The steel-built steamship Omrah was built at the Fairfield Shipbuilders yard in Govan near Glasgow and was launched there on September 3, 1898. It was completed in January 1899. The 149.56 m long and 17.28 meters wide ship had a chimney, two masts and two propellers and was powered by a six-cylinder triple expansion steam engine of the shipyard, the 180 PSI or 1772 nominal horsepower made . The ship had two steel decks clad with wood and was equipped with electric lights, cooling devices, a radio system and a false floor . The hull was divided into eleven watertight compartments by ten bulkheads . Three double-ended and two single-ended boilers with a total of 32 firing systems were installed in the boiler rooms .
The Omrah was built for the Australian service of the Orient Steam Navigation Company ( Orient Line ) and was designed for 350 passengers in the first and second and 500 in the third class. The ship was registered in Glasgow . On February 3, 1899, the Omrah left London on her maiden voyage to Melbourne and Sydney via Suez . In 1908 she promoted the Australian national rugby team to England for their 1908/09 Rugby Union Tour through Great Britain and France. The Omrah stayed on the Australian route for 17 years until it left London for Australia for the last time on November 3, 1916.
During the First World War , the Omrah was used as a troop transport. Her identification was HMT Omrah (A5). She was one of the ships of the first convoy to bring Australian and New Zealand troops to Europe during World War I. This convoy left the Australian port city of Albany on October 31, 1914 for Suez via Colombo and Aden . The Omrah did not leave for her next troop voyage until January 23, 1917, when she cast off as part of Convoy 29 in Fremantle .
On May 1, 1918, the Omrah ran under the command of Captain WS Shelford with six other transport ships on a troop voyage from Alexandria to Marseille . In Marseille, she brought soldiers from the 52nd and 74th British Divisions ashore and then set out on the return journey. 40 nautical miles southwest of Cape Spartivento on the southern tip of Sardinia , the ship was torpedoed and sunk on May 12, 1918 by the German submarine SM UB 52 (Oberleutnant zur See Otto von Launburg). One person, the coal trimmer Henry John Pearce, was killed. The Omrah was with a capacity of 8,130 gross registered tons, the largest of the 17 of UB 52 attacked ships.
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