SS Cestrian

SS Cestrian was a British cargo liner launched by Harland and Wolff at Belfast in 1895 as yard number 296 and completed in March 1896 for the Leyland Line, which owned and operated her for her whole career. One of three similar cargo liners ordered together, she measured 8,761 gross register tons, had a single screw driven by a triple-expansion engine, and could carry at least 900 head of cattle and 50 passengers. Her regular route ran between Liverpool and Boston, bringing cattle back from Boston, with occasional calls at New York instead. She carried troops and horses in the Second Boer War and donkeys, horses and troops in the First World War, and in May 1898 she struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic. A U-boat torpedoed and sank her in the Aegean in June 1917, killing her fourth engineer and two stokers.