Her chief engineer was killed but the remaining 17 crew members were rescued by onlookers and the Cromer lifeboat, commanded by Henry Blogg.

[1] In early 1915 she was at Gothenburg, Sweden, where she was used as a depot ship for the holding of part of a load of 40,000 sacks of wheat for export at a time when Swedish neutrality during the First World War was under question.

When she was near Cromer Pier she suffered an explosion that broke the vessel in two and killed her chief engineer Johan Adolf Anderson.

[3][7] Blogg and his crew had to launch the boat three times because of the poor conditions but eventually reached the floating portion of the Fernebo and took off the 11 survivors.

[3] A 20-metre (66 ft) long section of the Fernebo remains on Cromer's East Beach but is only visible at a combination of extremely low tides and erosion of sand deposits.