Laid down as Metapedia, this ship was renamed Montclare before being
launched in December 1921 at John Brown & Co. Her maiden voyage, on 18
August 1922, was on Canadian Pacific's Liverpool-Québec-Montréal
service.
Like her sisters,
Montcalm and
Montrose II,
Montclare was re-engined at
Harland & Wolff, with single reduction geared turbines; Montclare's were
installed in 1929. Also like Montrose, Montclare later moved to the
Antwerp and Hamburg services, both in 1929. She made her last regular
Hamburg-Canada sailing in November 1933 and spent the next seven years
cruising and taking sporadic transatlantic sailings from Liverpool,
Southampton, Antwerp and Hamburg. She made her last Canadian Pacific
voyage on 21 July 1939, a Liverpool-Montréal roundtrip.
Montclare was taken over as an armed merchant cruiser in August 1939. In
1942, she was purchased by the Admiralty and converted into a submarine
depot ship. Decommissioned in 1954, she was laid up at Gareloch and
Portsmouth until she was scrapped in 1958.
