On her final voyage under Master Alfred Norbury, she was in "position No.54 in the convoy, being the last ship in the 5th column",[2] part of Convoy HG 84[3] travelling from Lisbon to Garston, and had called at Gibraltar on 9 June to join with the 36th Escort Group under the command of Captain "Johnnie" Walker. She was carrying two thousand tons of iron ore and three hundred tons of cork[4]
The convoy was sighted approximately 300 nautical miles (560 km) to the west of Cape Finisterre early in the morning of 15 June 1942 by U-552, under Kapitänleutnant Erich Topp. Following a preliminary skirmish around 0400 hrs, Topp fired three torpedoes at the convoy between 0432 and 0434 hrs. City of Oxford was the second of two ships to be struck[5] ; the first being SS Thurso.
According to an oral history recounted by Cpt. "Johnnie" Walker, following Thurso's sinking:
Darkness had time to close in tightly again before the SS City of Oxford shuddered to a standstill under the impact of an internal explosion caused when the torpedo pierced her hull and detonated inside a cargo hold. She sank while the ships following her were altering course round her heavily listing hulk.[6]
One crew member was lost in the sinking, the 43 survivors were picked up by the rescue ship Copeland before being transferred to the corvetteHMS Marigold, and then the Bittern-class sloopHMS Stork[7] and landed at Liverpool.
