RMS Nova Scotia ( 1926 ) RMS " Nova Scotia " was a British Royal Mail Ship that was requisitioned as a troop ship in the Second World War . In 1942 a German submarine sank her in the Indian Ocean with the loss of 858 of the 1 , 052 people aboard . Building . Vickers , Sons & Maxim , Ltd of Barrow - in - Furness built " Nova Scotia " for Furness , Withy & Co of Liverpool . She was the sister ship of RMS " Newfoundland " , which Vickers had launched for the same owner 11 months previously . Her 1 , 047 NHP quadruple expansion steam engine was fed by five 215 lb / in single - ended boilers with a total heating surface of . Her boilers were heated by 20 oil - fuelled corrugated furnaces with a grate surface of . Her boat deck had six lifeboats , mounted on Welin - Maclachlan davits . Civilian service . " Nova Scotia " joined " Newfoundland " on Furness , Withy ' s regular transatlantic mail route between Liverpool and Boston " via " St John ' s , Newfoundland and Halifax , Nova Scotia . Passengers included Roald Dahl , then aged 17 , who in August 1934 was one of 50 public school boys who sailed from Liverpool on an expedition to Newfoundland of the recently founded Public Schools Exploring Society . Their passage to St John ' s took a week . Troop ship . Early in 1941 the Ministry of War Transport requisitioned " Nova Scotia " as a troop ship , and on 3 February she embarked 1 , 200 troops . She joined a convoy from Britain to Freetown , Sierra Leone , where she arrived on 2 March . " Nova Scotia " continued south , crossing the Equator on 12 March and reaching Cape Town , South Africa , on 22 March . In the autumn of 1942 " Nova Scotia " left Port Tewfik in Egypt and sailed down the Red Sea to Massawa in British - occupied Eritrea , where she put US troops ashore and embarked Italian prisoners of war . She also called at the British Colony of Aden and then proceeded southwards unescorted , carrying over 750 Italian prisoners of war and civilian internees and 3 , 000 bags of mail bound for Durban , South Africa . " Nova Scotia " had passed through the Mozambique Channel and was off the coast of Natal Province , South Africa , when at 0715 hrs on the morning of 28 November the hit her with three torpedoes . " Nova Scotia " rolled to port , caught fire and sank by the bow within 10 minutes . The crew managed to launch only one lifeboat ; other survivors depended on life rafts or pieces of wreckage . Those who were left in the water either drowned or were eaten by sharks . In order to identify what ship it had just sunk , " U - 177 " recovered two survivors . They were interned Italian merchant sailors who explained that most of those aboard had been Italian internees . Because of the Laconia Order that Admiral Dönitz had issued two months previously , the submarine ' s commander , Robert Gysae , withdrew " U - 177 " from the area and radioed the " Befehlshaber der U - Boote " ( BdU ) for orders . The BdU ordered him to leave survivors in the water and continue on patrol . The BdU requested help from Portugal , which sent the frigate from Lourenço Marques in neighbouring Mozambique . The " Afonso de Albuquerque " reached the area on 29 November . Five survivors fired a distress flare and were rescued by the frigate . The next day the " Afonso de Albuquerque " found herself surrounded by hundreds of floating corpses . In all the frigate rescued 130 Italian internees , 42 guards , 17 crew members , three military and naval personnel , one DEMS gunner and one passenger . 858 people were lost : 650 Italian internees , 96 crew members , 88 South African guards , 10 DEMS gunners , eight military and naval personnel , five passengers , and " Nova Scotia " s master . Two further survivors reached safety . One was rescued on the third day after the attack ; the other was an Italian who drifted on a liferaft for a fortnight until he came ashore at Mtunzini in Natal . Memorials . Many corpses were washed ashore in Natal . The bodies of 120 Italian prisoners of war and internees were buried in a mass grave in the Hillary suburb of Durban , forming the nucleus of what became the Italian Military Cemetery there . In 1982 a substantial monoment was erected on the grave . " Nova Scotia " s Italian dead are commemorated also in a monument at the Italian church at Adi Quala , Eritrea .