English School, Early 20th Century

The SS Californian en route to America

The SS Californian en route to America
oil on canvas laid to board
38 x 73.5cm (15 x 29in).

The Californian was a British steamship owned by the Leyland Line and constructed by the Caledon Shipbuilding & Engineering Company in Dundee in 1901. She weighed 6,223 tons, measured 447 feet long (53 feet at her beam) and had a triple expansion steam engine powered by two double-ended boilers, giving her an average speed of 12 knots. She was designed primarily to transport cotton, but also had the capacity to carry 47 passengers and 55 crew members. The Californian became infamous for her inaction during the sinking of the RMS Titanic, being the closest ship in the area. Stanley Lord, the ship's captain at the time, was heavily critisised during a U.S. Senate enquiry calling his lack of action 'reprehensible' and the British Enquiry concluded that Californian's responding to Titanic's rockets and going to assist '... might have saved many if not all of the lives that were lost'. She later sunk on the 9th Novembember 1915 by a German submarine in the Eastern Mediteranean during Wold War I.