In 1948, Empire Windrush arrived at the Port of Tilbury coast near London, carrying 1,027 passengers and two stowaways who embarked at Trinidad, Jamaica, Mexico and Bermuda.

[4] British Caribbean people who came to the United Kingdom in the period after World War II, including those who came on other ships, are often referred to as the Windrush generation.

The company commissioned another ship, Monte Cervantes, to meet the increased demand, but an uncharted rock sank her after only two years' service.

[13][Note 2] Some official documents, including the enquiry report into the ship's loss, use "MV" (which stands for Motor Vessel), instead of "HMT".

[15] Monte Rosa entered service just as the Great Depression was causing a global slump in shipping, including Hamburg Süd's passenger business.

[16] This provided concerts, lectures, sports activities and cheap holidays as a means of strengthening support for the Nazi regime and indoctrinating people in its ideology.

In 1933, the new German ambassador, Baron Edmond von Thermann [de], sailed to Argentina aboard Monte Rosa.

From 11 January 1940 she was a barracks ship at Stettin (now Szczecin), and in April 1940 she was a troopship for the invasion of Norway, mainly sailing to Oslo.

[24] She made two trips from Oslo to Denmark on 19 and 26 November,[25] carrying a total of 46 people, including the Polish-Norwegian businessman and humanitarian Moritz Rabinowitz.

[28] In September 1943, Royal Navy X-class submarines in Operation Source badly damaged the battleship Tirpitz in Altafjord in Norway.

In his memoirs, published on 2008, he wrote that the ship was carrying German troops, plus Norwegian women with young children, who were being taken to Germany as part of the Lebensborn programme.

[39] On 16 February 1945 a mine explosion near the Hel Peninsula in the Baltic damaged Monte Rosa, flooding her engine room.

In 1948, Empire Windrush travelled from the United Kingdom to the Caribbean, to repatriate around 500 West Indians who had served in the Royal Air Force during World War 2.

[citation needed] A figure often given for the number of West Indian migrants aboard Empire Windrush is 492,[2][50][51] based on news reports in the media at the time, which variously announced that "more than 400", "430" or "500" Jamaican men had arrived in Britain.

[52][53][54] However, the ship's manifest, kept in the United Kingdom National Archives, shows that 802 passengers gave their last place of residence as a country in the Caribbean.

[52] The name Windrush, as a result, has come to be used as shorthand for West Indian migration,[74] and, by extension, for the beginning of modern British multiracial society.

[75] The day after arrival, several MPs, including James Dixon Murray, warned the Prime Minister that such an "argosy of Jamaicans",[76] might "cause discord and unhappiness among all concerned".

Passengers who had not already arranged accommodation were temporarily housed in the Clapham South deep shelter in southwest London, less than a mile away from the Coldharbour Lane Employment Exchange in Brixton, where some of the arrivals sought work.

Those born in the West Indies who settled in the UK in this migration movement over the following years are now typically referred to as the "Windrush Generation".

[79] While the 1948 voyage of the Empire Windrush is well-known, she was not the first ship to bring West Indians to the UK after World War II.

[86] On 7 February 1953, around 200 nautical miles (370 km) south of the Nicobar Islands, Empire Windrush sighted a small cargo motor ship, Holchu, adrift with a broken mast.

[87] Holchu was carrying a cargo of bagged rice and was in good condition apart from her broken mast; the vessel was not short of food, water or fuel.

[citation needed] The voyage was beset by engine breakdowns and other defects, including a fire after the leaving Hong Kong.

[9] At around 0617 hrs on 28 March, Windrush was in the western Mediterranean, off the coast of Algeria, about 30 nautical miles (56 km) northwest of Cape Caxine.

The Chief Officer immediately mustered the ship's firefighting squad, who happened to be on deck at the time doing routine work, and went with them to the engine room.

[9] At 0645 hrs, firefighting was halted, and the order was given[clarification needed] to launch the lifeboats, with the first ones away carrying the women and children[9][96] and the ship's cat.

The fire was still burning fiercely more than a day after it started, but a party from Saintes managed to board her and secure a tow cable.

Member of Parliament, Bessie Braddock asked questions to Minister of Transport Alan Lennox-Boyd regarding the ship's state of repair.

She had in her possessions five letters he wrote to his father, which described the ship as being in a poor state of repair, subject to continuous serious breakdowns and a previous fire.

[111] On 27 July 2012 this part of the ship's history was briefly commemorated in the Pandemonium sequence of the Opening Ceremony of the Games of the XXX Olympiad in London.