She was laid down with the intention of being named Ormeda but was launched on 2nd October 1913 as the Orduna.
One funnel, two masts, triple screw and a speed of 14 knots. There was passenger accommodation for 240-1st, 180-2nd and 700-3rd class. She commenced her maiden voyage to Valparaiso on 19th February 1914 and in the following October was chartered to Cunard for their Liverpool to New York service, standing in for vessels requisitioned for trooping.
On 28th June 1915 she was chased by a U-boat but managed to outrun her attacker some 20 miles from the Smalls. Twelve days later , on 9th July, she was missed by a torpedo when 30 miles south of Queenstown in Southern Ireland. In June 1918 she sank a German submarine by gunfire and on 1st December of the same year was in collision with and sank Elder Dempster's Konakry off Galley Head, Ireland.
She returned to PSNC on 31st December 1919 and resumed service to Montevideo on 1st April 1920.
In 1921 she was transferred to Royal Mail's Hamburg - Southampton - New York service, to cater for a lack of German berths, making her first sailing on 28th May.
In the autumn of 1922 she returned to Harland and Wolff for a refit and resumed the South American service on 1st January 1923.
Converted to oil in 1926 she reverted to PSNC ownership on 7th April 1927, operating the Panama route. In 1941 she was requisitioned as a troopship and continued in that role until November 1950, by then, after 10 years of steady trooping, with little time for refit or proper maintenance and 36 years old, she was in poor shape and of little use as a passenger ship.
She was broken up at Dalmuir in 1951 after 37 years of exemplary service.
[South Atlantic Seaway by N.R.P.Bonsor][P.S.N.Liner "Orduna" by J.H.Isherwood, Sea Breezes Magazine, March 1965]
