ordered to take French troops evacuated to England from Dunkirk back to Brest to continue the fight. She left Plymouth on 2 June and sailed with 2,000 aboard, accompanied by the French corvette Commandant Rivière. They returned the next day, then sailed once more with approximately 1,500 men on board, returning with British troops. In September 1940 Prinses Beatrix was formally taken over by the Admiralty to be converted into an "assault ship" at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. The upper deck was largely cleared and gravity davits installed enabling six LCAs and two LCM(1)s to be carried, along with 450 troops. Prinses Beatrix was armed with two 12-pounder guns, two 2-pounders, four Hotchkiss 20 mm machine guns, and four .303 cal. machine guns. The ship was commissioned as HMS Princess Beatrix on 22 January 1941 as a special service ship. Lofoten Raid Her first major action in her new role was "Operation Claymore", a raid on the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway. On 22 February 1941 Princess Beatrix arrived at Scapa Flow, where men of 3 Commando boarded, as well as Royal Engineer demolition experts and a contingent of Norwegian troops. The British ships - five destroyers and two troop ships - entered the Vestfjord on the morning of 4 March, and launched their attack. Surprise was complete and there was little resistance. All targets selected were located and destroyed. The troops were embarked by 13.00 hours and within half an hour the British had left. After returning to England Princess Beatrix was used for the training and exercise of Special Forces in Scotland. South Atlantic In late 1941 she was selected to join the forces gathered at Freetown, Sierra Leone, for "Operation Pilgrim", the planned occupation of the Canary Islands, if either the Spanish or the Germans captured Gibraltar. After maintenance at Glasgow Princess Beatrix sailed to Freetown, arriving on 5 October 1941. However, it soon became clear that Franco did not plan to join the Axis, nor was he prepared to allow the German troops free passage through Spain to attack Gibraltar, and the operation was cancelled. On 4 November 1941 the British navy tanker reported that she had been attacked by a German raider, between Natal, Brazil and Freetown. Princess Beatrix was one of the ships sent to search. No German raider was found and the Admiralty assumed that a German U-boat had shot