SS Beaverford was a cargo liner registered in the United Kingdom and operated by the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company.

[5] On 2 July 1938 Beaverford rescued 400 passengers from the Cunard liner Ascania, which had run aground in the Saint Lawrence River near Bic Island, Quebec.

[6] With the onset of war, the fast and modern "Beaver" ships were requisitioned[citation needed] by the UK Admiralty to carry high-value stores.

She was commanded by the 60-year-old Captain Hugh Pettigrew from Coatbridge, who had sailed with Canadian Pacific since 1910, was a veteran of naval actions at Gallipoli, and as a First Officer had survived the torpedoing of Medora by SM U-86 west-southwest of Mull of Galloway in 1918.

[9] On 5 November Convoy HX 84 was midway across the Atlantic when the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer located and attacked it.

In an engagement that won the commander of Jervis Bay a posthumous Victoria Cross, the escort steered directly towards Admiral Scheer.

The shelling was observed and recorded in the log aboard the freighter Fresno City, ten miles off and also fleeing south.

Beaverford was badly damaged, but the cargo of timber on her deck kept her afloat, and to save ammunition Admiral Scheer's commander, KzS Theodor Krancke, ordered that she be finished off with a torpedo.

It was now completely dark, but Admiral Scheer went on to find and sink one more ship, Fresno City, from which the attack on Beaverford had been observed an hour before.

In 1944 an article supposedly based on accounts from one of the other ships in Convoy HX 84 was written by Norman Mackintosh, published in the magazine Canada's Weekly and republished in the Evening Standard in London which praised the sacrifice of Beaverford: "For more than four hours she was afloat, followed by the raider, firing and fighting to the last.

[12] Krancke paid generous tribute to the courage of Jervis Bay, and of a small burning freighter that fired back just before she sank (this must have been Kenbane Head).

But he did not mention any battle with Beaverford, which he records only as a ship carrying a deck cargo of timber that Admiral Scheer caught up with as it fled at speed far to the south of the main action.

Some writers complain that Beaverford received no official recognition for its role in the battle, but that may be because the story only emerged years later, and is unsupported by credible evidence.

Tower Hill Memorial, the UK Merchant Navy monument in London, records the names of all 77 members of Beaverford's crew who were killed when she was sunk.

The names of the three Canadians in her crew, Clifford Carter, Laughlin Elwood Stewart, William Lane Thibideau, are inscribed on the Sailors' Memorial at Point Pleasant Park in Halifax, Nova Scotia which overlooks the harbour mouth whence Beaverford made her final departure in 1940.