SS Empire Advocate
World War II merchant ship of the United Kingdom
SS Empire Advocate was a 5,787 ton steamship which was built in 1913 as the Solfels. She was taken as war reparations in 1919 and renamed Bowes Castle in 1920. In 1932, she was sold to Italy, renamed Angelina Lauro, seized in 1940, and renamed Empire Advocate. She was scrapped at Bo'ness in 1945.
Description
The ship was 127.92 metres (419 ft 8 in) long, with a beam of 17.12 metres (56 ft 2 in) and a depth of 9.08 metres (29 ft 9 in). She was propelled by a 520 horsepower (390 kW) NHP triple expansion steam engine which was made by Joh. C. Tecklenborg AG, Geestemünde, and which could propel her at 11.5 knots (21.3 km/h). As built, she was 5,821 GRT, 3,641 GRT, and 8,800 DWT.
History
Solfels was built by Joh. C. Tecklenborg AG, Wesermünde as yard number 255 and launched on 8 April 1913, being completed the following month. She entered service with the Hansa Line, Bremen on 22 May 1913 and served with them for six years until taken as a war prize on 25 May 1919, passing to the British Shipping Controller under the management of H Hogarth & Sons.
The public source identifies “SS Empire Advocate” as world War II merchant ship of the United Kingdom. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Empire, Advocate and World.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 9, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7393544. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1913, 1919, 1920 and 1932.
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This entry incorporates text from “SS Empire Advocate” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.