Requisition
Between February 1926 and September 1940, the ship operated as a civilian transport for Elder & Fyffes Ltd., based in London. [4] Her primary cargo was bananas and passengers, maneuvering on trade routes between the United Kingdom and the Caribbean. She had multiple freezer compartments to store the food goods, and numerous amenities for passengers. She was involved in no major incidents before her requisition.
As the war grew closer to mainland England, the ship was requisition in September 1940 and commissioned into service in March 1941. [5] She was redesigned to be a fighter catapult ship (FCS) of the Pegasus class, capable of storing and launching one Fairey Fulmar aircraft. [6] On 26 October 1941, at 03:54 while escorting Convoy HG 75, she was struck by a torpedo fired by the German submarine U-83 at a location roughly 600 miles (970 km) southwest of Portugal. [7] The crew immediately abandoned ship but returned to her at dawn once they realized she was not going to flood and sink. She was towed to Gibraltar, arriving on 2 November, with the help of numerous ships including; [1]
She was laid up at Gibraltar until February 1943, when she was then towed to The Clyde where she would arrive at Tyne on 22 March 1943. Following her repairs in Scotland, she returned to civilian service under her previous owners, [4] servicing the same routes she had served before the war. [10] She was sold for scrap in November 1956 and broken up at Briton Ferry, Wales, after a 30-year service life.
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
London 
United Kingdom