Rahul Sharma (Editor)

SS Mariposa (1883)

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Name
  
SS Mariposa

Launched
  
1883

Tonnage
  
3,000 GRT

Builder
  
William Cramp & Sons

SS Mariposa (1883) httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediacommonsthu

Owner
  
Oceanic Steamship Company (1883-1912) Alaska Steamship Company (1912-1917)

Fate
  
Wrecked and sank, 18 December 1917

SS Mariposa was a steamboat which served in the Pacific Ocean from 1883 to 1917.

Contents

History

The Mariposa was an iron ship built in 1883 in Philadelphia by the William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Company. It had a weight of 3,000 tons and was built for the Oceanic Steamship Company, which had been founded in 1881 by John D. Spreckels & Brothers to provide passenger and cargo service between San Francisco and Honolulu, Hawaii. Later their service was extended to include Australia and New Zealand.

The ship was sold in 1912 to the Alaska Steamship Company, but not renamed. On 18 December 1917 it sank after hitting a Straits Island reef off the coast of British Columbia.

In 1926 the Oceanic Steamship Company was bought out by the Matson Line of which it became a subsidiary.

Famous passengers

Notable passengers include Saint Marianne Cope, O.S.F., Jessie Ackermann, Jack London and William Priestly MacIntosh.

  • Marianne Cope, a missionary Religious Sister, was the leader of a small group of Franciscan Sisters who sailed to Hawaii on this ship at the request of the King of Hawaii to provide medical care for the lepers of the country. She and her companions arrived in Honolulu on November 8, 1883, and she spent the rest of her life in this service, dying on the island of Molokai in 1918. She was declared a saint by the Catholic Church in 2012 for her heroic and holy life of service and self-sacrifice. She is also honored as a saint by the Episcopal Church.
  • Jessie Ackermann was the much-travelled delegate of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union who left Sydney on the Mariposa on 20 March 1893 to return to America.
  • Jack London and his wife, the writer Charmian London, traveled from Papeete to San Francisco and back in January and February, 1908.
  • William Priestly MacIntosh left Sydney in the Mariposa on April 1898 on the first leg of a journey to Italy where he was going to supervise the roughing out of the marble sculptures for the Queen Victoria Building.

    • References

    SS Mariposa (1883) Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA