I think most people from Bradford will be unaware of the significance of having three ships named after the city during world wars which were all merchantmen'," writes Derek A J Lister.

I think he's probably right, and I'm indebted to the Bradford author for the research which has produced the following information.

The City of Bradford, a passenger/ cargo ship with a capacity for 50 cabins and 250 deck passengers, was built in Hull in 1903 for the Great Central Railway. She made her maiden voyage from Grimsby to Rotterdam in September of that year, then traded to Norway and Sweden before being used on the Hamburg service.

On August 3, 1914, she left Grimsby for Hamburg, but lacking a radio the captain was unaware that war had broken out and the ship was seized by German ships off Heligoland. In 1915 she was converted to a floating workshop and began service with the Imperial German Navy under the name of Donau.

By 1916 she was being used as a depot ship in the Baltic and in 1917 took part in the capture of Oesal Island off Riga.

On January 20, 1919, she was recovered by the British, towed to Grimsby and returned to her owners. By 1935 she was in the hands of Associated Humber Lines and was put up for sale. The following year she was sold for £5,500 to Near East Shipping Co, London, and renamed Hanne. On February 22, 1942, she was bombed and sunk off Malta by German aircraft.

The first Bradford City had a rather shorter career. It was built in 1910 and was allocated to Senior Naval Oficer, Gibraltar. On August 16, 1917, while she was being used as a "Q-ship", a submarine decoy vessel, she was torpedoed in the Straits of Messina off the Italian coast.

The Q-ships, or mystery ships, were developed because of the large loss of shipping caused by German U-boats early in the First World War. They were made to look poorly maintained, with an outward appearance indistinguishable from ordinary merchantmen. However, they were heavily armed and would drop their disguise when a U-boat drew close enough to be attacked.

Early in the war these ships accounted for about a third of the U-boats destroyed. Later the Germans figured out what was happening and there were fewer successes. It's been reported that there were possibly 366 Q-ships, and 61 of them were lost in the war, including the Bradford City.

Another Bradford City was a merchant ship launched from Middlesbrough in 1936. The weeks leading up to its sinking after being torpedoed were later recorded by one of the survivors, Leonard Ball.

He said that after sailing to Egypt with a cargo of military supplies for the 8th Army they were in Alexandria for 42 days, during which time they suffered 42 air raids.

"We were continuously covered in mud and slime and sewage which the bombs threw up when they hit the water," he wrote. "I could smell it for months afterwards. For me this was the worst moment of the war.

"Our next voyage was to Karachi and back with some railway lines and then we set off to Mauritius where we loaded 14,000 tons of sugar. We rounded the Cape and two or three days later (at 3.30am on November 1, 1941) we were torpedoed. The sugar acted like sandbags and delayed us going down instantly and we succeeded in getting two lifeboats away with everybody on board."

"Then the submarine surfaced. The Germany captain wanted to know the name of our ship. After that we were left to get on with it."

A week later they managed to land near Walvis Bay and were rescued by South African troops.