Lisbon Maru was completed on 8 July 1920 at the Yokohama Dock Company shipyard in Yokohama, Japan as Yard No. 70, entering service for a major Japanese shipping line, Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha, and registered at the port of Tokyo. The ship was long, with a beam of and a depth of. The ship measured and 4,308 NRT. Twin propellers were powered by a pair of triple expansionsteam engines with a combined rating of 632 nhp, giving a service speed of. The engines and four boilers were made by the shipbuilder.
Sinking
On her final voyage she was carrying, in addition to 700 Japanese Army personnel, 1,816 British and Canadian prisoners of war captured after the fall of Hong Kong in December 1941. The POWs were held in "appalling conditions... at the bottom of the hold... showered by the diarrhoea of sick soldiers above". On 1 October 1942 the ship was torpedoed by. The Japanese troops were evacuated from the ship but the POWs were not; instead the hatches were battened down above them and they were left on the listing ship. After 24 hours it became apparent that the ship was sinking and the POWs were able to break through the hatch covers. Some were able to escape from the ship before it sank. The ladder from one of the holds to the deck failed, and the Royal Artillery POWs in the hold could not escape; they were last heard singing "It's a Long Way to Tipperary". Survivors reported that Japanese guards first fired on the POWs who reached the deck; and that other Japanese ships used machine guns to fire at POWs who were in the water. Later, however, after some Chinese fishermen started rescuing survivors, the Japanese ships also rescued survivors. The British government insisted that over 800 of these men died either directly as a result of the sinking, or were shot or otherwise killed by the Japanese while swimming away from the wreck. The ship was not marked to alert Allied forces to the nature of its passengers. The Japanese Government insisted that British prisoners were in fact not deliberately killed by Japanese soldiers and criticised the British statement
Aftermath
A memorial was placed in the chapel of Stanley Fort, Hong Kong, which was moved to the chapel of St. Stephen's College, Hong Kong, due to Hong Kong's change in sovereignty. A reunion of survivors was held on board on 2 October 2007 to mark the 65th anniversary of their escape. Six former prisoners attended, alongside many bereaved families of the escapees.
