SOLENT (II) 1878
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SOLENT (II) 1878
Built as a three-masted iron hulled cargo-passenger vessel under yard No 170 by Oswald Mordaunt, Woodston near Southampton for the Royal Mail S.P. Co., London.
Launched under the name SOLENT.
Tonnage 1.908 gross, 1.206 net., dim. 97.97 x 10.67 x 5.05m.
Powered by a 2-cyl. compound inverted steam engine; manufactured by the shipbuilder, 280 hp., one propeller, speed 11 knots.
Passenger accommodation for 137 passengers in two classes.
Barquentine rigged.
September 1878 completed.
She was used in the inter-colonial West Indies island service of the Royal Mail Line, with home port Barbados.
1900 Was her aft mast removed.
12 May 1902 arrived as rescue ship at Saint Pierre, Martinique after the Mount Pelée eruption in which at least 35.000 people died. Crew of the SOLENT found one man in a cell in the town jail, but he died two days afterwards.
August 1904, she was de Royal Mail Lines first full time cruise vessel with a white painted hull, and used in the West Indies, without any cargo, she made calls at interesting places which are mostly not visited by ordinary steamers.
Third quarter of 1909 broken up. (most probably somewhere in the Caribbean.)
On Montserrat 1980 $1 sg 484.
Source: Merchant Fleets, Royal Mail Line by Duncan Haws. Some web-sites
Re: SOLENT (II) 1878
RMS Solent was not broken up in the Caribbean but in Bo'ness on the River Forth. See attachment from the Linthgowshire Gazette, 25/06/1909