SS Abyssinia

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Career

Name:	SS Abyssinia
Completed:	3 March 1870
Status:	Destroyed by fire, 18 December 1891
General characteristics
Tonnage:	3,651 tons
Length:	364 ft (111 m)
Beam:	42 ft (13 m)
Speed:	13 knots (24 km/h)

The SS Abyssinia was a Canadian Pacific steamship in the 19th Century, originally owned by Cunard Steamships and chartered to Canadian Pacific Steamships to open its Trans-Pacific steamship service, as were also the SS Parthia and the SS Batavia. Named for Abyssinia.

The Abyssinia, at 3,651 tons, accommodated 200 passengers in first class and 868 in steerage, with other classes proportionate to those, although on its maiden voyage it had only 22 first-class and 80 steerage passengers, the latter all Chinese.

The first voyage of the Abyssinia for Canadian Pacific Steamships broke all previous records for Trans-Pacific shipping, taking only 13 days to sail from Yokohama, Japan to Vancouver, British Columbia, arriving there on June 13, 1887, with its freight shipment of silk and tea arriving in New York, via Montreal, on June 21, and in London on June 29. The previous record for Trans-Pacific shipping was also held by CP shipping and via the Vancouver-Montreal railway route, which was much faster than via the Union Pacific or other railways, but the old sailing-ship liners were still much slower than the voyage of the steam-powered Abyssinia — 47 days from Yokohama to London, vs. 49 via American railroads. The Abyssinia's voyage is most notable, therefore, for halving transportation times between the Orient and Europe ove the days of the windjammers and other sail-driven vessels.