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SS Trebartha

cargo carrying steamship built in 1920

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ106771330 ↗
Source-derived summary

SS Trebartha was a 4,597 GRT cargo carrying steamship built in 1920 by John Readhead & Sons Ltd of South Shields for the Hain Steamship Company.

She was attacked by German aircraft on 11 November and sank on 12 November 1940.

Building

Named after Trebartha Hall; a photograph of her namesake was hung in the ship’s smokeroom.

Sister ships

Trebartha's sister ships were SS Trevorian and SS Tredinnick, J. Readhead & Sons yard numbers 462 and 464 respectively. Trevorian sank in the North Sea on 29 November 1943 after a collision with the Icelandic trawler Oli Garda. Tredinnick was torpedoed of 25 or 29 March 1942 (sources conflict as to the date) by the Italian submarine Pietro Calvi on passage from New York to Table Bay and lost with all hands.

Cargo ship career

After conducting her sea trials off the River Tyne Trebartha departed Avonmouth on 24 December 1920 for Liverpool and sailed on 1 Jan 1921 for Fremantle; Adelaide; Melbourne; Sydney; and Brisbane under the command of Captain J.H. Pelham.

A letter published in The Fremantle Times Feb 1921 from the Second Officer S.G. Roach reported a ship’s cricket team had been formed by the officers and cadets and would be pleased to play local amateur teams when the ship reached Australia – providing the local teams could provide the bats.

Trebartha arrived in Fremantle at 1240 p.m 17 February 1921 before then calling at Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney on the 2, 7, and 14 March. Whilst in Sydney the apprentice Samuel Hills, aged 16, was overcome by fumigating gas when removing hatch covers and fell 40 ft into No.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “SS Trebartha” as cargo carrying steamship built in 1920. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1920, 1940, 1943, 1942—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Trebartha, cargo and carrying can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as cargo carrying steamship built in 1920. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q106771330. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1920, 1940, 1943 and 1942.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

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  2. Expand the search: follow SS Trebartha primary sources, SS Trebartha archive and Trebartha research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “SS Trebartha” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.