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Kanawha (1899)
Kanawha (1899)
Rogers was a major developer of coal and railroad properties in USS Piqua (SP-130), during its
West Virginia along the Kanawha River. Aboard the Kanawha, he service during World War I
frequently hosted his friends, including American humorist Mark
Twain and black educator Booker T. Washington.
After Rogers' death in 1909, the Kanawha served the U.S. Navy during World War I. After the war, it was
sold to Marcus Garvey's ill-fated Black Star Line and renamed the S.S. Antonio Maceo. However, the
former luxury yacht was apparently in poor condition by this time. A boiler, used to generate steam to drive
the ship, exploded, and a crewman was killed, while the vessel was located off the Virginia coast on its first
voyage from New York to Cuba.
Construction
Consolidated Shipbuilding was a builder of luxury yachts. The Kanawha was built in 1899 at the shipyard
on Matthewson Road, in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx, New York City. The shipyard moved
after World War II. The former shipyard property later became part of Roberto Clemente State Park.[1]
The 471-ton Kanawha was approximately 200 feet (61 m) long. Crewed by a complement of 39 people,
Kanawha was often compared by the newspapers of the day to the North Star, the yacht of a member of the
Vanderbilt family. Even among its contemporaries in the fleet of the New York Yacht Club, Kanawha was a
large vessel. The yacht cost $350,000 to build, and it had a record-setting speed of 22.2 knots.[2]
The latter included the Kanawha and Pocahontas Railroad Company incorporated in 1898. Its line ran 15
miles (24 km) from the Kanawha River up a tributary called Paint Creek. Rogers negotiated its lease to the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) in 1901 and its sale to a newly formed C&O subsidiary, Kanawha
and Paint Creek Railway Company, in 1902.
That same year, Rogers began investing with William Nelson Page in the Deepwater Railway, which was
built south into new coal lands from Deepwater in Fayette County on the Kanawha River.
Unfortunately for Garvey and his efforts, the ships he purchased beginning in 1919 were apparently both
overpriced and in poor condition. Among these was the once-grand and well-maintained Kanawha. It was
noted that Dr. Washington, the late educator, had been an honored guest aboard the ship years earlier.
Renamed by the Black Star Line the S.S. Antonio Maceo, after putting in for unplanned repairs at Norfolk,
it blew a boiler and killed a man off the Virginia coast on its first voyage from New York to Cuba, and had
to be towed back to New York. The Black Star Line stopped sailing in February 1922, and was soon out of
business.
References
This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.