The single-screw steel general cargo steamer Plawsworth was ordered for the Dalgliesh Steam Shipping Company of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and built for them by Richardson, Duck & Co. at Stockton-on-Tees in 1917. Registered at 4,724 tons gross (2,887 net & 4,408 under-deck), she measured 400 feet in length with a 52 foot beam and her design incorporated a shelter deck in addition to her main cargo deck. Her three coal-fired boilers generated power for a triple-expansion 3-cylinder engine by Blair & Co., also of Stockton, and she even boasted a stern gun to emphasise the fact that she was completed for sea in time of war. After barely a year in service however, she became a casualty of those hostilities when she was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-60 on 13th July 1918. The sinking occurred 105 miles out in the Atlantic whilst Plawsworth was on passage from Newport (South Wales) to Genoa with a cargo of steam coal, and one crewman lost his life.