Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

In 1922, Mataroa, sister ship of Sophocles, which became Tamaroa, was built as Diogenes for the Aberdeen Line.
Launched: March, 1922, Harland & Wolff at Belfast
On August 16, 1922, Diogenes commenced her maiden voyage from London to Australia via South Africa.
Displacement: 12,341 gross tons
Length: 500·4 feet
Beam: 63·2 feet
Draught: 24 feet, 2 inches
Engine: Twin screw, initially coal fired turbines, changed to oil fired in 1926
Cruising speed: 13·5 knots
Accommodation: 130 first and 422 third class passengers initially

In June, 1926, Diogenes, along with her sister ship Tamaroa, formerly Sophocles, was converted from coal to oil fuel, and given a speed of 15 knots.
She was chartered by Shaw Savill& Albion Line.
She commenced sailings from Southampton to Wellington via Panama.
In 1932, she was purchased by Shaw Savill, and renamed Mataroa.

On May 15, 1943, SS Mataroa sailed from Avonmouth.
She left the Bristol Channel and went up the Irish Sea to Greenock, to join up with the convoy, which included Caernarvon Castle.
During the voyage, a German Fokke Wulf Condor flew over and tried to bomb the aircraft carrier in the convoy, and there were encounters with a U-Boat, and the destroyers dropped depth charges quite regularly.
Because the convoy couldn't go through the Suez Canal, because of the fighting in North Africa, they sailed down the coast of Africa, and around the Cape.

In 1944, Mataroa transported US troops to Northern Ireland in preparation for the Normandy Invasion.
Because pressure in Southern Ireland and the United States decreed that no Americans of Irish descent should go to the North, the United States Army sent all black troops to Ireland.

In 1945, Jewish Brigade soldiers arranged for the legal immigration of groups of survivors to Palestine.
On July 2, 1945, Mataroa, the first boat, sailed from England through the Mediterranean.

In July, 1945, SS Mataroa sailed from Napoli, carrying some 1,164 passengers without certificates, survivors from Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald.
United States Holocaust Museum Memorial cites: "The Buchenwald children were a group of approximately 1,000 child survivors found by American troops when they liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp on April 11, 1945. Most of the children were found in barrack #66."
This was a legal transport, which was funded in part by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee AJDC.

On July 15, 1945, RMS Mataroa arrived at Haifa.

Mataroa docked at Haifa, and all the passengers were put unto railway wagons, and transported by the British soldiers to Atlit detention camp.

On July 15, 1945, Miriam Weinfeld and Hanan Jakobovicz arrived in Haifa, with a Youth Aliyah group on a boat from Marseille.

In September, 1945, Gabi Rosenblatt and his parents sailed on SS Mataroa from Marseille.

On August 5, 1947, SS Mataroa docked at Liverpool, having sailed from Port Said, carrying 199 Polish Displaced Pesons from Lebanon لُبْنَان‎, organized by the Polish Resettlement Organisation.

On March 29, 1957, Mataroa arrived at Faslane. to be scrapped, and her ship's bell was given to New Zealand's Mataroa School.