page_title: SS Mohamed Ali El-Kebir
section_title: Mohamed Ali El-Kebir
hierarchical_section_title: SS Mohamed Ali El-Kebir / Mohamed Ali El-Kebir
caption_attribution_description: English: King Farouk I and Queen Farida of Egypt seated at the royal table during their wedding ceremony, which took place on 20 January 1938. The photograph was published in Al-Musawwar magazine on 11 February 1939. العربية: صاحبا الجلالة على المائدة الملكية يوم الزفاف.
context_page_description: SS Mohamed Ali El-Kebir, formerly SS Teno, was one of a pair of steam turbine ocean liners built in Scotland in 1922 for the Chilean company CSAV. She and her sister ship Aconcagua ran between Valparaíso and New York via the Panama Canal until 1932, when CSAV was hit by the Great Depression and surrendered the two ships to the Scottish shipbuilder Lithgows to clear a debt.
  In 1935 the Egyptian company KML bought and renamed both ships and put them on routes across the Mediterranean. Teno was renamed Mohamed Ali El-Kebir after a former Egyptian monarch. In 1940 the British Government requisitioned both liners and had them converted into troop ships. 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. However, her escort HMS Griffin drove away the submarine and rescued 766 survivors.
context_section_description: In 1935 the Khedivial Mail Steamship and Graving Dock Company of Alexandria, Egypt bought both Aconcagua and Teno. The company, which traded as the Khedivial Mail Line (KML), renamed each ship after a former Khedive of Egypt. Teno became Mohamed Ali El-Kebir, after Muhammad Ali Pasha who reigned 1805–48. KML and operated services linking Alexandria across the Mediterranean Sea with Cyprus, Piraeus, Malta and Marseille. In 1936 the company was reconstituted as the Pharaonic Mail Line, but continued trading as the KML.
  In 1938 King Farouk of Egypt married his first wife, Queen Farida. They took part of their honeymoon aboard Mohamed Ali El-Kebir.
  After the Second World War broke out in 1939, Mohamed Ali El-Kebir sailed to Britain. En route she called at Gibraltar where she joined Convoy HG 4, which left on 22 October and reached Liverpool on the 29th. She then returned to the Mediterranean and ran a regular service between Alexandria and Marseille until March 1940. Although Egypt was supposedly independent, in practice the British Empire controlled the country. 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. Initially the Admiralty used Mohamed Ali El-Kebir as a Royal Navy stores ship, but then she was converted into a troop ship, which increased her gross register tonnage and net register tonnage by more than 200 tons.
caption: King Farouk and Queen Farida at their wedding in 1938, before their honeymoon aboard Mohamed Ali El-Kebir
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