SS Great Republic (1867)
SS Great Republic (1867) launched in 1867 for Pacific Mail Steamship Company.
The Great Republic was launched from Henry Steers's ship-yard (see George Steers and Co), at Greenpoint, Long Island, on Thursday, November 8, 1866, and was the largest ship of any kind that at that date had ever been built in USA for commercial purposes. She was the first of the ships built by Pacific Mail Steamship Company for the new line between San Francisco and China, China Line, and was 380 feet long, 50 feet wide and 31 feet 6 inches deep in hold. The Great Republic was 5,000 tons.
She could carry 1450 passengers
Construction details
Her frame timbers were of white and live oak, fastened with copper and iron, and braced with straps of iron five inches wide and seven-eights of an inch thick, crossing each other diagonally every four feet. The inner planking was also double-strapped, and outside of the iron strapping was a double planking of Georgia yellow pine. The whole was thoroughly braced, and bolted together with three-nails of locust, iron, and composition spikes, and copper bolts.
The Great Republic had three masts, and was full ship-rigged, her foremast, however being the highest of the three, and her mizzenmast the shortest. She had three full decks, with an orlop deck fore and aft, extending to the engine bulk-head. She had four stout, water-tight bulk heads, dividing the hold into five separate compartments.[1]
Immediately after the launch the steamer was taken to the wharf of the Novelty Iron Works (New-York), at the foot of Twelfth-street, where she received her machinery, after being copper-bottomed at the Erie Basin Dock. It took 21 months to build her engines and put them in place. They were built with vertical beam, with a single cylinder while it was lying on its side. The table was set for 22 persons. Steam was supplied to the cylinder by four horizontal tubular boilers, each heated by four furnaces, their grates having a surface of 560 square feet. The heating surface presented to the action of the furnaces was 15,100 square feet. The paddle-wheels were 40 feet in diameter, having a face of 12 feet, each wheel being provided with 34 onk buckets.
The only accident at her launch was the loss of two anchors, the cables breaking the ship was hove to in the river. She was arranged for 20 per cent more power than the other large vessels then in the company's fleet, and was built to make from 15 to 20 knots an hour. Her register tonnage was 3,881 tons, the same as the SS America and the SS Japan.
In 1878, she has been sold to P.B. Cornwall and she was not renamed.
Wreckage
In 1879, the SS Great Republic was lost by capsizing of a boat, wrecked on Sand Island, Columbia River Bar. [2]
