In 1979, she became stuck in ice and suffered a cataphoric structural failure, resulting in her bow sheering off and the spilling of 10,000 tons of oil off Nova Scotia, Canada.

[3] Anticipating demand from the new refinery, the Nile Steamship Company, itself a subsidiary of Common Brothers, ordered two oil tankers from Swan Hunter shipbuilders at a combined cost of $15 million ($102,953,523 in 2023).

[11] On 16 July 1975, she collided with the Mount Hope Bridge while traveling to Tiverton, Rhode Island at night in heavy fog.

[1] While traveling from Point Tupper, Nova Scotia to Sept-Îles, Quebec on 15 March 1979, laden with 30,000 tons of heated Bunker c oil, Kurdistan encountered heavy winter pack ice in the Cabot Strait around noon and was unable to proceed.

Almost immediately after clearing the ice, the tanker was caught in a heavy swell and crew reported hearing a "thud and a shudder", and Kurdistan's hull began to crack vertically in two separate areas.

In the disaster, 10,000 tons of heavy oil was ultimately spilled into the Cabot Strait, with the clean-up efforts along Cape Breton Island's western coastline taking ten months to complete.

[17] The severed bow section was towed to deep water south of Sable Island and sunk by gunfire from HMCS Margaree on 1 April 1979.

[16][18][19] An inquiry later blamed the wreck on human error, with faulty welding to the ship's hull made shortly before the incident being deemed responsible.

[1][22] Her purchase while in drydock left Common Brothers to cover the cost of reconstruction, who financed the move with bank loans in hopes to achieve questionable profits previously forecasted.

By 1982, the company had missed the forecasted profits and approached a crisis as its stock rapidly deflated, interest on debt mounted, and began losing money due to failed investments.