Service
Carmania left Liverpool on 2 December 1905 for her maiden voyage to New York arriving on 10 December. She completed the voyage in 7 days, 9 hours and 31 minutes, averaging 15.97 kn over the 2835 nmi route.[5]
Carmania plied between Liverpool and New York from 1905 to 1910. In the spring of 1906 she took H. G. Wells to North America for the first time. He noted her qualities in a book about his travels, "There are, one must admit, tremendous justifications for the belief in a sort of automatic ascent of American things to unprecedented magnificences, an ascent so automatic that indeed one needn't bother in the slightest to keep the whole thing going. For example, consider this, last year's last-word in ocean travel in which I am crossing, the Carmania with its unparalleled steadfastness, its racing, tireless great turbines, its vast population of 3244 souls! It has on the whole a tremendous effect of having come by fate and its own forces".[8]
Ernest Shackleton returned to Liverpool from New York after his US lecture tour, travelling first class on Carmania, from 18–28 May 1910.
In June 1910 in Liverpool Carmania suffered a major fire in her passenger accommodation. Her structure and machinery were undamaged, and repairs were completed by 4 October.[2]
On an eastbound crossing in October 1913 Carmania answered a distress signal from SS Volturno (1906) to pick up survivors in a storm, which resulted in many awards for gallantry being presented to various members of her crew and Captain James Clayton Barr.[9]
In August 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, Carmania was converted into an AMC, armed with eight QF 4.7 inch Mk V naval guns. She was commissioned as HMS Carmania, with the pennant number M 55.[10]
Commanded by Captain Noel Grant, she sailed from Liverpool to Shell Bay in Bermuda. On 14 September 1914 she engaged and sank the German merchant cruiser SMS Cap Trafalgar in the Battle of Trindade. At the time Cap Trafalgar's appearance had been altered to resemble the Carmania in order to infiltrate into British fleets.[11] Carmania suffered extensive damage and several casualties to her crew.
After repairs in Gibraltar, she patrolled the coast of Portugal and the Atlantic islands for the next two years. In 1916 she assisted in the Gallipoli campaign. From July 1916 she was a troop ship. After the war she took Canadian troops home from Europe.
By 1919 she had returned to passenger liner service. In 1923 Cunard had her refitted as a cabin class ship, with her total accommodation reduced from 2,650 berths to 1,440. Caronia was similarly refitted, and the two sisters kept busy until the shipping slump caused by the Great Depression after 1929. By 1930 Carmania's navigational equipment included submarine signalling and wireless direction finding.[4]
