The ship was lost 26 March 1941 in an air attack causing fires and wreck ashore near St. Ann's Head near Milford Haven.

Two six cylinder triple expansion engines designed to be capable of operating at very low revolutions for cable laying drove twin screws.

[7] By the end of that year the ship laid cable between the Atlantic islands of Fernando de Noronha and São Vicente, Cape Verde.

Faraday carried out a number of cable laying and surveying exercises both in home waters and the Pacific until 1939.

The cable was a new type carrying the signal over a single wire described as a central conductor separated from another composed of "five copper tapes, which are insulated from the central copper conductor wire by a new substance known as “paragutta,” and covered again by a coating of the same material."

This plan was cancelled after the evacuation from Narvik and the ship was then laid up until requisitioned by the Admiralty, becoming HMS Faraday with some of the civilian crew remaining on board to maintain the cable machinery, first for training of Naval cadets but then for cable work around the African coast.

The Faraday was carrying 90 miles,[note 1] 3,870 tons, of submarine telephone cable required in Freetown, Cape Town, Mombassa and Suez.