Arrivals from Jamaica

SIR – James Weymouth (Letters, May 5) perpetuates the myth that the Empire Windrush brought the first postwar Jamaican immigrants to Britain.

In fact the first ship to bring migrants to Britain was my father’s ship, the (then HMT) Ormonde. My father served on her as ship’s surgeon during the Second World War. This first postwar migrant voyage, from Jamaica to Liverpool’s Albert Dock, occurred over a year before Empire Windrush. Ormonde was returning demobbed Caribbean soldiers and was advertised in the Sunday Gleaner newspaper on March 2 1947 for passengers wanting to travel to Britain on the return. This was to be at their own cost; 108 people applied. Tim Twist

Matlock, Derbyshire