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SS Westralia (1896)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 10, 2025
Entity authorityQ7394547 ↗
Source-derived summary

SS Westralia was a 2,884 GRT cargo and passenger ship. She served as a troopship in the First World War and was later converted into a hulk. She was sunk in the air raids on Rabaul on 20 January 1942.

Sir J Laing & Sons, Sunderland, built her in 1897 for the Melbourne-based Huddart Parker line. She worked along the Australian coast and the trans-Tasman route.

In 1917, she was used a troopship, transporting the New Zealand 27th and 28th Main Regiment. She then resumed commercial service with Huddart Parker.

W. R. Carpenter and Company of Sydney bought her in 1927, had her engines removed and towed her to Rabaul for use as coal hulk, arriving in 1929. In the Rabaul air raids on 20 January 1942 she was bombed and sunk in Simpson Harbour.

Citations

References

Gamble, Bruce (2006).

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “SS Westralia (1896)” as open-knowledge reference entry. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1942, 1897, 1917, 1927—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Westralia, Open-knowledge and entry can be independently traced.
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Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as open-knowledge reference entry. 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 Dec 10, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7394547. The first chronological checks are 1942, 1897, 1917 and 1927.

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.

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  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “SS Westralia (1896)” 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.