Skip to content
NewsPipe

Steamship Milwaukee Sails With Record Cotton Cargo

A New Orleans steamship departed for Liverpool with what was claimed to be the largest general cargo ever floated, a striking record of the cotton export trade now long forgotten.

NewsPipe summary

Mesa Free Press · November 19, 1897 · Page 2

1 min read

The steamship Milwaukee has sailed from New Orleans for Liverpool with the largest cargo of cotton, if not the largest general cargo ever floated. It consists of 23,850 bales of cotton, 30,200 bushels of grain, 38,818 pieces of staves, 2,300 oars — the entire cargo being equal to 26,000 bales of cotton. It would take 500 freight cars to carry her cargo, and the train would measure three and one-quarter miles in length.

Was this worth reading?

This is how the site learns what to look for. Ratings move the weights behind the front page; notes go into the editorial brief that guides what gets pulled from the archives next.

Feedback on “Steamship Milwaukee Sails With Record Cotton Cargo”

Elsewhere in the archive

Schooner Volcano Survives Mid-Ocean Storm Without a Compass

Mesa Free Press · November 19, 1897 · San Francisco, California

A small trading schooner bound for Alaska lost its compass in a Pacific storm, and its captain steered home by the stars in a feat seafaring men called marvelous — a forgotten piece of maritime heroism.

Improvements Planned for Wilson's Peak Park

Mesa Free Press · November 19, 1897 · Wilson's Peak, California

Plans to terrace the mountainside, lay new trails, and add tourist facilities at a Southern California mountain resort, as reported in a routine local improvement notice.

Berkeley Student From Redlands Dies of Morphine Poisoning

Mesa Free Press · November 19, 1897 · Berkeley, California

A young California college student's sudden death from morphine, rumored to stem from a failed romance, was reported in a single terse paragraph — the kind of unresolved personal tragedy newspapers of the era rarely followed up on.