SS Empire Windrush’s connections to Scotland are revealed in new book.
On 22 June 1948 newsreels captured the disembarkation of 1,027 passengers from the Windrush’s gangplank at Tilbury, Essex.
It is the voyage Windrush would become most famous for, but it is not the only one that changed the course of world history, and people’s lives, forever.
That same Windrush gangplank forced Norwegian Jews onto a German quayside just six years earlier to meet their deaths at Auschwitz.
It was the one boarding migrating Nazis bound for South America in the 1930s, holding rallies on arrival in Buenos Aires, or landing Nazi tourists when Goebbels requisitioned her as one of his ‘Strength Through Joy’ holiday fleet carousing in Norway and the Mediterranean.
It was the same one climbed by British service people bound for the Korean War – despite reports that it was no longer seaworthy – many never to return.
From 1931 to its fiery sinking in 1954, the Windrush transported thousands of people across the world, from India, Norway, Germany, Mexico, Britain and Korea – some freely, many by force.
In Windrush: A Ship Through Time author and producer Paul Arnott reveals a vivid biography of this unique vessel, combining the memories of people who were there with archival research to create a gripping account of an extraordinary merchant ship at the end of empires.
For decades the Windrush played vastly different roles in the most turbulent episodes of our history, spreading undercurrents of ideas on nationalism, migration and identity which still resonate today.
By bringing to light the full history of a single ship, and in giving wider context and nuance to the Windrush story, Arnott aims to both equip the Windrush generation with ammunition for their cause, and offer further understanding of the injustices they, and many others, have endured.
Windrush: A Ship Through Time by Paul Abbot is released this week, published by The History Press, priced £20.
Author
TAGS
FOLLOW US
