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BRITANNIA (1887)
Service dates: 1887-1909
Official number: 93196
Shipping lines: P&O STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY
Ship type:
Passenger Liner.
Career
- 18.08.1887
- Launched.
- 11.10.1887
- Registered.
- 15.10.1887
- Ran trials. Fuel consumption 110 tons per day.
- 16.10.1887
- Delivered as Britannia for The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company at a cost of £187,278. A sister to the earlier Victoria and very similar to the later Oceana and Arcadia which together made up P&O’s Jubilee Class to mark Queen Victoria’s (and the Company’s) Golden Jubilee. Fitted with unsubsidised gun platforms in case of auxiliary cruiser duties. Her name is a poetic one for Britain, or Britain personified, taken from the Latin name for the Roman province covering most of England.
- 18.10.1887
- Aground for 12 hours on the Goodwin Sands.
- 05.11.1887
- Maiden sailing established a new Brindisi/Adelaide mail record of 23 days 10 hours, at an average of 16 knots as against 14.5 knots required by the mail contract.
- 26.07.1889
- Arrived at Sydney from Melbourne during which passage she was overhauled by the clipper Cutty Sark when she (Britannia) was making 16 knots.
- 07.01.1890
- Cargo capacity 4,406 cubic metres (155,612 cubic feet).
- 13.11.1891
- Collided with the steamer Knight of Sir John in the Suez Canal.
- 1894
- Ran aground in the Suez Canal.
- 1894/1895
- Experimental six-month charter (with Victoria) for Indian trooping carrying 1,200 men (she could carry 2,700 in emergency). Contract repeated in 1895/96 and 1896/97. This was the first time that commercial ships had been hired for trooping for many years, and improved the situation substantially.
- 26.07.1898
- Cargo capacity 4,308 cubic metres (152,131 cubic feet).
- 05.1899
- Deadweight 4,988 tons. Draught 8.062m (26ft 5½in). Cargo capacity 3,990 cubic metres (140,915 cubic feet).
- 02.1902
- Cargo capacity 3,911 cubic metres (138,137 cubic feet).
- 1904
- Refitted and modernised for revised mail contracts starting in 1905.
- 1907
- Carried Prince Fushimi of Japan on a state visit to London.
- n.d.
- Laid up in London.
- 08.1909
- Sold for £11,520 to Fratelli Cerruti fu Allesandra, Italy to be broken up.
- 22.08.1909
- Arrived at Genoa under the name Britanni. Scrapped alongside her sister Victoria.