| Summary: | The shipping firm of J. P. Corry & Company commissioned Star of Bengal for their own account. Star of Bengal, appropriately, traded between London and Indian ports with occasional voyages to Australia well into the 1880s. Star of Bengal also made voyages to San Francisco and South America. In 1898 the ship came under the ownership of J. J. Smith of San Francisco. In 1906, the Alaska Packers Association purchased the ship and it began voyaging to Alaska with cannery workers, returning at the end of summer with cases of canned salmon. The ship wrecked on Coronation Island, Alaska in a preventable mishap that claimed the lives of 110 of her complement of 137—one of the worst maritime disasters of the west coast. The photograph shows the ship sometime between 1906 and 1908. Star of Bengal has been rerigged as a bark with a typical west coast gaffless spanker and topsail. Ship Name:Star of Bengal; Sailed: 1874-1908; Type: Iron 3-masted later bark; Built by: Belfast, Ireland by Harland & Wolff; Dimensions: 262.8' x 40.2' x 23.5'; Tonnage: 1877 tons.
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