SS Mariposa (1883)

History

Famous passengers

• Marianne Cope, a missionary Religious Sister, was the leader of a small group of Franciscan Sisters who sailed to Hawaii on this ship at the request of the King of Hawaii to provide medical care for the lepers of the country. She and Sister Leopoldina Burns and their companions arrived in Honolulu on November 8, 1883, and she spent the rest of her life in this service, dying on the island of Molokai in 1918. She was declared a saint by the Catholic Church in 2012 for her heroic and holy life of service and self-sacrifice. She is also honored as a saint by the Episcopal Church.
• King O'Malley arrived in Sydney aboard the Mariposa in late July 1888, travelling from San Francisco via Hawaii. He left the U.S. to escape embezzlement allegations. In Australia he became a member of the inaugural federal parliament and served two terms as a cabinet minister.
• Sarah Bernhardt, French actress. In August 1891 the Sarah Bernhardt Company passed through Auckland on the Mariposa en route from Sydney to Honolulu.
• Jessie Ackermann was the much-travelled delegate of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union who left Sydney on the Mariposa on 20 March 1893 to return to America.
• Jack London and his wife, the writer Charmian London, traveled from Papeete to San Francisco and back in January and February, 1908.
• William Priestly MacIntosh left Sydney in the Mariposa in April 1898 on the first leg of a journey to Italy where he was going to supervise the roughing out of the marble sculptures for the Queen Victoria Building.