British passenger steamer SS Laura (1885)
![[ img ]](https://i.imgur.com/Qgap0kW.png)
SS Laura was a British passenger steamer built for the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) by Aitken & Mansel of Whiteinch, Scotland, and launched on 20 March 1885. She was 207 ft (63 m) long, had a tonnage of 641 GRT and could carry 150 third class passengers. She originally sailed between Southampton, the Channel Islands and France. She had a compound steam engine of either 180 or 200 hp, a single funnel and two masts.
In 1886, Laura damaged her engine and required assistance from the tugboats Rescue and Alert. In 1910, she collided with a Norwegian freighter off the Isle of Wight and was damaged. She collided with her sister ship Lydia in 1911, and with the German ship Ariadne in 1914. She continued in service throughout the Great War, and sometimes filled in for newer and larger ships on the mail run when they were damaged. After 1922, she was reduced to carrying freight only. In 1923, the LSWR became part of the Southern Railway (SR) under the Railways Act 1921 and Laura was transferred to the new company. In 1925, she damaged her rudder and had to be towed back to Southampton by the steamer Magic Star.
Laura was sold off to the Bahamas Shipping Company of Nassau in 1927, and then to the Florida Inter-Island Steam Ship Company in 1928, where she was renamed to SS City of Nassau. From this point on, records are confusing. She seems to have sailed between Nassau, Harbour Island and probably other islands in the Bahamas. Depending on the source, she was either scrapped in 1937, lost in a hurricane off Nassau, wrecked while smuggling alcohol into the USA during the Prohibition (so that would have to be before 1933), or still appeared on the Mercantile Navy List in 1940 or even 1957...
This drawing is based on photographs I found on https://www.theislandwiki.org/index.php/Laura. Most of them are not dated, and the exact configuration of the ship isn't the same on all of them but this is roughly how she would have appeared in the early to mid-1910s. I've also included an above-the-waterline drawing because everything below the waterline is speculation on my part (as are the portholes because they don't show up on the black hull).
This is my first attempt at drawing a real world ship from reference photographs so feedback is welcome!
![[ img ]](https://i.imgur.com/ZnNW2z6.png)
