and that an example would be made to dissuade other potential immigrants from making the attempt. The British High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Harold MacMichael, issued a deportation order on 20 November, ordering that the refugees be taken to the British Indian Ocean territory of Mauritius and the Caribbean territory of Trinidad. The refugees were transferred to another ship, SS Patria, for the voyage to Mauritius. Patria was an 11,885-ton ocean liner dating from 1913 that the French company Messageries Maritimes ran between Marseille and the Levant. She had reached the Port of Haifa shortly before Italy declared war on France and Britain, and then remained in port for safety. After the French surrender to Nazi Germany the British authorities in Haifa first detained Patria and then seized her for use as a troop ship. As a civilian liner she was permitted to carry 805 people including her crew, but after being requisitioned she was authorised to carry 1,800 troops (excluding the crew). She still only had enough lifeboats for the original 805 passengers and crew, so these were supplemented with liferafts. The refugees from Pacific and Milos were soon transferred to Patria. Atlantic arrived on 24 November and the transfer of eight hundred of its 1,645 passengers began. Bombing Meanwhile, Zionist organizations were considering how to thwart the deportation plan. A general strike had little effect. The Irgun tried unsuccessfully to place a bomb on Patria to disable her. The Haganah also sought to disable Patria, with the intention of forcing her to stay in port for repairs and thus gaining time to press the British to rescind the deportation order. The Haganah officer in charge of the operation was Yitzhak Sadeh, authorised by Moshe Sharett, who led the Political Department of the Jewish Agency in the temporary absence of David Ben-Gurion, who had left for the United States on 22 September and did not return until 13 February 1941. On 22 November Haganah agents smuggled a bomb aboard the ship, timed to explode at 9 p.m. that day. It failed, so a second, more powerful bomb was smuggled aboard on 24 November and hidden next to the ship's inner hull. At 9 a.m. on 25 November, it exploded. The Haganah had miscalculated the effect of the charge and it blew a large hole measuring in the ship's side, sinking her in only 16 minutes. When the bomb exploded,