The Ardeola/Aderno steamer

Ardeola was a smart English passenger ship, of a customary three masted profile, with the funnel mounted slightly aft; a layout typical of the Yeoward line. She was built by the Caledon Shipbuilding Co., Dundee in 1912 weighing 2609 gross tons powered by a single triple expansion steam engine.
Built originally for the Ardeola Steam Ship Co., she was designed to carry around 80 first class passengers but later was used as a cargo vessel transporting fruit on the Liverpool-Lisbon-Casablanca-Madeira-Canary Islands run. In 1920 the Yeoward Line purchased her but, 15 years later, during the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, she was requisitioned as a stores ship based at Aden. She was returned to the owners in 1936, by which time her passenger certificate had been cancelled.
On November 9th, 1942, while delivering stores to the besieged island of Malta, she was captured by Vichy French motor torpedo boats near Cape Bon, North Africa, and taken to the port of Biserta. On November 24th the Ardeola’s crew were taken to a POW camp at Sfax until being transferred to Algiers on the 24th of November; meanwhile the ship was handed over to German forces. On January 11th management of the Ardeola was handed over to ORIENS - Anonymous Society of Navigation, Lines for the East, a pseudonym used by Lloyds Triestino during the period between 1941 and 1946 when the English language was not well received in the region.
In the same period, the Italian government changed the ship’s name to “Aderno” and she was assigned to stores transport duties in the Mediterranean Sea chartered to the Carboni monopoly. Her story continued unremarkably until her fateful meeting with the submarine HMS Torbay.
H.M.S. Torbay, a British T-class submarine, was launched on April 9th 1940. She was the target of a Luftwaffe air raid that attempted to sink her in dock during the final preparation for launch. Under the command of Lt. Anthony Miers, she operated in the Atlantic Ocean and, later, based in Alexandria, patrolled the Aegean Sea and the Sicilian channel. On October 27th 1942, command of the Torbay passed to Lt. Robert Clutterbuck who remained her commanding officer until the end of the war. He took part to Allied invasion of Sicily, relieving the Dutch submarine Dolphin off the Sicilian coast. Her task was to form a patrol line between Corsica and Italy along with HMS Sybil, Simon, Saracen and Trespasser, with orders to sink any ships of the Italian western fleet venturing forth to challenge the invasion. During the course of the Second World War HMS Torbay sank a total of 53,516 tons of enemy shipping, the 6th highest total of the conflict. Lt. Clutterbuck was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. HMS Torbay survived the world war and was sold to and subsequently dismantled by the British Iron and Steel Corporation in1946.