The Greek shipowner John D. Chandris bought her as global shipping revived in the late 1930s from the slump that followed the Wall Street crash of 1929.

In 1940 Antonios Chandris took part in North Atlantic convoys, bringing Canadian grain to the Republic of Ireland and United Kingdom.

They included a dozen steamships that the Kawasaki Dockyard in Kobe built, all to a standard design with identical dimensions.

She then waited at The Downs and the Nieuwe Waterweg before joining Convoy OA 22, which assembled off Southend-on-Sea on 22 December 1939, and dispersed at sea on Christmas Day.

[7] On 8 September the German auxiliary cruiser Widder intercepted Antonios Chandris in the South Atlantic and ordered her to stop.

Widder was already crowded with 140 prisoners of war from other merchant ships, so Ruckteschell gave the Greek crew extra food and water, and left them at sea in Antonios Chandris' two lifeboats.

A month later, on 8 October, the 22 occupants of one boat sighted the Portuguese passenger ship Serpa Pinto and signalled to her with distress rockets.

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