Name SS Usoga Yard number 284 Launched 1913 | Port of registry Kisumu In service 1915 Length 67 m | |
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Namesake the kingdom of Busoga in Uganda Operator Uganda Railway 1913–29; Kenya and Uganda Railways and Harbours 1929–48; East African Railways and Harbours Corporation 1948–75 Builder Bow, McLachlan and Company | ||
SS Usoga is a disused cargo and passenger Lake Victoria ferry in East Africa.
History
Bow, McLachlan and Company of Paisley in Renfrewshire, Scotland built Usoga and her sister ship SS Rusinga in 1913. They were "knock down" vessels; that is, they were bolted together in the shipyard at Paisley, all the parts marked with numbers, disassembled into many hundreds of parts and transported in kit form by sea to Kenya for reassembly.
Usoga entered service on the lake in 1915 and was a troop ship during the First World War East African Campaign. After the Armistice she entered civilian service as a Lake Victoria ferry.
In 1975 the East African Railways and Harbours Corporation laid her up at the Lake Victoria port of Kisumu. In the 1990s she sank at the quayside and she was still there in 2006 and 2007, along with the slightly earlier SS Nyanza from the same fleet.