AUSTRAL RAINBOW AK 1005

Ship Name and Designation History

This section lists the names and designations that the ship had during its lifetime. The list is in chronological order.

Lighter Aboard Ship (LASH) Cargo Ship Laid down circa 1971-72 as SS CHINA BEAR at Avondale Industries, New Orleans, LA. LASH is a system for loading barges or (lighters) onto a large vessel for transport Launched (date unknown) CHINA BEAR (Commercial Service) Completed and delivered, 25 May 1972 to Pacific Far East Lines Inc Sold to Farrell Lines Inc., 22 December 1975 AUSTRAL RAINBOW (Commercial Service) Renamed 30 December 1975 AUSTRAL RAINBOW AK-1005 Chartered by the Military Sealift Command (MSC), from 22 October 1981 to 21 October 1985 Time-chartered by MSC from 30 May 1987 to March 1990 AUSTRAL RAINBOW (Commercial Service) Returned to her owners for commercial service upon completion of her contract with MSC Sold to Central Gulf Lines Inc., October 1990 Laid up for scrapping in Malaysia in February 2000

 

Naval Covers

This section lists active links to the pages displaying covers associated with the ship. There should be a separate set of pages for each name of the ship (for example, Bushnell AG-32 / Sumner AGS-5 are different names for the same ship so there should be one set of pages for Bushnell and one set for Sumner). Covers should be presented in chronological order (or as best as can be determined).

Since a ship may have many covers, they may be split among many pages so it doesn't take forever for the pages to load. Each page link should be accompanied by a date range for covers on that page.

1. Covers Page 1     (DATE RANGE)

 

Postmarks

This section lists examples of the postmarks used by the ship. There should be a separate set of postmarks for each name and/or commissioning period. Within each set, the postmarks should be listed in order of their classification type. If more than one postmark has the same classification, then they should be further sorted by date of earliest known usage.

A postmark should not be included unless accompanied by a close-up image and/or an image of a cover showing that postmark. Date ranges MUST be based ONLY ON COVERS IN THE MUSEUM and are expected to change as more covers are added.
 
>>> If you have a better example for any of the postmarks, please feel free to replace the existing example.

 

Postmark Type --- Killer Bar Text	Date From to Date To	Thumbnail Link To Postmark Image	Thumbnail Link To Cover Image

 

Kobe JAPAN Postmark

Unknown

N/A

SS CHINA BEAR (May 1972-December 1975)

 

Other Information

This section lists any other information that might be relevant to this ship.

 

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If you have images or information to add to this page, then either contact the Curator or edit this page yourself and add it. See Editing Ship Pages for detailed information on editing this page.

 

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