The Castel Felice, as she was eventually named, was built in Glasgow in 1930 for the British India Company as the Kenya, commencing her maiden voyage to Bombay on 18 December 1931, then operated between India and Africa carrying passengers (mainly Indian immigrants) and cargo.
The British Government requisitioned her in 1940 and she was converted to an armed infantrylanding ship for World War 2. Renamed first HMS Hydra, then HMS Keren, she was used to land troops for action in Madagascar, Sicily and North Africa. The British India Line refused an option to resume ownership after the war in 1946 and consequently she was purchased by the British Ministry of Transport. Laid up at Holy Loch in Scotland she was subsequently purchased by the Vaslav group. In 1949 the vessel broke moorings and was swept ashore in a heavy storm.
In 1950 ownership was transferred to the Sitmar Line which re-modelled and refitted the ship in Genoa in the following year, and named the Castel Felice (‘Happy Castle’) for her inaugural Australian voyage to Melbourne. She began the South American immigrant service in 1952. Two years later she was refitted with air conditioning and a swimming pool to commence the Atlantic service to New York. Between 1952 and 1970, on a total of 101 voyages, she carried over 100,000 immigrants to Australia and New Zealand, of these, 16,126 were breadwinners and the others dependents. She left Sydney in 1970 to be broken up in Taiwan, with all cutlery and linen transferred to Cunard for use on the Fairsea and Fairwind from Sydney.
Configuration
Engines: 11,000 s.h.p. six single-reduction-geared steam turbines / twin screws
Passengers: 1400 one class - based on her final configuration.
Previous names: Kenya (1930), Hydra (1941), Keren (1941), Kenya (1949), Fairstone (1950), Kenya (1950), Keren (1951–52)
Notable passengers
Giorgio Mangiamele (13 August 1926 – 13 May 2001) was an Italian/Australian photographer and filmmaker.
The Groop travelled to UK on the Sitmar line cruiser Castel Felice on 31 January 1968. Traveling with them was Molly Meldrum
Ray (Raymond Frank) Mathew (14 April 1929 – 27 May 2002), an Australian author, was born in Sydney, New South Wales. Mathew wrote poetry, drama, radio plays and filmscripts, short stories, novels, arts and literature criticism, and other non-fiction. He left Australia in 1960 on the Castel Felice and never returned, dying in New York where he had lived from 1968.
Andrea Dworkin, while a student, was arrested in 1965 during an anti-Vietnam-War and imprisoned at New York Women's House of Detention, later testifying before a Grand Jury about her maltreatment there, receiving national and international news coverage resulting in the closure of the prison. Soon after, Dworkin left on the Castel Felice to live in Greece and to pursue her writing.
Marina von Neumann Whitman (born March 6, 1935) is an American economist. She is a Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business as well as The Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Her father was John von Neumann, mathematician. She traveled to from USA to Europe on the Castel Felice in 1954.
Jeffrey Smart departed Australia for London on the Castel Felice out of Sydney just after Christmas 1963, driving to Greece fellow painter Justin O’Brien. On the same sailing was Margaret Reynolds (born 19 July 1941), Australian Labor Party Senator for Queensland from 1983 to 1999.
Robyn Williams AM (born 1944 in Buckinghamshire, England) is a science journalist and broadcaster resident in Australia who has hosted the Science Show on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation since 1975, Ockham's Razor (created 1984) and In Conversation (created 1997). He immigrated to Australia from England in 1964 on the Castel Felice
George Holmes Honadle, advisor on issues of sustainable development.
Jutta Feddersen, tapestry and installation artist migrated alone from Germany to Australia on the Castel Felice in December 1956 at 26 years of age.
J. Brian McArdle, photojournalist and editor of Walkabout (passenger 1955)
Bruce Beresford, Australian film director, moved to the UK in 1963.
In popular culture
Hungarian playwright Kornél Hamvai's Castel Felice (2006) masquerades as a naturalist drama, but becomes surreal as passengers on the Castel Felice find themselves in a no-exit situation with national and existential dimensions.
Events on the Castel Felice are at the centre of action in Calvin C. Hernton’s novel Scarecrow (Doubleday, 1974) which explores the fatal psychosexual, racial conflicts of voyagers on board.
Mentioned in King of Thieves: The Adventures of Arthur Delaney and the Kangaroo Gang by Adam Shand p. 44, p. 49
Mention in Gee, Maurice (2000). Going west. Penguin Books, Auckland, N.Z. p. 158.
