The 9,337 GRT motor ship Accra was built at Harland & Wolff in Belfast , Northern Ireland . The ship, 137.5 meters long and 18.9 meters wide, had a chimney, two masts and two propellers and was powered by two diesel engines that developed 1,700 nominal horsepower and could accelerate the ship to 14.5 knots. The Accra could accommodate 243 first class passengers and 70 second class passengers and had a crew of 130 people.
She was the identical sister ship of the Apapa (II) (9333 BRT), which was also built by Harland & Wolff and put into service in early 1927. The Accra was launched on March 18, 1926, was completed on August 17, 1926, and left for her maiden voyage from Liverpool to West Africa the following month . The ship stayed on this route in the following years. After the outbreak of war in 1939, the Accra continued to operate in civil passenger traffic.
On July 23, 1940, the Accra ran under the command of Captain John Joseph Smith in Liverpool for another crossing to Freetown and other ports in West Africa. The ship was part of convoy OB-188. 166 crew members, 323 passengers and 1700 tons of cargo were on board. Three days after departure, on July 26, 1940, the convoy was attacked 320 nautical miles west of Bloody Foreland on the coast of the Irish county Donegal by the German submarine U 34 (Kapitänleutnant Wilhelm Rollmann ). At 2.47 p.m. U 34 fired a fan of three torpedoes . The Accra and the 4,359 GRT motor ship Vinemoor were each hit by a torpedo.
The Accra went under an hour and 15 minutes later (position 55.40N / 16.28W). Four crew members and one passenger were killed. Eight other crew members and eleven passengers drowned when one of the lifeboats capsized and sank in the troubled sea. 154 crew members, including Captain Smith, and 311 passengers survived. They were recorded by the British steamer Hollinside , the Norwegian steamer Loke , the sloop HMS Enchantress (Commander Alan K. Scott-Moncrieff) and the corvette Clarkia (Lt. Commander Frederick JG Jones). The two warships brought them back to Liverpool. After the tanker Thiara (10,364 GRT), the Accra was the second largest ship sunk by U 34 .
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