THE NEW STEAMSHIP ‘MIKAHALA.’

At 10 o’clock a.m. of Wednesday, January 12,  the steamer replacing the Paeli, which ran aground off Niihau, of the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company [Hui Hooholo Mokuahi Pili Aina], named the Mikahala and captained by Captain B. B. Hampstead, arrived at Honolulu Harbor, reaching here in 8 days and 20 hours.

This new steamship was built in Port Blakely by the ship builders, the Hall Brothers. And from here, she was sent using a sail to San Francisco, where the machinery and steam engine of the Paeli was salvaged and waited to be laid out in her wide belly. Everything was installed there and when it was all complete, it set off for here.

The farthest the steamer went was on the second day after it left San Francisco, for it travelled 265 miles that day, and its shortest day was 230 miles. Therefore, its average speed was a little over 10 miles per hour.

The length of this ship is 150 feet and the width is 29 feet; its depth is 14 feet. Its tonnage according to the captain is 420. Its body is a little larger than the Paeli, and a little smaller than the Malulani.

Its design is similar in every manner with the Malulani, and so too are the rooms and the decks. There are 8 double state rooms on the upper deck, and 8 rooms below in the stern.

The name of this new steamship is the name of Mrs. M. E. Foster [Mary E. Foster], the wife of the President of the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company.

This steamer will be set aside for Kauai under Captain Freeman, and next week, it will be sent to her ports for the first time.

[It is quite the strange coincidence that this ship named Mikahala (after the Hawaiian name of Mary E. Foster) is the same ship that ran into and sank the other ship named for her, the Mary E. Foster! See here for the article reporting the accident in 1894.]

(Ko Hawaii Pae Aina, 1/15/1887, p. 3)

Ko Hawaii Pae Aina, Buke X, Helu 3, Aoao 3. Ianuari 15, 1887.