Qualla: SS Georgetown Victory

SS Georgetown Victory: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonard G., CC0. Just before midnight on 30 April 1946, a 10,500-ton American Victory ship steaming at near top speed put her bow into the rocks 100 yards south of Killard Point. There were 1,400 Royal Navy and Royal Marines on board, on their way home from Sydney to Glasgow, and a single police constable in Ballyhornan got the call. His name was Eric Bownes. From midnight until five o'clock the following afternoon, he worked the wreck and the beach. By the time the Cloughey and Newcastle lifeboats arrived later on the 1st of May, every one of the 1,400 men was ashore. The SS Georgetown Victory had ended her career in eighteen hours. The men she carried had a war to walk away from.

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Image: Leonard G. | CC0

SS Georgetown Victory: A Ship Built in a Hurry

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonard G., CC0. Georgetown Victory was laid down on 8 March 1945 at the Bethlehem-Fairfield yard in Baltimore. She was launched on 28 April that year, the same week the war in Europe was ending, and completed on 22 May. She was a VC2-S-AP2 type, hull number 653, one of the new Victory ships desi...

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Image: Leonard G. | CC0

SS Georgetown Victory: The Last Voyage

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonard G., CC0. By 1946 Georgetown Victory had taken the 326th Glider Infantry Regiment home to New York, delivered troops to Port Dickson in Malaysia and Rabaul in Papua New Guinea, and called at Brisbane in February. In November 1945, while she was tied up in Saigon, her merchant seamen met ab...

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Image: Leonard G. | CC0

SS Georgetown Victory: Constable Bownes

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonard G., CC0. Eric Bownes was a young constable in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, posted to a stretch of coast where the busiest night was usually a poacher. He was the only police officer on the scene. The wreck lay close enough to shore that men could be waded in across the broken water, and...

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Image: Leonard G. | CC0

SS Georgetown Victory: What the Sea Kept

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonard G., CC0. Pieces of the Georgetown Victory are still there. The wreck site, a hundred yards off Killard Point in shallow water, is a dive site now, the kind of place that local divers know in detail and the rest of the country has forgotten. Eric Bownes, the constable who never set out to ...

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Image: Leonard G. | CC0