S.S. Quirigua

October 2, 1934
Great White Fleet - United Fruit Company Post Card Depicting the Quirigua
sent from Cristobal, Canal Zone to Audubon, New Jersey

Post Card franked with one cent "Major-General William Crawford Gorgas" definitive of 1928-1940. A U.S. Army physician and Surgeon-
General (1914-1918), Gorgas is best known for his work in Florida, Havana and at the Panama Canal in abating the transmission of yellow
fever and malaria by controlling the mosquitoes that carry these diseases thus contributing to the successful completion of the Canal.

Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation of Quincy, Massachusetts built the ship as SS Quirigua for United Fruit Company in 1932. She was one of six U.F.C. sister ships driven by turbo-electric transmission. The United States Postal Service subsidised the building of the six ships, which served the USPS as mail boats. United Fruit placed Quirigua on express liner services between Central America and New York, normally carrying up to 95 passengers to ports in Central America and then returning to the United States with passengers, refrigerated bananas and miscellaneous cargo.From 1941 to 1946 she saw service with the American navy as the USS Mizar. United Fruit restored the ship's pre-war name Quirigua to her. In 1958 United Fruit transferred Quirigua and her sisters Talamanca and Veragua to its British subsidiary Elders and Fyffes. Quirigua was renamed SS Samala after an earlier Fyffes ship of the same name. She was scrapped in 1964.

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© Derrick Grose, 2022