SS Carnatic
SS Carnatic | |
| History | |
|---|---|
| United Kingdom | |
| Name | SS Carnatic |
| Operator | Peninsula & Orient Steam Navigation Company |
| Builder | Samuda Brothers, Cubitt Town, London |
| Laid down | 30 January 1862 |
| Launched | 6 December 1862 |
| Completed | 25 April 1863 |
| Fate | Wrecked, 12 September 1869 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type | Steam ship |
| Tonnage | 1,776 GRT |
| Length | 89.4 m (293 ft 4 in) |
| Beam | 11.6 m (38 ft 1 in) |
| Draught | 7.8 m (25 ft 7 in) |
| Propulsion | Humphrys, Tennant and Dykes 4-cylinder compound inverted steam engine, 2,442 hp (1,821 kW), single shaft |
| Sail plan | Brig |
| Speed | 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) |
| Capacity | 250 passengers |
| Notes | 31 persons lost in the shipwreck |
SS Carnatic was a British steamship built in 1862-63 by Samuda Brothers at Cubitt Town on the Isle of Dogs, London, for the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O). She operated on the Suez to Bombay run in the last years before the Suez Canal was opened. This route gave a fast, steamship-operated route from Britain to India, connecting with similar steamships running through the Mediterranean to Alexandria, with an overland crossing to Suez. The alternative was to sail round the Cape of Good Hope, a distance at which steam ships were not, in the early 1860s, sufficiently economical to be commercially competitive with sail.
As one of the first British steamships to use a compound engine, Carnatic achieved a much better fuel economy (at 2lbs of coal per indicated horsepower-hour) than most other contemporary steamers. P&O had a number of compound-engined ships built in the first half of the 1860s: Poonah (1863), Golconda (1863) and Baronda (1864).: 170
In 1869, she ran aground on a coral reef in the Red Sea and broke apart the following morning, with the loss of 31 lives. Her wreck was rediscovered in 1984 and is now a popular scuba diving site.