[10] She was one of a pair of sister ships completed that year for Deutsche Ost-Afrika Linie, the other being TS Windhuk.

[1] Her destination was Lourenço Marques, Mozambique via Southampton, United Kingdom;[11] Lisbon, Portugal; Casablanca, Morocco;[12] Cape Town, South Africa.

[11] On 24 December, having departed from Southampton with 470 passengers and 300 crew on board, she ran aground on the East Lepe Bank in the Solent.

On 20 May 1937, Pretoria was involved in a collision with the British tanker Hekla during foggy weather in the North Sea (53°29′N 4°49′E / 53.483°N 4.817°E / 53.483; 4.817).

[1] Pretoria was passed to the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) converted to a troop ship at Newcastle upon Tyne.

[1] Empire Doon suffered boiler trouble in Port Said, Egypt, was towed back to Falmouth, Cornwall by the Admiralty tug Bustler.

[8] Empire Orwell departed on her maiden voyage as a troopship on 17 January 1950 bound for Tobruk, Libya and Port Said, Egypt.

[19] There were complaints about conditions on board Empire Orwell when she was returning troops from the Far East to the United Kingdom in 1958.

In reply, Alfred Barnes, the Minister of Transport, stated that complaints about messing arrangements encountered in the early part of the voyage were swiftly resolved.

Complaints that soldiers below the rank of sergeant were generally unable to visit their families were stated to be a matter of military discipline.

[20] Later that year, she was chartered to the Pan-Islamic Steam Ship Co of Karachi, Pakistan who used her to carry Muslim pilgrims.

[1] Alfred Holt & Co bought her in November of that year and renamed her Gunung Djati after the 16th century Javanese Wali Sanga Sunan Gunungjati.

[1] In 1979,[21] the Indonesian Government bought Gunung Djati back, renamed her KRI Tanjung Pandan, with the pennant number 971.

[10] In 2003 Indonesia commissioned an amphibious transport dock ship from Daesun Shipbuilding and Engineering of Pusan in Korea, which entered service as KRI Tanjung Dalpele.