She had survived the North Atlantic in 1943. She had crossed to the Mediterranean and back. She had outlasted the war that built her, been sold twice, renamed twice. On 7 November 1950 she ran aground at Leinish Point in the Inner Hebrides. They refloated her. For one day she floated again. On 8 November she sank off the Bo Vich Chuan Rock and stayed down. Her name by then was Seniority. She had begun life eight years earlier as Empire Boswell.
William Gray & Co. of West Hartlepool launched her on 2 June 1942 as yard number 738. By August 1942 she was complete. The Empire prefix marked her as a wartime construction for the Ministry of War Transport, part of the desperate British effort to replace the merchant tonnage being lost to U-boats. Cargo ships like her crossed the Atlantic in convoy, carrying food, fuel, equipment, and the raw material of survival. They sailed close together at the speed of the slowest ship, hoping the escorts would keep the wolves at bay. Currie Line Ltd. managed her initially. The port of registry was West Hartlepool, the steel town that built her.
Convoy SC 129 left Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 2 May 1943 and arrived at Liverpool on 21 May. It was a slow convoy of merchant ships during one of the most brutal months of the Battle of the Atlantic. Empire Boswell was part of that crossing. The pattern of those weeks was steady and grim. Ships sailed in columns. Lookouts watched. Hydrophone operators listened. When a torpedo hit, the convoy held formation and kept going. Five months later, on 15 September 1943, she joined Convoy UGS 18 at Gibraltar after the convoy had departed Hampton Roads, Virginia. UGS 18 reached Port Said on 13 October. Empire Boswell left at Bone in Algeria, having done her part of the Mediterranean leg.
In 1945, with the war ending, her management passed to the British-India Steam Navigation Company. Two years later, the Ministry of War Transport sold her into commercial service. Aviation & Shipping Co Ltd bought her and renamed her Aviswell. Purvis Shipping Co Ltd managed her. In 1949 she changed hands again, sold to F T Everard & Co Ltd and renamed Seniority. She kept her UK Official Number, 168945, the way a person keeps a passport number across name changes. Her wartime Code Letters, BCBP, were a relic of an earlier identification system. By the end of 1949 she was just another cargo ship working the coastal trades, indistinguishable from a hundred similar vessels.
On 7 November 1950, Seniority ran aground at Leinish Point. The rocks of the Hebrides have claimed countless ships over the centuries. There is nothing unusual about a grounding in these waters. The unusual thing was that they refloated her at all. Her hull must have been badly damaged but not catastrophically. For a few hours on 7 and 8 November she floated again, kept above the waves by pumps and prayer. Then on 8 November she went down for good, off the Bo Vich Chuan Rock. Eight years from launch to wreck. Three names, three owners, two wars survived, two convoys remembered, and a final resting place on the Hebridean seabed.
Wreck site located approximately at 56.95 N, 7.43 W, off the Bo Vich Chuan Rock near the Barra Isles. The wreck lies in the waters between Mingulay and Sandray in the southern Outer Hebrides. Recommended altitude 1,500-3,000 ft. Approach from the east over the Sea of the Hebrides. Nearest airports: Barra (EGPR) approximately 10 nm north on Traigh Mhor, Benbecula (EGPL) approximately 58 nm north. Strong tidal currents and exposed Atlantic seas make this an inhospitable stretch of water.