Qualla: SS Kurtuluş

SS Kurtuluş: Introduction

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The ship's name, *Kurtuluş*, means liberation in Turkish. She was old — built in 1883 in Barrow-in-Furness, England, and already pushing sixty when the mission came — but she was available, and the mission was urgent. In the winter of 1941, people were dying of hunger on the streets of Athens. The Great Famine that Nazi Germany's occupation had brought to Greece was killing tens of thousands of civilians. Someone had to carry food through the Allied naval blockade, and Turkey, neutral in the war, sent this ship.

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SS Kurtuluş: A Famine in Occupied Greece

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When German forces occupied Greece in April 1941, they requisitioned food supplies and left the civilian population to survive on what little remained. The Royal Navy maintained a blockade of Axis-controlled territory, which cut off normal food imports. The combination was catast...

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SS Kurtuluş: An Old Ship, a Wartime Errand

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The SS Kurtuluş had lived several lives before this one. Built as a dry-freight carrier — 76.5 metres long, 2,735 gross register tons capacity — she had changed flags and names multiple times before the Kalkavan brothers purchased her in 1924 to serve under the flag of the newly ...

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SS Kurtuluş: The Fifth Voyage

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

She left Istanbul on 18 February 1942, loaded and heading for Piraeus again. On the night of 20 February, a storm caught the old ship in the Sea of Marmara. Heavy weather drove her onto rocks off the coast near Saraylar village, on the north shore of Marmara Island. She did not s...

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SS Kurtuluş: The Mission Continued

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Turkey did not stop when it lost the Kurtuluş. The relief operation continued until 1946, carried on by other ships: the SS Dumlupınar, SS Tunç, SS Konya, SS Güneysu, and SS Aksu. One of these later voyages brought something beyond food. The SS Dumlupınar transported around 1,000...

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