SS Mohamed Ali El-Kebir

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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.