SS Empire Tower was a British cargo ship built in 1935 and sunk by enemy action in 1943.
She was built by the Burntisland Shipbuilding Company Ltd. in Fife, Scotland. The North Eastern Marine Engineering Co. Ltd. of Sunderland built her 335 nominal horsepower three-cylinder triple expansion steam engine. She had six corrugated furnaces with a combined heating surface of 117 sqft heat to heat her three 180 psi single-ended boilers, which had a combined heating surface of 5445 sqft. She was fitted with direction finding equipment.[2]
She was launched as SS Roxburgh for B.J. Sutherland and Company of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In 1937 the Tower Hill Steamship Company, an offshoot of Counties Ship Management, bought her and renamed her SS Tower Field.[1]
Damage and repair
On 10 May 1941 Tower Field was steaming in ballast from London to Newcastle when a German aircraft attacked and damaged her off the Outer Dowsing Buoy in the Thames Estuary