President (ship)
 |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
The President was put into operation in 1840 paddle steamer of the British shipping company British and American Steam Navigation Company with 2366 BRT the then largest passenger ship in the world. After three completed Atlantic crossings, the ship disappeared after March 11, 1841 without a trace on the North Atlantic .
history
The wooden paddle steamer President was commissioned in 1839 by the British and American Steam Navigation Company, founded the previous year, and built at the Curling & Young shipyard in London. This was the first shipping company to offer a liner service on the North Atlantic . Her first ship , the 1,863 GRT British Queen , was the largest ship in the world when it entered service in July 1839 and thus beat the Great Western , which was commissioned in 1838 .
To ensure a regular service from Liverpool via Queenstown to New York , the President was put into service on August 1, 1840. At 2,366 GRT, she was twice the size of the Cunard Line's RMS Britannia and replaced the British Queen as the largest passenger ship in the world. The ships took turns so that one left Liverpool every 10th of the month. There was space for 154 passengers on board the President .
In the transatlantic service, the President, like the British Queen, turned out to be too lightly built and too little engine power. The shipping company was disappointed with the performance of the ship. On her maiden voyage , the ship took 16 days in each direction. On the second crossing (November 2, 1840) she got into stormy weather and covered only 300 miles in the first three days. The coal supply was so exhausted that the President could no longer make it to Liverpool and had to return to New York. On November 28, she finally arrived in Liverpool ten days late. It was then taken out of service for two months and rebuilt in Plymouth . In February 1841 the ship made its third voyage and reached New York after three weeks.
After a total of only three completed Atlantic crossings, the President disappeared in March 1841 without a trace on the North Atlantic. On Thursday, March 11, 1841, she cast off in New York with 28 passengers and 81 crew members on board. Lieut was in command. Richard Roberts, a reserve officer in the Royal Navy . Roberts had been the captain of the Sirius when it became the first steamship to cross the Atlantic in April 1838.
Due to the heavy cargo and the additional coal, the President was deep in the water when she left. Shortly after departure, the steamer got into a heavy storm. The President was last seen by the Orpheus crew between the Nantucket Shoals and Georges Bank on March 13th . The captain of the Orpheus reported that the ship struggled against high waves and stormy winds. After that, the President was never seen again. No debris or bodies were found.
Due to her late arrival on the previous crossing, the delay of the President did not cause much unrest at first. Only after a while did the owners worry. Junius Smith, founder of the British and American Steam Navigation Company, hoped for months that the President would safely reach her destination. Even Queen Victoria ordered that she be informed immediately when the ship arrived. Most likely the ship sank in a storm at the Georges Banks, but rumors of an iceberg collision were also spread.
Among the passengers on this trip were:
- George Grimston Cookman (* 1800), influential minister of the Wesleyan Methodist Church and chaplain of the United States Senate
- Lord Fitzroy George Charles Gordon-Lennox (* 1820), British nobleman , son of Charles Gordon-Lennox, 5th Duke of Richmond and younger brother of Charles Gordon-Lennox, 6th Duke of Richmond
- Tyrone Power (* 1797), Irish stage actor, comedian and theater manager, whose descendants include Tyrone Guthrie , Tyrone Power , Taryn Power and Romina Power
The shipping company collapsed and sold its only remaining ship, the British Queen , to the Belgian government that same year. Three years after the disappearance was one of Captain Roberts Cenotaph in the cemetery of Marmullane Church in his hometown of Passage West ( County Cork built). On May 22, 2009 Roberts was honored among others with the title "Freedom of the City of Cork" of the city of Cork and thus made an honorary citizen of the city of Cork.
Web links
- Executive summary of the President's tenure with a large picture
- Report from the Times of May 13, 1841 with the passenger list of the last voyage
- Discussion of the President on an ancestry.com message board
- The accident of the steamer President from the perspective of the affected Cookman family (PDF file; 188 kB)
- The British and American Steam Navigation Company in The Ships List