SS Arcadian

SS Arcadian was a Barrow-in-Furness built passenger liner constructed in 1899 by Vickers, Sons & Maxim Ltd for the Pacific Steam Navigation Company as the Ortona.

Five hundred feet long and weighing 7,950 tons the Arcadian carried 593 passengers firstly to and from Australia, and then under its new owners from 1906, the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company to the West Indies. Reconfigured in 1910 as a liner she was brought into military service at the start of the First World War as a troop ship. She was sunk 26 miles off the Greek island of Milos by German submarine UC-74 on 15 April 1917 whilst on route from Salonika to Alexandria with the loss of 279 lives, including Sir Marc Armand Ruffer.