This vessel was a British steam-powered merchant vessel of 5,612 tons which had been built in California in 1919. She had been acquired by the Ministry of War Transport in mid-1940.

She was originally part of convoy HX-82 sailing from Halifax, Nova Scotia to the Clyde with a load of scrap metal and trucks and was under the command of William Herbert Harland OBE. However, during bad weather she had become detached from the convoy. As an unescorted straggler she was hugely vulnerable to German U-boats which were patrolling the mid-Atlantic and Western Approaches.

It was this vessel's misfortune to be spotted by U-124 at around 4am on the 1st November, 1940. Initially, U-124 shadowed the ship in bad weather, which was steering a zig-zag course at nine knots, before missing with its first torpedo at 6.18am. This was merely a temporary reprieve; at 7.06am, she was hit by a single torpedo between number 1 and number 2 holds, some 200 miles north-west of Rockall. The ship sank by the bow within a minute, thwarting attempts by the crew to launch their lifeboats. The ship's Master, 29 crew members, a Royal Naval gunner (the ship was armed with a single 4-inch gun and one machine gun) and seven passengers were lost. The only survivors were the second officer, the boatswain, one fireman and one passenger, who scrambled aboard a raft which had floated free of the vessel. The U-boat did not stop to pick up the survivors. This was U-124's fifth and final victim of her second wartime patrol.

After 24 hours, the survivors were spotted by another U-boat which had surfaced nearby. However, the four men "played dead" and the U-boat did not investigate further; thus they avoided being captured. Ultimately, they were very fortunate; the occupants were eventually picked up on the 5th November by the British merchant vessel "Olga S" and landed at Gourock.

The exhibit here is part of a WW2 medal grouping of Petty Officer Stanley Alan George, Royal Navy, who was a passenger aboard "Empire Bison" and who was lost during her sinking. He was 33 years old and was the husband of Mrs Florence Ruby George of St. Budeaux, Devon. His loss is recorded on the Plymouth Naval Memorial.

U-124 was at type IXB U-boat and was one of the most successful U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. U-124 sank 46 merchant ships, two warships and damaged four others, before her loss with all hands in April, 1943. Her Commander until September 1941, Korvettenkapitan Georg-Wilhelm Schulz, won the Knight's Cross for his successes in 1940-41. Promoted to Flotilla Commander and later appointed to a variety of training and testing and evaluation roles, he survived the war.

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