Giovanni Ansaldo and Company built the ship in 1941 for the Garibaldi group, which assigned her to its shipowning subsidiary SA Cooperativa di Navigazione.

She was a modern cargo ship, with a diesel engine driving her single screw and giving her a speed of 15 knots (28 km/h).

[1] On 16 August 1942 Nino Bixio and another Italian cargo ship, Sestriere, embarked several thousand UK, Dominion and Allied prisoners of war from the North African Campaign at Benghazi in Libya.

[3] The two ships sailed for Brindisi in Italy, escorted by the destroyers Saetta and Nicoloso da Recco and the torpedo boats Castore and Orione.

At 16:33 on Monday 17 August Turbulent fired a spread of four torpedoes at the two cargo ships, and then dived deep to evade counter-attack.

[2] Saetta towed Nino Bixio to the Peloponnesian port of Pylos in Italian-occupied Greece, where the damaged ship was beached.

[4] They were moved to prisoner of war Camp 57 at Grupignano/San Mauro, about 9 miles (15 km) east of Udine in north-eastern Italy.

20 New Zealand soldiers are buried at Pylos and their names are included on the CWGC's Phaleron War Memorial in Athens.

A white marble tablet commemorating the 116 New Zealanders and 41 Australians among Ninio Bixio's dead was installed in the chapel in the 21st century.

In her peacetime career she visited a number of New Zealand ports including Wellington, where on 25 January 1955 a wreath-laying ceremony was held aboard her foredeck.