On turning a corner we saw the Ausonia for the first time. “On arrival at Portsmouth we were marched in a body through the dockyard. She re-commissioned at Portsmouth on the 2 nd May and one of her shipwrights, Charlie Baker, recalls joining her: The axe and the hammer allude to the role of the ship. The red field makes reference to the house flag and funnel colour of the Cunard Company, the lions face is taken from the Cunard badge. The crest consisted of a red blazon with a carpenter’s axe and a blacksmiths hammer in saltire, surmounted by a lions face in gold. On re-commissioning in 1944, HMS Ausonia was issued with a ships crest. She had a number of workshops including plate shop, welding, plumbers, smithy, coppersmiths, pattern makers and electrical along with her own drawing office. When the work was finished in May 1944, HMS Ausonia was an extremely effective repair ship.
Owing to the heavy demands on the dockyard services it was to be two years before the work was finished and when she commissioned again she would be almost unrecognisable as the former Cunard liner. On the 20 th April dockyard contractors started work on discharging the buoyant ballast and she paid off as an AMC on the 3 rd May 1942.
In March 1942 approval was given to convert the Ausonia into a repair ship and she left Bermuda on the 24 th March for Portsmouth, arriving there on the 6 th April at 6.24 pm. The first two AMC’s to be earmarked for this role were the Ausonia and the Aurania. In the middle of February 1942, the armed merchant cruiser HMS Ausonia sailed south to Bermuda where she carried out patrols in the Sargasso Sea but now, with the increasing need for repair and depot ships, the Ausonia’s role was about to change. HMS Ausonia after conversion to a Fleet Repair Ship
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