HMT (Hired Military Transport) Dunera was a British passenger ship which, in 1940, became involved in a controversial transportation of thousands of "enemy aliens" to Australia. The British India Steam Navigation Company had operated a previous , which served as a troopship during the Second Boer War. Early service as a troopship After trials in 1937, she was handed over to the British-India Steam Navigation Company and served as a passenger liner and an educational cruise ship before seeing extensive service as a troopship throughout the Second World War. She was taken over by the Royal Navy as a troopship before hostilities started, and was taking troops to the Far East when her crew heard the news of war at Malta on 3 September 1939 (from private diary of telegraphist R H Wood). Dunera carried New Zealand troops to Egypt in January 1940. Transport voyage to Australia Background After Britain declared war on Germany the government set up aliens tribunals to distinguish Nazi sympathisers from refugees who had fled from Nazism. As a result, 568 were classified as unreliable, 6,800 were left at liberty but subject to restrictions, and 65,000 were regarded as "friendly". However, after the fall of France, the loss of the Low Countries and Italy's declaration of war, Britain stood alone against the Axis and anxieties became acute. In what Winston Churchill later regretted as "a deplorable and regrettable mistake," all Austrians and Germans, and many Italians, were suspected of being enemy agents, potentially helping to plan the invasion of Britain, and a decision was made to deport them. Canada agreed to take some of them and Australia others, though, "not since the middle of the nineteenth century had Australia received the unwanted of Britain transported across the world for the purposes of incarceration." Voyage On 10 July 1940, 2,542 detainees, all classified as "enemy aliens", were embarked aboard Dunera at Liverpool. While the detainees included 200 Italian and 251 German prisoners of war, as well as several dozen Nazi sympathizers, the majority were 2,036 Italian and German civilians who were anti-Nazi, most of them Jewish refugees. Some had already been to sea but their ship, the had been torpedoed en route to Canada, with great loss of life. In addition to the passengers were 309 poorly trained guards, mostly from the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps, as well as seven officers and the ship's crew, creating a