I found this information on the web looking for some other merchant marine information for my family.
While its a few year later, there may be other links on this site.
Brett Groves
SS NOVA SCOTIA (November 28, 1942)
Passenger/cargo ship of 6,796 tons launched in 1926 for the Warren Line, requisitioned and converted to a troopship in 1941, was en route from Aden to Durban, South Africa, carrying 780 Italian POW's and 130 South African military troops acting as guards, plus a crew of 127. It was sunk in the southern Indian Ocean 244 kilometers northeast of Durban by the U-177 (Korvkpt. Robert Gysae). Casualties amounted to a staggering 863 lives lost. The U-177 was sunk on February 6, 1944, by depth-charges from a US Liberator aircraft. Fifty of her crew died, there were 15 survivors.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/maritime-1a.html
