The steel screw steamer Emma was built in Thomas Turnbull's Whitehall yard at Whitby in 1898. Registered in Cardiff at 2,520 tons gross, she measured 310 feet in length with a 44 foot beam, and was engined by Blair of Stockton. She was ordered by Turnbull Brothers of Cardiff - to whom the Whitby Turnbull's were related - and, when completed, Emma joined their growing fleet of new vessels, each named after a member of one of the two families in the South Wales partnership. Another branch of the family owned Turnbull, Scott & Co. of London and the three businesses - in Whitby, Cardiff and the capital - worked closely together as both ship owners and managers in the years leading up to the Great War. When the War began in 1914, the Cardiff fleet contained seven vessels and, pro rata, suffered much greater losses than the other two with only one ship surviving hostilities. Emma herself was sunk - probably torpedoed - in the Channel approaches n 20 April 1917 whilst inbound for the Clyde with a cargo of maize from Baltimore.