Parthia (ship)
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The Parthia was a passenger ship of the British shipping company Cunard Line put into service in 1870 , which was used in passenger and mail traffic from Liverpool via Queenstown to New York . The ship was handed over to the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1887 and changed hands several times in the following years. It was scrapped in 1956 after 86 years of service.
history
Cunard Line
The 3,167 GRT iron steamship Parthia was built at the William Denny and Brothers shipyard in the Scottish port city of Dumbarton and was 109.87 meters long and 12.31 meters wide. The Parthia had a chimney, three masts with full rigging , a single propeller and could reach a speed of 12 knots (22.2 km / h). There was space on board for 150 first class and 1,031 third class passengers.
The Parthia was one of five new iron-built screw express steamers commissioned by the Cunard Line after the Russia , which entered service in 1867 , had proven itself. The Russia was Cunard's first passenger steamer that was no longer powered by a paddle wheel, but by a screw. This method was then used on Cunard's later ships.
The Parthia was launched on September 10, 1870. On December 17, 1870, she sailed from Liverpool to New York on her maiden voyage. In March 1880, she towed the leaky barque Mary A. Marshall , which sank the following day. In November 1880 she saved the crew of the sinking barque James Edwards . In 1881, the ship was used to bring troops to Alexandria to be deployed in Khartoum during the looming Mahdi uprising .
The Parthia remained on the Liverpool-New York service until November 14, 1883. Then she and the Batavia were sold to the John Elder & Company shipyard in order to finance the construction of the new sister ships Umbria and Etruria .
Pacific route
After the Parthia was equipped with triple expansion steam engines in 1885, she made one or more trips to Australia . In the years 1887 to 1891 she ran for the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) on the Pacific route Vancouver - Yokohama - Shanghai - Hong Kong . In 1891 the Parthia was sold to the Northern Pacific Line. For this company, the ship sailed from Tacoma to Hong Kong under the name Victoria .
In 1898 the steamer was sold to the US shipping company North American Mail Line, for which it served the same route under the American flag, but also brought troops to Manila . In 1901 the Parthia was returned to the Northern Pacific Line, used from 1904 by North Western Commercial and from 1908 used by the Alaska Steamship Company on their Alaska route.
The shipping company had the ship overhauled at great expense, equipped it with new machines and expanded the passenger capacity. In 1934, the Parthia completed the first cruise to the Arctic for the Alaska Steamship Company, with stops in Nome and Kotzebue .
Late years
1935 was Parthia for three years on Lake Union in Seattle launched . In 1941 the passenger quarters were dismantled. Until 1947 the Parthia was in the service of the War Shipping Administration . On May 23, 1952, the ship was launched again.
With the Straits Towing Company in Vancouver, a new owner was found in 1954 who converted the now 84-year-old Parthia into a lighter for timber transport and named it Straits No. 27 . In 1956 the ship was sold to Japan and in the same year it was scrapped in Osaka under the name Straits Maru .
Web links
- Ship description in The Ships List
- The Parthia in the Clydebuilt Ships Database
- Website with data on Cunard ships ( Memento from January 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive )