City of Boston
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The City of Boston was a passenger ship of the British shipping company Inman Line , which was used as a transatlantic liner and carried passengers , mail and cargo from Liverpool to New York between 1865 and 1870 . In January 1870, the City of Boston with 191 people on board disappeared without a trace in the North Atlantic .
The ship
The City of Boston sailing steamer was built on the River Clyde in 1864 in the Meadowside Dock of the Tod and MacGregor shipyard in Partick, a district of Glasgow , and completed in January 1865. Its hull was made of steel . It measured 8.4 m from the keel to the upper deck. Inman Line was founded in 1850 and is based in Glasgow. In the second half of the 19th century, the Inman Line was one of the most successful shipping companies in passenger traffic between Europe and North America .
The ship classification company Lloyd’s Register in London and the insurance company Liverpool Underwriter's Maritime Association in Liverpool placed the ship in their highest categories. Seven bulkheads reaching to the upper deck divided the hull into eight watertight compartments. The passenger accommodations were comfortably equipped and furnished and were supplied with fresh air through a ventilation system. The main salon measured 12.2 by 5.5 m and was 2.3 m high. In terms of appearance, it was modeled on the City of London, which was commissioned in 1863 .
On February 8, 1865, the City of Boston departed from Liverpool on its maiden voyage to New York via Queenstown . The ship remained on this route throughout its entire service life. She completed her last voyage on the west course on January 13, 1870, when she arrived in New York ten days after departure from Liverpool. Then the preparations for the return trip to England began.
The disappearance
On Tuesday, January 25, 1870, the City of Boston in New York departed for another Atlantic crossing under the command of Captain JJ Halcrow. Three days later, on January 28, she made a stopover in Halifax and then ran out into the Atlantic Ocean . In addition to 84 crew members, 107 passengers were on board, 55 of them in first class and 52 in third class. Among the passengers were some officers from the Royal Artillery as well as 19 women and 13 children.
After leaving Halifax, the City of Boston was no longer seen, it never arrived in Liverpool. No debris or human remains were found, so it is unclear what happened to the ship. Captain Hackett of the schooner Charles Tupper, who sailed into Halifax on February 8, 1870, reported that on the evening of January 31, he had seen a large three- masted steamship off Sable Island firing various colored emergency missiles. The ship then disappeared. The Inman Line did not consider this ship to be the City of Boston , as in their opinion it must have already left Sable Island far behind at the specified time.
Implications and assumptions
The disappearance of the City of Boston caused consternation on both sides of the Atlantic and generated a lot of media coverage. On March 17, 1870, the press reported that the ship had entered Queenstown early the morning before. The relatives' joy, however, was short-lived; it soon turned out that the information the newspapers had received was incorrect. It is not known whether it was a mistake or a bad joke. David M. Stone, president of the Associated Press , offered a reward of $ 500 for clues that would lead to the origin of the message, but to no avail.
A lifeboat attributed to the City of Boston was later found on the coast of Cornwall . A message that the ship had sunk was reportedly carved into one of the planks. In February 1913, a message in a bottle was also found that appeared to have been written on board the City of Boston . Under the heading "SS City of Boston, February 4, 1870" it was read that the ship sank quickly, was also on fire, that the propeller had broken and that four people had already gone overboard. Since the names with which the paper was signed do not appear on the crew list, the authenticity of the message in a bottle has been questioned.
Shortly before, the ship's three-bladed propeller had been replaced by a double-bladed one. It was later believed that this was not strong enough to get the City of Boston through bad weather and heavy seas. The theories about the possible cause of the sinking included a hurricane that was reported off Sable Island on January 29, and the collision with an iceberg .
It was also noted that the City of Boston left New York Harbor completely overloaded with passengers and cargo and was also in an unseaworthy condition. Her cargo consisted of 390 tons of beef , 486 bales of cotton , 36 bales of hops , 12 boxes of sewing machines , 18 tons of press cake , 88,500 pounds of flour , 189,700 pounds of bacon , 10,376 pounds of wheat and 82,672 pounds of tallow . According to several eyewitness reports, the ship is said to have been unusually deep in the water on departure.
See also
Web links
- Overview of technical data in the Clydeships database
- SS City of Boston (+1870) at Wrecksite Database
- Illustrated report on the City of Boston in Liverpool Mercury magazine , February 8, 1913
- Collection of contemporary reports from the New York Daily Times
- THE STEAMSHIP CITY OF BOSTON (Report in the New York Times of February 23, 1870)
- The City of Boston in the Norway Heritage ship database
- Entry in the ship directory Miramar Ship Index