German WW2 Navy HAPAG.D Bayern cap tally
A very hard to find cap tally from a ship with a very intersting story.
Below you will find some history and photos about the ship, the newspaper article is from 1945.
Has both the Weimar flag as the WW2 national flag.
We can date this cap tally from around 1932-1936. Most likely in the earlier span 1932-1936.
Nor earlier or later is possible since the ship was sold to the French government.
Full length. No damages.
HISTORY:
Originally named BAYERN the ship had been built and completed by Bremer Vulkan at Vegesack in 1921 for the Hamburg America Line, for whom she did one voyage to New York and then switched to the Far East Service.
In 1936 she was acquired by an affiliate of the French Messageries Maritimes to carry Foreign Legion troops to Indo China as stated, and re-named SONTAY [after an MSL liner famously torpedoed during WWI, in 1917].
As such she had fallen under Vichy French control and was boarded and captured by the British en route from Tamatave to Dakar in West Africa on Feb. 25, 1941, becoming a British trooper managed by Union Castle.
Under the British flag the Sontay carried thousands of troops between Durban and Suez and in the Mediterranean.
