The Union Castle Line ship Braemar castle was built in 1898 as one of the last ships for the Castle Line before its merger with the Union Line. She was built by Barclay, Curle & Co., of Glasgow. She was commissioned in the summer of 1899 and commenced service on the Southampton to South Africa service. She spent much of her time being in Government service. She transported the Liverpool Regiment, The King's Own Scottish Borderers and the Worcestershire Regiment to South Africa at the start of the Boer War.

From 1909 she was used mainly as a peacetime troop transport except for one commercial voyage for Union-Castle in 1920. During World War I she served in a variety of roles, as a cross-channel troop transport for the British Expeditionary Force in 1914; a troop transport for the Gallipoli campaign in 1915 and as a hospital ship from 1915. It was as a hospital ship in November 1916 that she struck a mine in the Aegean Sea, and was repaired at La Spezia.

In March 1918 she was sent to Murmansk, Russia, and spent nearly a year there as a base hospital for British and French troops engaged in the Allied Northern Campaign. She returned to Russia in 1921 and, carrying patients and non-Russian medical personnel, was the last non-Russian ship to leave Archangel. She was later used to transport troops to Turkey and Cyprus during, and after, the 1922 fighting between Turkey and Greece. She made her final voyage as a troopship in September 1924 and was then sold for scrapping in Italy.