She was one of a class of five sister ships popularly known as "Lady Boats" that Cammell Laird of Birkenhead, England built in 1928 and 1929 for the Canadian National Steamship Company (CNS or CN).

Cammell Laird of Birkenhead, on the Wirral in England built all five Lady-liners, and completed Lady Hawkins in November 1928.

[2] Lady Hawkins was an oil-burner, with a set of four Cammell Laird steam turbines driving the propeller shafts to her twin screws by single-reduction gearing.

[3] CN introduced the liners which became known as "Lady Boats" for mail, freight and passenger traffic between Canada, Bermuda and the Caribbean.

CN named each of its five new liners after the wife of an English or British admiral who was noted for his actions in the Caribbean,[6] and who had been knighted or ennobled.

[10] The boat had no radio transmitter and very limited rations of drinking water, ship's biscuit and condensed milk.

It shipped water and needed constant baling, but it had a mast, sail and oars and Chief Officer Percy Kelly set a course west toward the USA's Atlantic coast sea lanes and land.

[13] On 27 October 1942 two of Lady Hawkins' Able Seamen, Ernest Rice and Clarence Squires, were commended in Naval citations.