After heavy losses during the First World War, Cunard Line embarked on an ambitious building programme. It decided to build "intermediate", 19,000 GRT ships rather than the large liners it had previously employed. Scythia was the first ship in this new fleet, and building began in 1919. Scythia was built for the services between Liverpool and Queenstown in the British Isles to New York and Boston, in the United States. A luxury liner designed to appeal to American tourists, in the mid-1920s, she began sailing from New York to the Mediterranean.


Scythia was requisitioned at the end of 1939,^[​3] left Liverpool on 24 September 1940 with 48 children bound for Boston, sponsored by readers of the Boston Evening Transcript newspaper,^[​4] part of a wider British evacuation programme under the Children's Overseas Reception Board.


She became a troop ship on 1 November 1940, and sailed from Liverpool to the Middle East carrying the 1st King's Dragoon Guards. She then saw service carrying evacuees from Liverpool to New York. In 1942, Scythia took part in the Allied invasion of French North Africa. On 23 November she was struck by an aerial torpedo. Her crew managed to get her to harbour at Algiers, and she suffered only five casualties out of a complement of 4,300 men.


Scythia was salvaged and taken to New York for repair in
January 1943, and afterwards ferried American troops to Europe. At the
end of the war she took many US troops back from Europe, many of them
accompanied by their new brides, before sailing to India to bring home
UK troops from the war in the East. She was also a war bride ship taking
Canadian war brides and their children from Liverpool to Pier 21 in Halifax in the early part of 1946.^[​5] One of her last missions as a troop ship was to bring the 1st King's Dragoon Guards home to Liverpool, on 11 March 1948.


Later in 1948, Scythia was handed to the International Refugee Organisation to take refugees
from Europe to Canada. In 1950 she became a passenger ship again,
sailing from Britain to Canada and later to New York. Again in 1957 the
Scythia was used to transport Hungarian refugees to Canada (departed
Southampton England 19 Jan 1957), landing in Halifax, Nova Scotia at Pier 21 (Canada's equivalent to Ellis Island in New York).


Her final route was around the North Sea. In 1958, after 37 years of service, Scythia was delivered to ship breakers Thos. W. Ward at Inverkeithing by her final Master, Geoffrey Thrippleton Marr.

RMS Samaria was a British transatlantic ocean liner built by Cammell Laird & Company in Birkenhead for the Cunard Line, and launched in November of 1920.^[​1] Fitting out for service took somewhat longer than usual due to post war demands on industry but in due course Samaria
entered service in April 1922. She was an intermediate liner designed
with an emphasis on fuel economy to which end the ship's service speed
was around 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph). Intended to augment Cunard's transatlantic service Samaria ran on the Liverpool to Boston and New York City route with periodic stops in Cobh, and appealed to those first and second class passengers looking for comfort at reasonable rates and who were not in a hurry.^[​3][​4]
Originally the ship was intended to make a profit in the immigrant
trade with third class passengers. However the end of unrestricted
immigration to the United States in the mid 1920s necessitated the first
of several reconfiguration of passenger accommodations as third class
became "tourist."^[​3]


Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Samaria was frequently employed as a cruise ship. In September 1940 she took part in the evacuation of children from the UK to the US under the scheme set up by the Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB). In 1941 the ship was taken over by the Royal Navy and served as a troopship until 1948 when she was returned to Cunard and refitted for passenger service. Between 1948 and 1955 Samaria was assigned almost exclusively to the Canadian route with service to Montreal, Quebec, and Halifax along with her sister-ship RMS Scythia.
In November 1955 she completed her last transatlantic crossing and was
subsequently sold for scrapping, which was completed in 1956 at Inverkeithing, Scotland.^{[​1][​2][​3]}