[1] San Demetrio had loaded 11,200 tons of aviation fuel in Aruba, Dutch West Indies and was bound for Avonmouth, England.

[6] The Town-class destroyers HMCS Columbia and HMCS St. Francis escorted the convoy out of Canadian home waters but once clear of the coast, the convoy's sole escort was the armed merchant cruiser HMS Jervis Bay[6] – a converted passenger liner that had been armed with seven outdated BL 6 inch Mk VII naval guns and a pair of 3-inch (76 mm) anti-aircraft guns.

Nevertheless, her Master, Captain Waite, believed that the fire could set off the aviation fuel at any moment so he gave the order to abandon ship.

The sixteen men in the other lifeboat, including Second Officer Arthur G. Hawkins and Chief Engineer Charles Pollard, drifted for 24 hours when they sighted a burning ship.

In the end they chose to remain in the lifeboat because the fire was too great and the weather too hazardous to attempt boarding, but after a second night in the boat and enduring a freezing North Atlantic winter gale, they regretted not re-boarding the tanker.

At dawn the following day, 7 November 1940, the San Demetrio was about 5 nautical miles (9 km) downwind so the crew set sail toward her and re-boarded.

Since the crew had received no assistance from another vessel, in the ensuing case in the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court,[9][10] they were able to claim the salvage money from the insurers for the ship and cargo.

Another £1,000 went to 26-year-old Oswald John Edmund Preston, a Canadian seaman and Naturalized American Citizen, because he played a "magnificent" part when the battle started.

[3][8] Chief Engineer Charles Pollard and Deck Apprentice John Lewis Jones each received the Lloyd's War Medal for Bravery at Sea.

[4] The ship's part in Convoy HX 84 was made into a film, San Demetrio London in 1943, starring Walter Fitzgerald, Mervyn Johns, Ralph Michael, and Robert Beatty.

An 64-page account of the events surrounding the sinking written by F. Tennyson Jesse, The Saga of San Demetrio, was published by HMSO in 1942 as an exercise in helping boost public morale.

One of the ship's crew, Able Seaman Calum Macneil, wrote a book called San Demetrio, which was published by Angus and Robertson in 1957.

[18] The compass along with two newspaper cuttings (pictured right) were stored in John Jamieson's father's tenement from 1940 until 1972 at 600 Paisley Road West, Glasgow, then in Southampton, before being donated to the Imperial War Museum.