Within months of being converted, Mohamed Ali El-Kebir was sunk in the Western Approaches by a German submarine with the loss of 96 people.

In April 1920 the Chilean Compañía Sud Americana de Vapores (CSAV) ordered a pair of passenger and cargo liners for service between Valparaíso and New York via the Panama Canal.

By the time Aconcagua and Teno entered service they faced strong competition from Grace Line, and CSAV reported losses in 1922 and 1923.

[2] The Wall Street crash of October 1929 started the Great Depression, which sharply reduced the export market for Chilean mining products and hence the country's ability to buy goods from overseas.

[8] In 1935 the Khedivial Mail Steamship and Graving Dock Company of Alexandria, Egypt bought both Aconcagua and Teno.

KML and operated services linking Alexandria across the Mediterranean Sea with Cyprus, Piraeus, Malta and Marseille.

En route she called at Gibraltar where she joined Convoy HG 4, which left on 22 October and reached Liverpool on the 29th.

In 1940 the UK Ministry of War Transport requisitioned seven KML ships and placed two of them, Khedive Ismail and Mohamed Ali El-Kebir, under the management of the British-India Steam Navigation Company.

En route she joined Convoy HG 36 at Gibraltar, which left on 28 June and reached Liverpool on 8 July.

[13] At the beginning of August 1940 she was in Avonmouth, where she loaded mail and government stores and embarked 697 troops bound for the Mediterranean.

At 2140 hrs on 7 August the convoy was in the Western Approaches about 230 nautical miles (430 km) west of Bloody Foreland in Ireland, making a zigzag course at 15 knots (28 km/h) when U-38 fired two stern-launched torpedoes at her.

[10] Mohamed Ali El-Kebir's civilian ship's doctor, Stuart Liston, and a military medical officer remained aboard to treat many wounded men and prepare them for evacuation.