Tod & Macgregor Shiplist

 

Yard No.:

 67

Name:

 BENGAL

Year:

 1852

Description:

 Passenger Ship

Webpage:

 Webpage The Shiplist, P & O

Picture:

 Yes

Tonnage:

 2,238

Length:

 310

Width:

 39.2

H.P.:

 275

Type:

 Iron. 2 Compound Inverted engines

Customer:

 P. & O.

Fate:

 

Points of Note:

 

Date of Launch:

 

Notes:

          Pride of the P. & O. fleet and for a short while the world's largest ship except Great Britain. Bengal could always make her 10 knots on 45 tons of coal a day. On her second voyage she steamed from Gibraltar to Alexandria via Marseilles in 166 hours (11½ hours). Captured a Russian barque during the Crimean war, and brought her into Madras, causing a legal Controversy. She was struck by a squall and driven ashore at Galle, June 1859, and four years later Benares towed her into port with a broken propeller shaft. In 1864 a Calcutta cyclone drove Bengal so far inland that a canal had to be cut to refloat her in deep water. A year later she was in trouble once more with another shaft-breakage at sea. Disposal was to other London shipowners.

[British Passenger Lines of the Five Oceans, Commander C.R. Vernon Gibbs]