SS Rex

SS Rex was an Italian ocean liner launched in 1931. She held the westbound Blue Riband between 1933 and 1935, for a passenger liner in regular service crossing the Atlantic Ocean with the record highest average speed. Laid down as SS Guglielmo Marconi for the Navigazione Generale Italiana (NGI), this company's state-ordered merger with the Lloyd Sabaudo line meant that the ship was completed instead for the newly created Italia Flotta Riunite (Italian Line).

Rex operated transatlantic crossings from Italy with its running mate, SS Conte di Savoia prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Rex maintained a commercial service in the Mediterranean Sea for eight years, but when Italy entered the war in June 1940 Rex was laid up for safe-keeping. On 8 September 1944, off Koper, Rex was hit by cannon fire and 123 rockets launched by Royal Air Force aircraft, caught fire from bow to stern. She rolled onto the port side, burned for four days, and sank in shallow water. The ship was partially broken up in situ in 1950.