ANTONIO JACOBSEN | CITY OF LONDON

Parke-Bernet, New York, 1967;

Sotheby's Parke-Bernet, New York, May 10-11, 1974, lot 242.

The transatlantic British passenger steamship, the City of London, was built in 1863 by Tod & McGregor in Glasgow, Scotland and owned by the Inman Line, which transported immigrants from Liverpool to the Port of Cobh, Queenstown and then to New York for several years. The original 2,560-ton ship was rebuilt and equipped with new single-expansion engines in 1869 in order to meet growing emigration demands in the 1870s. The Liverpool firm of W.H. Ross purchased the SS City of London for the Thistle Line in 1878, and added compounded engines that brought it to a ultimate weight of 2,801 gross-tons. The City of London carried passengers and cattle from London to New York for the following four years before it went missing at sea in 1881, taking forty-one lives.