RMS Rhone

RMS Rhone was a Royal Mail Ship of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, ordered in June 1863 from the Millwall Iron Works on the Isle of Dogs in London. She had an iron hull 310 feet long, measured 2,738 gross tons and was a sail-steamer rigged as a two-masted brig, with a compound steam engine that gave her 14 knots on trials. She was an innovative ship, with a bronze propeller that was only the second ever cast in that alloy and a surface condenser that let her reuse boiler water. She left Southampton on her maiden voyage to Brazil on 9 October 1865 and was moved to the Caribbean route in January 1867. On 29 October 1867 she was driven onto Salt Island in the British Virgin Islands during the San Narciso hurricane and broke in two, killing 123 people. Her wreck became a national park in 1980 and is one of the best known wreck dives in the Caribbean.