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SS Traffic (1873)

NOTES:
Interior is purely guesswork
Exterior somewhat goes against what may be expected, that common drawing of her was made in the 1960s and many other drawings by the same artist of tenders are fairly inaccurate.

The SS Traffic was an English oak built water and baggage barge launched in Runcorn by Phillip Speakman. She was launched on September 22nd 1872, and was quickly outfitted in the Old Quay Dock by Mr W. P. Gaulton, a Mancunian engineer. She entered service on January 15th 1873, where she started tendering mails and baggage to the Oceanic Class and the Gaelic Class at first. On January 10th 1879, the SS Maggie Ann crashed into Traffic, and the Traffic was damaged badly but was repaired and continued serving the White Star Line at Liverpool.

By 1889, the enormous Teutonic was sailing, which was 64x larger than Traffic (for comparison, the Atlantic was 24x larger) . Traffic now was starting to become too small for the megaliners, so a much more modern and larger vessel was ordered to replace her, the Pontic, launched February 3rd 1894. Despite Traffic now becoming redundant to the White Star Line, this is far from the end of her life.

In 1896, the Traffic was sold off to the Liverpool Lighterage Company where she continued serving the liners in the Mersey. She sank on May 5th 1941 during the May Blitz, suffering bad damage from the large bombing raid. She was soon refloated and continued back in service for another 14 years before being scrapped on Tranmere Beach in 1955.

Thanks to Liam for helping with the understanding of this small steam lighter and the long, mysterious history behind her!