RareShip S.S. Empire Windrush Ashtray / Trinket Dish, Windrush Generation

Original & authentic, not reproduction. 

Dated around the late 1940's - 1950's

Cast aluminium, in the form of a ship's wheel, with engraved central brass plaque 'S S Empire Windrush'

15cm wide x 2cm approx

HMT Empire Windrush, originally MV Monte Rosa, was a passenger liner and cruise ship launched in Germany in 1930. She was owned and operated by the German shipping line Hamburg Süd in the 1930s under the name Monte Rosa. During World War II she was operated by the German navy as a troopship. At the end of the war, she was taken by the British Government as a prize of war and renamed the Empire Windrush. In British service, she continued to be used as a troopship until March 1954, when the vessel caught fire and sank in the Mediterranean Sea with the loss of four crewmen. HMT stands for "His Majesty's Transport" and MV for "Motor Vessel".

In 1948, Empire Windrush brought a large group of West Indian immigrants to the United Kingdom, carrying 1,027 passengers and two stowaways on a voyage from Jamaica to London. 802 of these passengers gave their last country of residence as somewhere in the Caribbean: of these, 693 intended to settle in the United Kingdom. Additionally, the ship carried 66 Polish people intending to settle in Britain.

Windrush was not the first ship to carry a large group of West Indian people to the United Kingdom, as two other ships had arrived the previous year. But Windrush's 1948 voyage became very well-known; British Caribbean people who came to the United Kingdom in the period after World War II, including those who came on other ships, are sometimes referred to as the Windrush generation.

I have included 3 images of the ship in the photos, just for reference.