Queen of the Pacific

Canadian Pacific Steamship Co's RMS Empress of Japan (1891)

Queen of the Pacific is a name or nickname of ships and places associated with the Pacific Ocean, the largest of Earth's oceans.

Ships

NYK Line's Hikawa Maru preserved at Naka-ku, Yokohama

US Coast Guard Cutter USCGC Taney preserved in Baltimore Inner Harbor

• In 1852, at the height of the age of the fast clipper sailing ships, the clipper Queen of the Pacific was launched from Pembroke, Maine.^[1]
• In 1857 the 2,801-ton wooden-hulled side-wheel steamship Queen of the Pacific was built and launched for the San Francisco – Nicaragua line of the Morgan and Garrison partnership. By 1859 Cornelius Vanderbilt owned her and renamed her SS Ocean Queen for transatlantic service. She was subsequently owned and operated by the Quartermaster's Department of the United States Department of War, the New York City – Aspinwall service, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and Ruger Brothers before being broken up in 1874.^[2]
• In 1888 the loss of a Queen of the Pacific in what was then called Port Harford (later renamed Port San Luis) brought forward the installation of the much needed Point San Luis Light in San Luis Obispo County, California. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1901 on liability for damage to that ship's cargo.^[3]
• In 1891 the new 5,905-ton twin-funnel steam ocean liner RMS Empress of Japan was hailed as the Queen of the Pacific when Canadian Pacific Steamships commissioned her for the trans-Pacific service. Her figurehead is preserved in Vancouver Maritime Museum and there is a fiberglass replica of the figurehead in Vancouver's Stanley Park.^[4]
• Hikawa Maru, an 11,602-ton NYK Line liner built in 1929, was nicknamed the Queen of the Pacific by its passengers. One of only two Imperial Japanese ocean-going passenger liners to survive World War II, she retired from service in 1960 and is permanently berthed at Yamashita Park in Naka-ku, Yokohama, Japan since 1961.^[5]
• Reina del Pacifico is Spanish for "Queen of the Pacific", and was the name of a British 17,702-ton Pacific Steam Navigation Company liner built in 1930. In her time she was the largest ocean liner serving the west coast of South America.^[6]
• The United States Coast Guard Cutter USCGC Taney was nicknamed the Queen of the Pacific while serving as the unofficial flagship of the Coast Guard's Pacific Area commander in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Taney is preserved by Baltimore Maritime Museum in Baltimore Inner Harbor. Her cruise books are in the collection of the Coast Guard Cutter Cruise Book Preservation Center.^[7]

Places

Countries

• Tahiti: the "Queen of the Pacific" in Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and in Francis Allyn Olmsted's Incidents of a Whaling Voyage.^[8]
• Philippines: in André de la Varre's 1938 documentary film "Manila, Queen of the Pacific".

States

• California: "the youthful Queen of the Pacific, in her robes of freedom, gorgeously inlaid with gold," in a speech by William H. Seward to the United States Senate in 1850.^[9]

Cities

• Acapulco, Mexico^[10]
• Honolulu, Hawaii^[11]
• Old Panama City: called the Queen of the Pacific before pirate Henry Morgan burned it.^[12]
• San Francisco^[13]

People

• Sandra Ávila Beltrán, a Mexican drug lord^[14]

References

1. "Also to sail that January, were the Maine clippers Flying Arrow, Golden Racer, Queen of the Pacific, and Wings of the Morning." (1852, launched from Pembroke)
2. 1857: Queen of the Pacific built. 1859: purchased by Vanderbilt and renamed Ocean Queen. 1861: chartered to US War Department. 1869–70: chartered to Ruger's American Line. 1875: scrapped.
3. History of Port San Luis. 180 U.S. 49 THE QUEEN OF THE PACIFIC No 130 decided 7 January 1901.
4. "Known as The Queen of the Pacific, the Empress of Japan had soon broken the Pacific speed-record."
5. Goossens, Reuben. "MV Hikawa Maru". ssMaritime. Retrieved 16 April 2013.
6. Talbot-Booth, E.C. (1942) [1936]. Ships and the Sea (Seventh ed.). London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co. Ltd.
7. USCGC Taney WHEC-37 "Queen of the Pacific" Viet Nam 1969–1970.
8. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Chapter XVIII – Vanikoro "On 15th of December, we left to the east the bewitching group of the Societies and the graceful Tahiti, queen of the Pacific." Incidents of a Whaling Voyage, Chapter XXVI – South Pacific "The 'queen of the Pacific,' a proud title that has been given to this island."
9. Classic Senate Speeches: William H. Seward, "Freedom in the New Territories" 11 March 1850. (Full text.)
10. Andrew Wilson (15 April 2006). "A Star is Reborn". The Guardian. Acapulco, once the 'Queen of the Pacific' and last word in Hollywood cool, is on the comeback trail after a $1 billion facelift.
11. Honolulu's chosen nickname is "The Queen of the Pacific".
12. Old Panama: the Queen of the Pacific.
13. Normand E. Klare. The Final Voyage of the SS Central America "The Ship of Gold" 1857,Chapter III – The Voyage. "San Francisco had been several times destroyed by fire. Each reconstruction of the city saw improvement as it progressed from a city of canvas to one of wood, then to a metropolis of bricks, a thriving port city. By 1853 she was called the Queen of the Pacific."
14. "'La reina del Pacífico', una historia salpicada de fantasía y realidad" (in Spanish). Terra Networks. 6 October 2007. Retrieved 23 October 2007.