two minutes it took for the Khedive Ismail to sink. Only 208 men and 6 women survived. The sinking was the third worst Allied shipping disaster of World War II and the single worst loss of female service personnel in the history of the Commonwealth of Nations. The Army nurses that died are commemorated on the Brookwood Memorial.
Nurses who died at sea on the SS Khedive Ismail
Dalgarno, Elsie Alice
Dann, Elizabeth Doritha
Davies, Margaret Eluned
Dervan, Gertrude
Dewar, Alice Whitehead
Dowling, Beatrice Olivia
Farrelly, Mary
FitzGerald, Catherine Mary
Harvey, Grace Wesslink
Hastings, Valerie Francis
Humphrey, Muriel Christine
Ievers, Eileen Mary Elsie
Jarman, Marie
Johnston, Maud Fredaline
Kells, Maggie Jane
Kells, Winifred Evelyn
Leckey, Muriel Emily
Leech, Barbara Elisabeth
Littleton, Mary Joyce
MacLaren, Jean Noel
McMillan, Marion Lennox
Moore, Isabella
Morgan, Sarah
Nuttall, Phyllis
Pirie, Barbara
Richardson, Sybil Gwendoline
Robertson, Helen Murray
Senior, Doris Ena
Smith, Marjorie
Spence, Isobel
Taylor, Katherine Mary Monica
Thomas, Jane Mair George
Urquhart, Mary Annie Ross
Walker, Kathleen Hewison
Warwick, Roberta Alice
Whitaker, Mafalda Selene
White, Gwendoline May
Willis, Annie Amelia
Young, Eleanor Jane