Photos- HMAS Albatross (later HMS Albatross) was a seaplane tender of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN)

HMAS Albatross (later HMS Albatross) was a seaplane tender of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), which was later transferred to the Royal Navy and used as a repair ship. Albatross was built by Cockatoo Island Dockyard during the mid-1920s and entered service at the start of 1929. The ship experienced problems with the aircraft assigned to her during her career: the amphibious aircraft she had been designed for were retired just before the ship entered service, the replacement aircraft could not be catapult-launched from the ship, and a new plane designed specifically to work with the ship began operations after Albatross was demoted from seagoing status in 1933.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAS_Albatross_(1928)

 

In 1946 the Admiralty sold Albatross to a British company which planned to convert her into a passenger luxury cruiser. High conversion costs caused abandonment of the scheme and it was decided to use the ship as an off-shore floating cabaret at Torquay on the Devonshire coast. However, she was saved from this fate when the Greek-British Yannoulatos Group of shipowners offered to buy her for the sum of £185,000. The deal was completed on the day Prince Charles was born (14 November 1948) and in his honour her new owners renamed the ship Hellenic Prince.

The Yannoulatos Group sent her to Barry in Wales, where she was converted to a modern passenger vessel at a cost of £200,000.

The former Albatross as she appeared following conversion to the Hellenic Prince.

In late 1949 she was chartered by the International Refugee Organization as a refugee transport. On 5 December 1949 she reached Sydney carrying 1,000 displaced persons thus returning to her birthplace after an absence of more than eleven years.

The ship's career finally ended when she was scrapped at Hong Kong on 12 August 1954.