City of Exeter was built for Ellerman's City Line by Workman, Clark & Co. at Belfast in 1914. A twin-screw steamer registered at 9,447 tons gross (6,023 net), she measured 486½ feet in length with a 59 foot beam and was powered by two of her builder's own 4-cylinder quadruple-expansion engines giving her a cruising speed of 12 knots. With accommodation for 180 First and 62 Second class passengers, she entered service [on the Indian run, via the Suez Canal] in July 1914 only to be requisitioned as an Indian Army troopship when the Great War began the following month. Returned to commercial duties the next year (1915), she survived the War despite being mined off Bombay on 11th June 1917 and continued operating throughout the inter-War decades during which she was converted into a 194-berth one-class ship in 1933. Remarkably, in 1940 she was saved from the clutches of the German Armed Merchant Cruiser Atlantis in the South Atlantic when the enemy vessel let her proceed unharmed on 1st May as she had no room to accommodate City of Exeter's passengers and crew. Despite a serious cargo fire at Bombay in 1942, she also survived the Second World War and was used to convey King Zog of Albania and his entourage back to Port Said after their wartime domicile in Britain. Finally withdrawn from service in 1950 after 38 years afloat, she was sold for scrapping and broken up at Dalmuir the same year.