It later entered service with the United States Merchant Marine to deliver chromite to help build ships in her namesake New York City.

It was sunk off Cape Hatteras, part of the North Carolinian Outer Banks, on March 29, 1942, after being torpedoed by the German U-boat U-160.

[1] The ship was placed on a route going from Lourenço Marques, to Cape Town, to Port of Spain, and the finally to New York.

144 people were aboard City of New York when she left Cape Town, capital of the Union of South Africa, in December 1941.

[4][5][6] A few days earlier, the oil tanker Dixie Arrow had been sunk by a German U-boat, U-71, killing 11 of her 33 crew members.

Captain George Sullivan was worried about traveling alone, especially in the dangerous area off of Cape Hatteras, known as Torpedo Junction.

It had sunk the Panamanian cargo ship Equipoise only two days earlier, off the coast of Cape Henry, Virginia.

The U-boat fired one G7a torpedo at City of New York, and it struck the port side just below the bridge 29 seconds after, at 19:36 hours.

The helmsman brought the ship into the wind, moving at her maximum speed of 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph), and the order to secure the engines was given to the watch below.

[4][11][12] Sailors of the United States Merchant Marine rushed to the 4-inch gun on the poop deck and opened fire on U-160's periscope, still visible above the choppy seas.

The order to abandon ship was given by Captain Sullivan, and passengers of City of New York put on their life vests and hurried up to the boat deck.

The destroyed lifeboat flipped over in the waves, and the crew rushed to hook the boat on the poop deck up to davits in its place.

The USN blimp K-4 directed the United States Coast Guard ship USCGC CG-455 to the lifeboat, and picked up 11 survivors and two bodies.

[12] One of the passengers in a lifeboat was Desanka Mohorovic, the eight-and-a-half month pregnant wife of an attaché to the Yugoslav consulate in New York.