This very typical American coastal liner had a long and interesting career afloat of forty years, and continues to have a useful function today as a cut-down breakwater at Port Hueneme in California. She served the route from San Juan in Puerto Rico to New York for many years as a liner. old San Juan is an island on the north east part of the mainland and is a very beautiful port, connected to the mainland by motorway bridges, and today is very busy with the numerous calls of international cruise ships that dock in the port area to the south of old San Juan. The El Morro headland has the impregnable and impressive San Felipe del Morro fortress, completed in 1539 by the Spanish with walls 140 feet high and fifteen feet thick to keep out would be conquerors of this island and its rich seams of gold.

Colon (Christopher Columbus) landed in Puerto Rico or Borinquen in the native language on his second voyage to the Caribbean on 15th November 1493 and stayed for two days. Spain began to colonise Borinquen from 1508 when Juan Ponce de Leon landed with 42 settlers and eight sailors in the Bay of San Juan. He was proclaimed governor of Borinquen in 1514 after the defeat of the last local Taino Indians. He was wounded by a poisoned arrow in an attack on Sanibel Island in Florida in February 1521 and was carried back to Cuba and died in agony five months later at Havana. Output of gold for the Spanish treasury from Borinquen equalled that of La Espanola (Dominican Republic and Haiti today). A Carib Indian attack on San Juan in 1521 killed thirteen Spaniards and fifty local Taino Indians. This was the last hostile act in the Spanish colonisation of Borinquen. The island was frequently attacked by the English, French and Dutch because of its strategic position, but the El Morro fortress was strong enough to repel all attackers.