SS City of Boston

The SS City of Boston was a British iron-hulled single-screw passenger steamship of the Inman Line which disappeared in the North Atlantic Ocean en route from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Liverpool in January 1870.[1]

City of Boston, by Henry Spernon Tozer
History
United Kingdom
NameCity of Boston
Operator Inman Line
BuilderTod and Macgregor, Partick, Glasgow
Yard number131
Launched15 November 1864
FateLost 1870
General characteristics
Tonnage2213 grt, 1650 nrt
Length305 ft (93 m)
Beam39 ft (12 m)
Depth18.1 ft (5.5 m)
Propulsion
  • 2 × steam engines (600 hp total)
  • single screw
Sail planThree-masted (ship rigged)
Speed12 kn (22 km/h; 14 mph)
Memorial to a family lost in the disaster in the porch of St Pancras Parish Church, London.

Description

The City of Boston was built by shipbuilders Tod & Macgregor of Partick, Glasgow and launched on 15 November 1864. Her maiden voyage, on 8 February 1865, was from Liverpool to New York via Queenstown.[2]

History

On 5 November 1868, she rescued the passengers and crew of Wabeno or Wahens, which had struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean and was sinking.[3][4] According to Henry Jenner (bishop), the City of Boston herself ran aground after leaving New York on 5 December 1868.[5] The New York Herald refers to storms in New York on 5 November 1868, but makes no reference to a grounding [6]

Disappearance

The City of Boston sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia for Liverpool on 28 January 1870 commanded by Captain Halcrow on her regular New York - Halifax - Liverpool route. She had 191 people on board: 55 cabin passengers, 52 steerage passengers and a crew of 84. (Other sources say 207 were aboard.) A number of the passengers were prominent businessmen and military officers from Halifax. She never reached her destination and no trace of her was ever found.[7]

A violent gale and snowstorm took place two days after her departure which may have contributed to her loss. Collision with an iceberg was another explanation suggested at the time.[8] It was reported at the time that she had been seen off the coast of Ireland on 25 February and had reported that both cylinders in her engine were broken. The barque Russell reported wreckage sunk 32 nautical miles (59 km) south west by south of the Smalls Lighthouse, with just a steamship's funnel out of the water. It was thought that this was from City of Boston.[9] A piece of wood washed up at Perranporth, Cornwall on 25 April with the inscription "City of Boston is sinking. February 11th".[10] A message in a bottle washed up at Cranstock, Cornwall in November 1870. The bottle had evidently been in the water for many months. The message claimed City of Boston had been in collision with another vessel and was sinking.[11] A message was found in a stone bottle at Waterloo on May 6, dated February 4, stating that the ship was on fire and the propellers broken. The signers were not listed as either crew or passengers. Another letter was found in a bottle on April 19 at Princes Bay, Staten Island, dated March 2, stating that the engine room had caught fire and that the ship was swamped while trying to launch the lifeboat. The letter was signed with the probable name of one of the steerage passengers.[12]

A statement was also published in the Times, that when she left, she was overladen, by 18 to 20 inches.[13]

City of Boston had been fitted with a two-blade propeller to replace her original three-blade propeller which had been broken during her previous voyage, and Captain Brooks of the SS City of Brooklyn expressed the opinion that the new propeller would not be strong enough to let her make headway against the adverse weather.

In 1875, speculation emerged that a time bomb connected to an insurance fraud have been responsible for the ship's loss. A bomb exploded in a barrel being loaded onto a ship in Bremerhaven that year and killed 80 people. The bomb was planted by Alexander Keith, Jr., originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia (the City of Boston's last port of call.) However no evidence emerged to connect Keith with the loss of the SS City of Boston.

The Missing Screw-Steamer City of Boston, by Edwin Weedon

Sargasso Sea Wreckage Theory

Around the year 1900, Elisha Thompson signed up as a cabin boy on the cargo vessel the J. G. Norwood. Three weeks after leaving port at Galveston, Texas, the ship ran headlong into a severe storm. Almost the whole crew was washed overboard by a massive wave. When the storm blew over, by a miracle the J.G. Norwood remained afloat but dismasted, leaving Thompson the only survivor on board.

The ship drifted for days until it got entangled with the floating seaweed of the Sargasso Sea. It was here that Thompson saw the floating wrecks of other ships, among them the SS City of Boston. Thompson eventually managed to escape from the Sargasso Sea by fitting out a still intact lifeboat and rigging it with a small sail. He was rescued three weeks later by a steamer heading for Liverpool, England, where he wrote down his adventure while recuperating.[14]

See also

Citations
  1. Gibbs, C. R. Vernon (1957). Passenger Liners of the Western Ocean: A Record of Atlantic Steam and Motor Passenger Vessels from 1838 to the Present Day. John De Graff. p. 117.
  2. "City of Boston". Caledonian Maritime Heritage Trust. Retrieved 7 October 2020.
  3. "Shipping Disasters". Liverpool Mercury. No. 6489. Liverpool. 12 November 1868.
  4. "Shipping Disasters". Liverpool Mercury. No. 6490. Liverpool. 13 November 1868.
  5. Jenner, Journal of a Voyage Around the World, in John Pearce, ed., Seeking a See: A Journal of The Right Reverend Henry Lascelles Jenner D.D. of his visit to Dunedin, New Zealand in 1868-1869, (Dunedin, N.Z.; Standing Committee of the Diocese of Dunedin, 1984) 92.
  6. "The Storm". New York Herald. 6 December 1868. p. 3 – via Library of Congress: Chronicling America.
  7. City of Boston - 1870, On the Rocks Shipwreck Database, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic
  8. "City of Boston-1870", On the Rocks Shipwreck Database Nova Scotia Museum
  9. "The City of Boston". The Times. No. 26687. London. 2 March 1870. col C, p. 5.
  10. "Shipping Intelligence". Northern Echo. No. 98. Darlington. 26 April 1870.
  11. "Shipping Intelligence". Newcastle Courant. No. 10220. Newcastle upon Tyne. 11 November 1870.
  12. "The City of Boston". The Leeds Mercury. 10 May 1870. p. 6 – via newspapers.com.
  13. "The Missing Steamer City Of Boston". Glasgow Herald. 16 March 1870. p. 5 – via newspapers.com.
  14. The Lookout Magazine: Seamen's Church Institute of New York; 8th October 1972 Issue; Article titled "Sea of No Return" by Captain Walt Jaffee

References

Sources
  • Ann Larabee The Dynamite Fiend: The Chilling Tale of A Confederate Spy, Con Artist, and Mass Murderer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), illus. p. 106, 144, 167, 177, 182. ISBN 1-4039-6794-6.

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