At 09.38 hours on 17 March 1944, U-371 fired a Gnat at convoy SNF-17 about 30 miles north-northeast of Bougie and observed a hit on a ship, which settled by the stern after the hit. At 09.42 hours, a spread of three torpedoes were fired and two hits were heard. After another Gnat at 09.48 hours, a further detonation on another ship was heard. The first torpedo struck the Maiden Creek in station #52 and the second the Dempo. The first ship was hit again at 13.50 hours by a coup de grâce.

The Maiden Creek (Master Oscar Pedersen) was hit by a torpedo forward of the #4 hatch. The explosion broke the shaft, the back of the ship and filled the #4 hold and the engine room with water. The eight officers, 40 crewmen, 29 armed guards (the ship was armed with two 3in and eight 20mm guns) and one passenger abandoned ship in two lifeboats and a raft as the ship slowly settled by the stern. The boats waited two hours near the vessel until an escort appeared and ordered the men back on the vessel to prepare her to be towed by a tug. They tied up the boats at the stern and reboarded the ship.
At 13.50 hours, the U-boat fired a coup de grâce which struck on the port side in the stern. The explosion lifted the ship out of the water, destroyed the lifeboats and killed one officer, two armed guards and five crewmen. The survivors jumped overboard and swam to a single raft near the ship. They were rescued after 30 minutes by motor launches from a British destroyer and brought to Bougie.

The badly damaged Maiden Creek was towed by a British escort vessel to Bougie on the morning of 18 March and beached, but broke in two forward of the #4 hold and was declared a total loss.