The second was a 19,777 GRT turbine steamship that was launched in 1924 in England, converted into a troop ship in the Second World War and sunk by a German cruiser in the Norwegian campaign in 1940.

[2][3] Orient Line ran a fortnightly liner service between Tilbury and Brisbane via Gibraltar, Toulon, Naples, the Suez Canal, Colombo, Fremantle, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.

In 1909 Orient Line upgraded its service with five new twin-screw sister ships, each of slightly more than 12,000 GRT, with twin screws driven by quadruple-expansion steam engines.

Most notable were the three giant Olympic-class transatlantic liners that Harland and Wolff built for White Star Line from 1910 onward.

When Orient Line ordered a sixth ship, Orama, to join the five sisters built in 1908 and 1909, it therefore specified that she should have three propellers and combination machinery,[8] with a pair of four-cylinder triple-expansion engines plus a low-pressure turbine.

For slow-speed manoeuvering, or going astern, her low-pressure turbine could be cut out by valves diverting the exhaust steam from her reciprocating engines straight to her condensers.

[18] In April 1913 Orient Line announced that it would order a sister ship for Orama, and had invited five UK shipbuilders to submit tenders.

[19] This was RMS Ormonde, for which Orient Line awarded the contract to John Brown & Co. She was laid down in 1913 but the First World War delayed her building for two years, and she was not launched until 1917.

[24] Her passengers included Havelock Wilson, President of the UK National Sailors' and Firemen's Union, which had won recognition from the Shipping Federation earlier that year.

[25][26] He was on his way to the hot springs at Rotorua in New Zealand to treat his gout, and thereafter he planned to address trade union meetings in Australia before his return to the UK.

[27] In the Red Sea Orama passed the P&O liner RMS Medina, which was carrying King George V and Queen Mary to India for the 1911 Delhi Durbar.

[24] Orient Line held an afternoon reception aboard for about 450 invited guests, who were conveyed from Adelaide to Outer Harbor by special train.

Addressing guests, Orient Line's general manager David Anderson rejected the idea of bunkering steamships with oil instead of coal, claiming that it would be dangerous and the smell would be objectionable to passengers.

[38] Barely 18 months later his objections were overtaken by the successful introduction of the Union Steam Ship Co of New Zealand's transpacific liner RMS Niagara.

[39][40] In May 1912 her stability in a gale and heavy sea off Fremantle led Captain Coad to declare Orama "a magnificent seaboat".

A magistrate at Water Police Court agreed that an assault had been committed, but found insufficient evidence to convict the accused.

[43] Archbishop Mannix, who would become the leading figure in the Australian Catholic Church, first arrived in Australia on the Orama on Easter Saturday 1913.

[44] In November 1913 Orama lost one blade of her middle screw as she rounded Cape Leeuwin on the coast of Western Australia.

They were matched by such a crowd on the quayside wishing them farewell that "It was an almost impossible task to even approximately estimate the number of people present".

Her passengers included Australian Postmaster-General Agar Wynne, who changed his plans and disembarked at Colombo to return to Australia.

A party from Orama fought the fire all afternoon without success, so on the evening of 11 October they scuttled Santa Catharina by opening her seacocks.

At the end of December it was reported that Orama had landed Emden's Captain, Karl von Müller, in England as a prisoner of war.

On the morning of 11 November 1914 Orama sighted the 5,794 GRT Hamburg America Line cargo liner Navarra in the South Atlantic off the Río de la Plata.

[65] On 17 November Orama transferred her German prisoners to HMS Edinburgh Castle, an AMC converted from a Union-Castle liner.

[61] On 28 November Orama captured the 3,791 GRT Hamburg Südamerikanische cargo liner Presidente Mitre as a prize, and interned her German crew.

On 19 January Presidente Mitre left the Río de la Plata and her prize crew sailed her north.

German survivors stated that Dresden was anchored in Cumberland Bay only 500 to 600 metres (1,600 to 2,000 ft) offshore,[66][67] well inside neutral Chilean territorial waters.

[68] On 20 June 1915 a French magazine, Le Miroir, published photographs confirming German accounts of Dresden's position.

She left Cape Town on 22 June, sailing via Sierra Leone to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she arrived on 20 July and unloaded her specie.

[61] In Halifax Orama loaded cargo, and then on 1 August 1917 left in convoy with the AMC Carmania, troop ships Adriatic and Orduña, and Canada Steamship Lines' Bermudian.