Empire Bairn was a 813 ton coastal tanker which was built by Blythswood Shipbuilding Co Ltd, Glasgow in 1941 for the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT). She spent the Second World War plying the Mediterranean Sea. Her uneventful wartime career is unusually well documented for a small cargo ship. After the war, she was sold to the Indian Navy in 1948 and commissioned as a harbour tanker HMIS Chilka, becoming INS Chilka when India became a republic in 1950. She was decommissioned in 1976 and was scrapped in 1977.