The Scheldt had been building ships since the age of sail, and De Schelde's yard at Vlissingen carried that tradition forward into the era of oil-burning turbine steamers. Slamat was equipped with submarine signalling apparatus — the 1920s saw it as a credible alternative to radio — and wireless direction finding, both reflecting a shipping world still adjusting to the technologies of the previous war. Her owners, Koninklijke Rotterdamsche Lloyd, were managed by Willem Ruys en Zonen, one of the great Dutch shipping families. In peacetime, Slamat carried the company livery: dove-grey hull, white superstructure, black funnels. On the colonial run from Rotterdam to the Dutch East Indies, calling at Lisbon, Cape Verde, Cape Town, Mauritius, Sabang, and Singapore before reaching Batavia, she was a familiar and unhurried presence on those waters.

When the Second World War began, the Netherlands declared neutrality. In mid-October 1939 Slamat left Rotterdam for the East Indies on what looked like a routine voyage, and reached Batavia on 30 November. From Batavia she sailed for Italy — also still neutral — arriving in Genoa on 21 December. She spent Christmas 1939 and New Year 1940 in port there, then left on 10 January for another East Indies run, reaching Batavia on 1 February 1940.

Four months later, neutrality was gone. Germany conquered the Netherlands in one week in May 1940. The Dutch monarchy and government evacuated to London. KRL's managing director Willem Ruys was captured. The company transferred Slamat's registration from Rotterdam to Batavia — a small administrative act with large consequences. The ship was now operating out of a colonial capital whose metropolitan government had ceased to exist. Orders came to move east and then south. Slamat followed her sister Indrapoera to Surabaya, then to Manila, then to Sydney, arriving on 17 August 1940. In Sydney Harbour she joined two other Dutch liners and together the four ships embarked 4,315 Australian troops. By 12 September they were heading west in Convoy US 5, bound for Suez.

For the next several months Slamat and Indrapoera worked the Indian Ocean troop routes, threading between Suez, Haifa, and various points east. It was unglamorous work for a ship built to carry passengers in comfort — the dove-grey livery was gone, the peacetime schedule abandoned. April 1941 brought a final separation: Indrapoera was directed via Durban toward the Caribbean and the United States. Slamat was ordered through the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean, assigned to Operation Demon, the evacuation of Allied forces from Greece as German forces overran the country.

Her destination was Nauplia — Nafplio — on the Argolic Gulf in the eastern Peloponnese. En route, her group of ships was bombed and Slamat's superstructure was heavily damaged. When she arrived, she found the port already blocked: another troopship had grounded in Nauplia Bay and an air attack had turned her into a total loss. Ships would have to anchor offshore and bring troops out by boat — a slow, exposed process, dependent on one landing craft, local caïques, and the ships' own boats.

On the evening of 26 April 1941 three cruisers, four destroyers, the troopship Khedive Ismail, and Slamat were in the Bay of Nauplia. Two cruisers and two destroyers managed to embark nearly 2,500 troops, but the rate was too slow. Khedive Ismail took on no troops at all. Slamat was still at anchor when four bombs found her. Two lifeboats capsized: one from overloading as men scrambled to get off, the other when HMS Diamond — in the middle of pulling survivors from the water — had to accelerate away to evade an attacking aircraft. Some aircraft machine-gunned the survivors still in the water.

Of the men aboard Slamat, 11 survived. HMS Diamond lost all but 20 of her 166 crew. HMS Wryneck lost all but 27 of her 106. In total, 66 men came back from three ships. Queen Wilhelmina later wrote to Captain Luidinga's widow, calling him "een groot zoon van ons zeevarend volk" — a great son of our seafaring people.

The survivors who made it into Wryneck's whaler reached Crete in stages: first to Ananes Rock, about 13 nautical miles southeast of Milos, where they found a caïque carrying Greek refugees and British soldiers sailing only at night. Then south to Crete, five men towed in the whaler behind the caïque, until on 29 April they spotted a landing craft from Porto Rafti and transferred aboard. They reached Souda Bay the following day.

George Dexter, a Royal Army Service Corps veteran who survived when his cruiser picked him up after Wryneck went down, later commissioned a monument to all the service personnel lost when the three ships sank. It stands in The Royal British Legion Club at Shard End, Birmingham. Royal Navy personnel are commemorated at the naval monuments in Chatham, Plymouth, and Portsmouth. The Argolic Gulf is open water now, unremarkable from the air — a blue expanse between the Peloponnese hills and the sea. The ship that spent fifteen years wearing dove-grey paint on the colonial run from Rotterdam lies somewhere beneath it.