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SS Pacific (1849)

Steamship Pacific
Pacific
(lithograph originally published by Day & Son)
History
Name: Pacific
Namesake: Pacific Ocean
Operator: Collins Line
Route: New York-Liverpool
Builder: Brown & Bell, New York
Cost: $700,000
Launched: 1 Feb 1849
Maiden voyage: 25 May 1850
Honors and
awards:
Blue Riband holder, 21 Sep 1850–16 Aug 1851
Fate: Sank off the coast of Wales, c.24 January 1856
General characteristics
Type: Passenger
Tonnage: 2,707 gross tons
Length: 281 ft (85.6 m)
Beam: 45 ft (13.7 m)
Propulsion: 2 × 95-inch cylinder (2.4 m), 9-foot stroke (2.7 m) side-lever engines, auxiliary sails
Speed: 12.5 knots (23.2 km/h; 14.4 mph)
Capacity: Passengers: 200 1st class, 80 2nd class
Crew: 141

SS Pacific was a wooden-hulled, sidewheel steamer built in 1849 for transatlantic service with the American Collins Line. Designed to outclass their chief rivals from the British-owned Cunard Line, Pacific and her three sister ships (Atlantic, Arctic and Baltic) were the largest, fastest and most well-appointed transatlantic steamers of their day.

Pacific's career began on a high note when she set a new transatlantic speed record in her first year of service, but after only five years in operation, the ship along with her entire complement of almost 200 passengers and crew went missing, without a trace, on a voyage from Liverpool to New York City, which began 23 January 1856. Pacific's fate remained a mystery for years. A message in a bottle found on a Hebrides island (Scotland) in 1861 declared her sunk by icebergs. In 1991, wreckage located in the Irish Sea off the coast of Wales was claimed, without corroboration, as being the SS Pacific.

For several decades prior to the 1840s, American sailing ships had dominated the transatlantic routes between Europe and the United States. With the coming of oceangoing steamships however, the U.S. lost its dominance as British steamship companies, particularly the government-subsidized Cunard Line, established regular and reliable steam packet services between the U.S. and Britain.

In 1847, the U.S. Congress granted a large subsidy to the New York and Liverpool United States Mail Steamship Company (S.S.C.) for the establishment of an American steam-packet service to compete with Britain's Cunard Line. With this generous subsidy in hand, the New York and Liverpool S.S.C. ordered four new ships from New York shipyards and established a new shipping line, the Collins Line, to manage them. The Collins Line ships were specifically designed to be larger and faster, and offer a greater degree of passenger comfort, than their Cunard Line counterparts. Design of the ships was entrusted to a noted New York marine architect, George Steers.


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Wikipedia

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