The passenger steamer was built by Harland & Wolff in Belfast in 1913 and initially operated under the name Katoomba . At delivery, the ship was the second largest Australian coastal steamer . From 1918 to 1920 she served as a troop transport and made a number of transatlantic trips. In the interwar period she was used for luxury cruises in the Pacific. During the Second World War, the Katoomba was again a troop transport, but remained in Australian waters. After the war, its operators did not consider modernization to be sensible and sold the ship in 1946 to the Greek Goulandris Group, for which it sailed under the Panamanian flag. In 1949 the ship was converted to oil firing and was named Columbia . From then on she drove for the Greek Line. In 1952 and 1957 the Columbia was damaged by fire. On August 18, 1956, she collided with the Homeric in fog in the port of Quebec . The ship was finally decommissioned in December 1957 and broken up in Japan in 1959.
