SS Campos

SS Campos was a merchant steamship. She was what in German is called a "kombischiff": a term roughly equivalent to "cargo liner" in English. She was built in Germany in 1895 as the mail steamer Asuncion for Hamburg Südamerikanische DG. She was the lead ship of a class of 11 ships in Hamburg Süd's fleet.

For nearly two decades, Asuncion carried emigrants and cargo on a regular route between Hamburg and the east coast of South America. In the first weeks of the First World War, she was an auxiliary ship for the Imperial German Navy in the South Atlantic. That November, she took refuge in a port in neutral Brazil.

In 1917, after Germany started sinking Brazilian merchant ships, the Brazilian government seized her and renamed her Campos. Lloyd Brasileiro was managing her by 1923, and owned her by 1927. In 1924, during the state of emergency in Brazil, she was a government prison ship. In 1943 a German U-boat sank her, killing 12 people.

She was the first of two Hamburg Süd ships to be named after Asunción, the capital of Paraguay. The second was a refrigerated cargo steamship that was built for Hamburg America Line (HAPAG) in 1921 as Niederwald. Hamburg Süd chartered her from 1934, and bought and renamed her in 1936. A mine sank her in 1942.