Empress of Asia was built for Canadian Pacific by Fairfield
Shipbuilding and Engineering of Glasgow, and was launched in November
1912. She made her maiden voyage, Liverpool-Cape Town-Hong Kong on 14
June 1913, and from there entered Canadian Pacific's transpacific
service between Vancouver and Yokohama.
She was requisitioned for use as a Red Sea armed merchant cruiser in
1914. She was returned to Canadian Pacific in 1916, but was again
requisitioned, as a troop ship, in 1918. She resumed her duties in
Canadian Pacific's transpacific service in 1919, and made a total of 307
voyages.
She was again requisitioned as a trooper in 1941, one of a very small
number of merchant ships to see duty in both World Wars. (Her sister,
Empress of Russia,
was another.) On 5 February 1942, she was sunk by a
Japanese air attack while off Singapore; out of the 2, 651 people on
board, there were fewer than twenty killed, but a large number of the
survivors were taken prisoner when Singapore fell a week and a half
later. The ship herself drifted ashore and burned out over the two days
following the attack. She was scrapped where she lay beginning in 1952.
