As HMS Ebro in the First World War she served with the 10th Cruiser Squadron from 1915 to 1917, and escorted convoys between the British Isles and Sierra Leone in 1918.

As Serpa Pinto in the Second World War she made several transatlantic crossings, on which she carried many refugees who had escaped German-occupied Europe.

[3] In 1914 Workman, Clark and Company of Belfast launched a pair of steamships for RMSP's service between England and the West Indies.

According to one source, on 28 October 1919 she traversed the Panama Canal for the first time, heading from the Caribbean to the Pacific, in the service of RMSP's subsidiary PSNC.

[12] On 16 December PSNC's New York agents, Sanderson and Sons, gave a banquet for 175 shipping and railroad men aboard Ebro at Pier 42 in the North River.

[17] On her return voyage her ports of call included Colón, Panama on 29 February, and she got back to New York on 8 March.

[24] When Ebro docked at Pier 42 on the North River on 19 January 1923, US Customs men seized "a large quantity" of liquor, narcotics, and several automatic firearms that were not on her manifest.

[25] In March 1924 Customs men in New York raided RMSP's Orduña and confiscated liquor and morphine valued at $16,000.

William Hayward, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, sought to seize Orduña for violations of Federal law.

[27] As a result, from April 1924 RMSP and PSNC posted two or more armed guards aboard each of their ships when they were in port in New York.

[32] At about 02:00 hrs on 5 July 1927, as Ebro neared New York, fire was discovered in 800 bales of cotton in her number 6 cargo hold.

[33] Five minutes after the last of her passengers had disembarked, Roberts ordered number 6 hatch opened, and longshoremen wearing gas masks went below in relays to raise bales of cotton to reach the seat of the fire.

[10] On 8 September the German auxiliary cruiser Widder captured the Greek cargo ship Antonios Chandris in the South Atlantic.

[40] A UK cargo ship found the other lifeboat, and on 21 October landed its ten surviving occupants at Buenos Aires.

Passengers complained that the food on board had been very bad, the ship was under-manned, the crew was over-worked, and water had got into some of the third class accommodation during the gales.

[43] Among the passengers were Czechoslovak, French, and German film producers, directors, and screenwriters, including the Czech Paul Schiller.

Porto Rico Line held its ship Coamo in New York for three hours to give the party time to make their connection.

Even so, she carried fourth class accommodation in three sections in her cargo holds, with improvised bunk beds between decks, for which the one-way fare was $170.

She reached Stapleton, Staten Island on 30 March carrying 640 passengers, including the Jewish sculptor Naoum Aronson; and Nessim Ovadia, Chief Rabbi of the Sephardic Jews in Paris.

Her passengers included 29 survivors from Zamzam, which the German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis had sunk in the South Atlantic two months previously.

[48] Also aboard were Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson,[49] Washington Luís, former President of Brazil, and a pair of Polish teenage aristocrats bringing a Stradivarius violin that they were to deliver to Bronisław Huberman.

[51] The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), in consultation with the HICEM, arranged for Serpa Pinto to embark refugees in Lisbon, sail on 25 October, embark more refugees at Casablanca in French Morocco, and take them across the North Atlantic to the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mexico, and New York.

[58][59] On 26 December the ship reached Pier 9 on Staten Island, where her disembarking passengers included the anti-fascist Randolfo Pacciardi.

[56] On 9 February 1942 it was reported that 150 Polish Jewish refugees, accompanied by a JDC representative, had left Lisbon aboard Serpa Pinto to be resettled in Jamaica.

On 6 May 1942 three members of her crew were arrested in Rio de Janeiro on suspicion of smuggling platinum, allegedly on behalf of a German diplomat.

However, US authorities held her for at least two days, reportedly over a dispute with the German government about which US port the Swedish liner Drottningholm should use when repatriating diplomats on either side of the war.

[69] On a subsequent crossing to Philadelphia she passed the Delaware Breakwater on 24 January 1943, but was then stopped off Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania for five US government agencies to question her 188 passengers before allowing them to disembark.

Her passengers included 32 children of various nationalities, who had been refugees in Spain since the German and Italian invasion of Vichy France in November 1942.

The 16-month-old daughter of a Polish refugee couple was killed when one of the lifeboats was being lowered and one of the boat's falls broke, tipping all of its occupants into the sea.

On 9 July 1954 she left Lisbon on a final voyage to Santos, via São Vicente, Cape Verde and Rio de Janeiro.