The SS Dakota was a steamship built by the Eastern Shipbuilding Company in Groton

Groton, Connecticut

Groton is a town located on the Thames River in New London County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 39,907 at the 2000 census....

, Connecticut

Connecticut

Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

 and owned by railroad magnate James J. Hill

James J. Hill

James Jerome Hill , was a Canadian-American railroad executive. He was the chief executive officer of a family of lines headed by the Great Northern Railway, which served a substantial area of the Upper Midwest, the northern Great Plains, and Pacific Northwest...

 of the Great Northern Steamship Company.

History

Along with her sister ship, the SS Minnesota, she was described as the largest steamer in the world flying the American flag.
She was built "to give impetus to the trade with the Orient

Orient

The Orient means "the East." It is a traditional designation for anything that belongs to the Eastern world or the Far East, in relation to Europe. In English it is a metonym that means various parts of Asia.- Derivation :...

", trading with Japan and Hong Kong and travelling the Pacific route. Launched in February 1903, she was a twin screw vessel with four masts and one funnel, capable of 14.6 knots.

She was wrecked when she struck a reef off the coast of Yokohama

Yokohama

is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the second largest city in Japan by population after Tokyo and most populous municipality of Japan. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu...

on 3 March 1907 on her seventh journey.
The ship was close enough to shore to avoid any deaths and the passengers and cargo were evacuated before she sank.. The passengers returned to the United States aboard the Japanese steamship Hakuai. Eighty bags of mail later washed ashore.

After the ship was lost, Hill vowed not to make any more ships under the American flag, noting the high cost of maintaining a ship in America compared to Japan due to restrictions he regarded as "onerous".

Engines

The Dakota's main engines consisted of two units of three vertically positioned triple expansion cylinders. The cylinders had a stroke of 57 inches and diameters of 29, 51, and 89 inches and were designed to run at 78 RPM, developing approximately 4,800 horsepower each at a steam pressure of 230 pounds per square inch. The engines were designed to drive the ship at 14 knots.

External links

• Photograph of the SS Dakota from an archived version of www.greatcruisephotos.com on the Internet Archive
• Dakota sinking by the bow (*note all lifeboats have been successfully launched on the starboard side.)