SS Persic
SS Persic was an ocean liner of the White Star Line, built by Harland and Wolff in 1899. She was one of the five ships (the others being the , , and ) built specifically to service the Liverpool–Cape Town–Sydney route. The voyage took six weeks. Persic was the third Jubilee-class ship to be built for the Australia service, and was launched at Belfast on 7 September 1899, entering service on 7 December that year. Persic, like her sisters was a single-funnel liner, which had capacity for 320 third class passengers, and also had substantial cargo capacity with seven cargo holds, most of them refrigerated for the transport of Australian meat. Early career Persic set out on her maiden voyage on 7 December 1899, as the Boer War was underway by this time, she carried 500 troops for South Africa. The maiden voyage turned out to be a fiasco as the ship developed a major fault: cracks developed on her rudder stock casting, which resulted in it breaking by the time she reached Cape Town. Persic had to remain at Cape Town until a replacement could be shipped out from Belfast and fitted. When the voyage resumed early the next