To America! Santiago de Cuba Steamship from Copenhagen to New York arriving Aug. 1869

Steamship Santiago de Cuba

Thanks for the National Library of Sweden’s Online Digitized Swedish newspapers collection, which is fully text searchable, I found a newspaper advertisement of the exact voyage my ancestors took to America! This from the Gotlands tidning (Gotland Journal) published July 9, 1869, Visby, page 4:

Advertisement for the steamship Santiago de Cuba, departing 01 August, Copenhagen

Here’s the translation:

North American Lloyd

DIRECT

fast steamship between Copenhagen and New York with the high-speed American steamer Santiago de Cuba departing 1 August.

Price from Copenhagen 140 Riksdollars

Children under 12 years of age pay half price. With every ship is a Danish doctor and a Swedish interpreter, escorting the passengers to Chicago.

The ship will be provisioned in Copenhagen and enter no English or any other European port between.

Passengers should arrive in Copenhagen at least 3 days before ship departure.

You should report for the passage to NP Frederiksen, St. Anne Place 24, Copenhagen.

Main agent for southern Sweden, Alfred Malmström, 48 North Wall Street, Malmo.

For the Directorate: Duhrssen & Lubbers

I had previously blogged about my Swedish ancestors, Nils Peter Andersson and Maria Lotta Persdotter, making note of their gravesite. Also, I have an article about them on my main website detailing a little more of their actual immigration story and their lives in America.

The Santiago de Cuba was a very fast steamship that was built in the late 1850s that was commandeered by the army during the civil war. During the Civil War it served as a premier blockade enforcer. Here is a photo of the Santiago de Cuba during the civil war. Make note of the added gun turrets:

After the civil war, the ship returned to private passenger service and remained one of the fastest passenger ships at sea, as evidenced by this clip from the New York Times in 1866:

The Santiago de Cuba was not a ship with a regular passenger route between Copenhagen and New York. Its journey between these two ports was one of only a few it made in its approximately 30 years of serving as a passenger ship. The Santiago de Cuba much more commonly sailed to ports in central America. Apparently this lone trip it took during this time wasn’t particularly profitable, so this journey was not repeated right away.

I’m rushing this post due to other commitments, but isn’t this just plain neat!?