The R.M.S. Orontes outward-bound on her maiden voyage, 24th October, 1902

The Royal Mail steamer Orontes was built on the Clyde for the Orient Line by Fairfields of Glasgow in 1902. By far her owners' largest vessel to date, she was designed as their new flagship and intended for their principal Australian service. Registered at 9,028 tons gross (4,622 net), she measured 514 feet in length with a 58 foot beam and her powerful quadruple-expansion engines, the first to be fitted into an Orient liner, gave her an impressive cruising speed of 18 knots. With accommodation for 320 1st and 320 3rd class passengers, she left Tilbury on 24th October 1902 on her maiden voyage to Sydney, via Suez, and soon became a popular ship with travellers. After fourteen years of reliable service, she was commandeered as a troopship in 1916 but released to resume her peacetime duties in the autumn of 1919. By then showing her age, she was laid up at Southend in 1921 and sold the following year for conversion into an exhibition ship. Renamed British Trade, her second career proved short-lived however and, in August 1922, she was taken back by the Orient Line, rechristened Orontes and put back into service until 1926 when she was broken up.

Charles Dixon painted a second portrait of Orontes in 1905 which is currently held in the collection of the P. & O. Line.