Built by Short Brothers at Sunderland for the Charlton Steam Shipping Company of Newcastle in 1924, Homeside was a steel screw steamer designed for general cargo. Registered in Newcastle at 4,617 tons gross (2,859 net and 4,256 under-deck), she measured 384 feet in length with a 52 foot beam and was powered by a 3-cylinder triple-expansion 406nhp. engine manufactured by the N.E. Marine Engine Company of Shields. After seventeen years of general tramping with a variety of cargoes, she became a wartime casualty although not through enemy action. Unlike her sister Hazelside, which was torpedoed and sunk in the opening days of the War on 24^th September 1939 [as was her replacement Hazelside II, on 28^th October 1941], Homeside was apparently sold at Freetown, Sierra Leone, on 8^th January 1941. In view of the critical shortage of British tonnage due to wartime losses, this disposal is mysterious in the extreme; perhaps Homeside had been disabled in heavy weather or damaged by an encounter with the enemy -- whatever the reason, it is now unknown. What is certain however is that she soon returned to sea and was last heard from on 28^th January (1941) when a wireless message reported that she was leaking heavily north-west of Corunna after which she was posted missing, believed lost.