SS Empire Banner
World War II merchant ship of the United Kingdom
Empire Banner was a 6,699 GRT cargo ship which was built by Bartram & Sons Ltd, Sunderland in 1942 for the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT). She was torpedoed by U-77 on 7 February 1943 and sunk later that day by enemy aircraft.
History
Empire Banner was built by Bartram & Sons Ltd, Sunderland as yard number 286. She was launched on 29 June 1942 and completed in September 1942. She was built for the MoWT and was operated under the management of W T Gould & Co Ltd, Cardiff.
Empire Banner was a member of a number of convoys during the Second World War.
MKS 3X
Convoy MKS 3X sailed from Bône, Algeria on 3 December 1942 and arrived at Liverpool on 19 December. Empire Banner joined the convoy at Algiers She was fitted with anti-torpedo nets although these were reported as being broken on departure from Algiers.
KMS 8G
Convoy KMS 8G which departed the Clyde on 21 January 1943. Empire Banner was carrying 3,800 tons of military supplies, including tanks and other transport.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “SS Empire Banner” is world War II merchant ship of the United Kingdom. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Empire, Banner and World, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “world War II merchant ship of the United Kingdom” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 11, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7393566. Authority coordinates are 36.800, 1.533. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942 and 1943.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “SS Empire Banner”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow SS Empire Banner primary sources, SS Empire Banner archive and Empire research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “SS Empire Banner” 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.