After her tow lines were cut, she repeatedly crashed on the rocky breakwater outside Apra Harbor, Guam and broke into three sections.

After World War II, the Cunard White Star Line operated three ships on the Southampton—New York run.

The smaller and slower RMS Mauretania served as an auxiliary ship on this route in addition to performing seasonal cruises out of New York City.

With this in mind, the new ship – soon to be named Caronia by Princess Elizabeth – received many different features from her Cunard White Star fleetmates.

On short cruises to the Caribbean and South America, every cabin was offered for occupation and often, as on transatlantic crossings, there would be two sittings for luncheon and dinner.

Instead of going for the then typical black hull with a white superstructure, Caronia received a unique livery of four different shades of "Cruising Green", making her a highly attractive and instantly recognizable vessel.

[2] Caronia was the largest passenger ship to be built in Scotland after World War 2 until Queen Elizabeth 2 twenty years later.

[8] Her annual refit in November 1956 saw Caronia modernised for southern cruising with air-conditioning outfitted through the entire ship.

By this time Caronia's itineraries had settled into a yearly pattern, each cruise having found its ideal individual place in the calendar.

By the early 1960s other shipping companies were catching up with Cunard and building their own purpose-built cruiseships, which in addition to being better equipped than Caronia were better suited for cruising than she had ever been.

To keep up with her newer competitors, Cunard decided that in November 1965 Caronia would be drydocked for ten weeks,[9] new suites and a lido deck built, and her interior brought up to date.

Things turned for the worse on her second cruise, when an explosion in the engine room resulted in the death of one crew member and the severe scalding of another.

In addition the ship lost all electrical power for twenty hours before repairs allowed her to return to port.

[12] Plans to revive Caribia were considered for the next five years,[13] but she remained docked in New York and her berthing debts continued to accumulate.

[14] On August 12, 1974, Hamburg's generators failed and her crew were forced to cut Caribia loose to save their own vessel.

As Apra is the only deep-water harbor on Guam, this made resupply of many vital commodities (e.g., petroleum products) impossible or difficult.