34cm (13.5in) x 26cm (10in) x 17cm (6.5in)
A Second World War ram horn mount on oak escutcheon inscribed 'HMS / Dunnottar Castle //Tristan Da Cunha 1942’.
In August 1939 the ocean liner Dunnottar Castle was requisitioned by the Admiralty and converted to an armed merchant cruiser. She served on convoy duty in the South Atlantic Station and as part of the Freetown Escort Force. In late March 1942, she was dispatched on a secret mission (Job 9) to the remote island of Tristan da Cuna to set up a radio station to intercept wireless traffic between surfaced U-boats and their bases in the fortified French Atlantic ports. Dunnottar Castle’s mission further included the construction of a weather station resulting in the commissioning of the island as a ‘stone frigate’ named HMS Atlantic Isle. The navy’s arrival revolutionised the life of the islanders who before the war numbered no more than 180 people, about the same number of cattle and some 40 horses. Dependant on the island’s main crop, potatoes, their diet was supplemented on high days and holidays with the ‘harvesting’ of one of the unknown number of sheep that roamed Tristan’s mountains. Upon completion of her mission, Dunnottar returned to Freetown, Sierra Leone, and from there, on 13 May 1942, departed on her final Atlantic escort duty (Convoy SL-110), arriving off Liverpool on 4 June 1942. She was afterwards handed over to the Ministry of Transport to serve as a troopship before being returned to her owners in 1948.