After a 20-month lay-up at Southampton, Fairsky completed two further voyages to Australia, before returning to be based at Sydney as a popular full-time cruise ship, until striking an unmarked wreck in 1977 which rendered the vessel uneconomic to permanently repair.

Attacker saw extensive wartime service – initially in convoy escort duties and after further conversion by the Royal Navy in October 1943 – as an assault carrier for the remainder of the war.

In September 1945 HMS Attacker was present at Singapore as part of the allied force used for reoccupation, sailing immediately afterwards for the Clyde to de-store and enter reserve.

The ship was next sold to the U.S. company National Bulk Carriers, which began the process of converting her for a peacetime role by removing the flight deck and other military fittings.

Laid up for another two years, in 1952 she was renamed Castel Forte and sent to the Newport News shipyard in the United States, intended for conversion to a refrigerated cargo ship for Vlasov's Italian-managed Sitmar Line.

In 1957, Sitmar secured a charter from the Australian government for Castel Forte to carry British migrants to Australia and major structural work started on the ship at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard in New York.

Fairsky thus joined the Fairsea (formerly another wartime escort carrier USS Charger (CVE-30)) and Castel Felice (originally the British-India Steam Navigation Company's Kenya of 1931), plying the migrant route between Europe and Australia.

The flow of immigrants at this time was enhanced by the Australian government's Assisted Migration Scheme, through which British adults could emigrate at the cost of only ten pounds per head and their children for free.

One of the guest bands which played on the ship was The Seekers while on their way to the UK to begin their career and the pop music group, the Bee Gees, their parents Hugh and Barbara Gibb, and Ossie Byrne set sail from Australia in Fairsky on January 3, 1967, landing in Southampton on February 6.

[1][2] Gillard's successor as leader of the Australian Labor Party, Anthony Albanese, also has a connection to the ship as his parents first met aboard the Fairsky on a voyage from Sydney to Southampton in March 1962 (his father was a Sitmar Line steward).

The ship would first berth at Fremantle, Western Australia, then steam through the Great Australian Bight to Melbourne, Victoria and finally onto Sydney, New South Wales, dropping passengers off at each point.

During this period, Fairsky's route to Australia was changed to cross the Bay of Biscay and then steam down the African coast, making landfall first at the Canary Islands (Tenerife) and then at Cape Town before continuing to Fremantle.

The wreck was finally sold for demolition, arriving in Hong Kong under tow on 27 May 1980, bringing to a sudden end a long, varied and otherwise highly successful career.