Her boilers had oil-burning furnaces, and her engines were steam turbines that drove her twin screws via double reduction gearing.

KRL ships operated passenger and cargo services between Rotterdam and the Dutch East Indies via Southampton, Marseille and the Suez Canal.

[3][6] Slamat was KRL's last major steam turbine passenger liner before it started introducing motor ships: Indrapoera in 1925, Sibajak in 1927 and the larger and swifter Baloeran and Dempo in 1929.

[4] In peacetime Slamat carried KRL's livery of dove-grey hull, white superstructure and black funnels.

Germany captured KRL's managing director Willem Ruys, and the company transferred the registration of its ships including Slamat from Rotterdam to Batavia.

[11] There they joined two other Dutch ocean liners; Stoomvaart-Maatschappij Nederland's 16,287 GRT Christiaan Huygens and Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij's Nieuw Holland, which between them embarked 4,315 Australian troops.

Indrapoera and Slamat continued through the Suez Canal, called at Port Said and on 17 October reached Haifa in Palestine.

Indrapoera and Slamat left Haifa on 21 October, reached Port Said the next day, and then passed through the Suez Canal.

For the next six months the two KRL ships operated in the Indian Ocean, bringing British Empire troops from India and Ceylon to Egypt.

The other Dutch ships were Christiaan Huygens, SMN's Johan de Witt and KPM's Nieuw Zeeland.

Among the British ships was Shaw, Savill & Albion Line's flagship QSMV Dominion Monarch, which at 27,155 GRT was the largest liner in the Indian Ocean.

Slamat had been spending the month making shuttle trips between Suez and Port Sudan, but by 23 April she was in the Mediterranean Sea and on the 24th she was in Convoy AG 14 from Alexandria to Greece.

[13] Slamat and another troop ship, the British-India Line-managed Khedive Ismail, were ordered with the cruiser HMS Calcutta and a number of destroyers to Nauplia[14] and Tolon on the Argolic Gulf in the eastern Peloponnese.

Slamat was afire from stem to stern, and Diamond fired a torpedo at her port side that sank her in a coup de grâce.

[13] Wryneck's Commissioned Engineer, Maurice Waldron, took command of her whaler and she set off east past Cape Maleas, towing two Carley floats and their occupants.

[13] After 1900 hrs on 27 April the Vice Admiral, Light Forces, Henry Pridham-Wippell, became concerned that Diamond had not returned to Souda Bay and was not answering radio signals.

[13] The last living survivor from Slamat,[18] Royal Army Service Corps veteran George Dexter, states that after Wryneck was sunk he and three other men were rescued by the cruiser HMS Orion.

There they met a caïque full of Greek refugees and British soldiers evacuated from Piraeus, who were sheltering by day and sailing only by night to avoid detection.

[16] In August 1946 Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands wrote to Captain Luidinga's widow, expressing her sympathy for her husband's death, gratitude for his war service and commending him as een groot zoon van ons zeevarend volk ("a great son of our seafaring people").

It was installed in the Sint-Laurenskerk ("St Lawrence Church"), Rotterdam and formally unveiled on the 70th anniversary of the disaster, 27 April.

[16] On 27 June 2012 the current HMS Diamond hosted a wreath-laying ceremony at the position where Slamat was sunk.