SS Empire Rest was a convoy rescue ship built for the Royal Navy during World War II, originally laid down as the Castle-class corvette Rayleigh Castle.

[1] The Castle-class corvette was a stretched version of the preceding Flower class, enlarged to improve seakeeping and to accommodate modern weapons.

She was laid down in 1943 and launched on 19 June 1944 as Rayleigh Castle (K695), but further work was then cancelled, and she was completed as a convoy rescue ship on 26 October 1944.

Under the ownership of the Ministry of War Transport, and managed by the Ellerman City Line, she sailed on eleven convoys between November 1944 and June 1945, but made no rescues.

In November 1945 she sailed to Kiel to repatriate Royal Navy personnel,[3] and was also employed as an transport ship in the Mediterranean in 1947, taking illegal Jewish immigrants from Haifa to internment camps on Cyprus in October that year.