Career (USA)
Name:	USS Estero
Builder:	Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation
Laid down:	31 October 1942
Launched:	22 March 1943
Completed:	October 1943
Fate:	Transferred to Royal Navy
Career (UK)
Name:	HMS Premier
Commissioned:	3 November 1943
Decommissioned:	21 May 1946
Fate:	Sold as merchant ship; for scrap 1974
General characteristics
Class and type:	Bogue class escort carrier
Displacement:	16,620 tons (full)
Length:	495 feet 7 inches (151.1 m)
Beam:	69 feet 6 inches (21.2 m)
Draught:	26 feet (7.9 m)
Propulsion:	Steam turbines, 1 shaft, 8,500 shp (6.3 MW)
Speed:	18 knots (33 km/h)
Complement:	890 officers and men
Armament:	2 × 5 in (127 mm) guns 8 x twin 40 mm Bofors 35 x single 20 mm Oerlikon
Aircraft carried:	24

The first USS Estero (CVE-42) (previously AVG-42 then later ACV-42) was an escort aircraft carrier launched 22 March 1943 by the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation, Seattle, Washington, and sponsored by Mrs. C. N. Ingraham. She was reclassified CVE-42 on 15 July 1943. Completed in October 1943, she was transferred to the Royal Navy on 3 November 1943 and commissioned the same day as HMS Premier.

She served in World War II as an ASW escort carrier in European waters and additionally as a ferry carrier. She was returned to United States custody 2 April 1946, she was stricken on 21 May 1946 and was sold into merchant service as the Rhodesia Star (later renamed Hong Kong Knight) in 1947. She was scrapped in Taiwan in 1974.