MV San Demetrio was a British motor tanker, notable for her service during the Second World War. She was built in 1938 for the Eagle Oil and Shipping Company. In 1940 she was damaged by enemy action in mid-Atlantic, abandoned by her crew but later re-boarded and successfully brought into harbour. She was the subject of a 1943 feature film, San Demetrio London, one of the few films that recognised the heroism of the UK Merchant Navy crews during the War.
MV San Demetrio
Compass from the San Demetrio, currently held at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford with reference number MAR1274
Eagle Oil and Shipping Company
Eagle Oil and Shipping Company was a United Kingdom merchant shipping company that operated oil tankers between the Gulf of Mexico and the UK. Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray founded it as the Eagle Oil Transport Company in 1912 and sold it to Royal Dutch Shell in 1919. It was renamed Eagle Oil and Shipping Company in about 1930, and remained a separate company within the Royal Dutch Shell group until it was absorbed in 1959.
Weetman Pearson, Viscount Cowdray
San Demetrio reached the Clyde in 1940 carrying a cargo of aviation spirit, despite having been damaged and set on fire by shelling from the Admiral Scheer
The Japanese submarine I-37 torpedoed San Ernesto in the Indian Ocean in 1943. The crew abandoned ship but the tanker stayed afloat and drifted 2,000 miles to Nias in the Dutch East Indies, where occupying Japanese forces dismantled her.
