Members of the group included New Orleans clarinetist Sidney Bechet,[1] British vocalist Evelyn Dove (using the name Norma Winchester),[2] and soprano Hattie King Reavis.

[3] The orchestra made successful annual tours around Britain and the Continent performing classical music, rag tunes, blues, slave songs and jazz.

Of the 120 people on board, 36 died, including nine players, when in dense fog late at night off Corsewall Point, Wigtownshire, the Rowan was struck by the American freighter West Camak and then cut in two by the Clan Malcolm, outward-bound from Glasgow for South Africa, which had come to the rescue at full speed.

The survivors came back to Glasgow, where theatres staged Relief Fund concerts in aid of the surviving members and to help replace their musical instruments, all of which had been lost.

[4][5] In 2013, two of the SSO musicians who died in the sinking of the SS Rowan were commemorated with blue plaques erected by the Nubian Jak Community Trust on properties where they had resided in London: vocalist Frank Bates[6][7] and drummer Pete Robinson.