3-028-285 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The City of Ragusa, now crossing the Atlantic, 1870. 'Another daring experiment is now made in the navigation of the Atlantic by a couple of bold men embarked in a very diminutive vessel. The City of Ragusa,...manned by her owner, Captain Buckley, and his sole companion, an Austrian Italian named Pietro Di Costa, both experienced sailors, left the port of Liverpool on the 2nd June, for her voyage to New York...Captain Buckley...has since been an officer of an American passenger-steamer...He has been rewarded with the honorary silver medal of the Humane Society for saving two lives on our coast...The other man, Pietro Di Costa, was master of an Austrian merchant-vessel, which was wrecked on the Goodwin Sands, when his wife and two children were drowned. The boat...is 20 ft. in length and 6 ft. in breadth...; her registered burden is 1¾ ton. She is strongly built...and has been decked over,...so that there is a cabin, 3 ft. wide, and 4 ft. 6 in...She is now rigged as a yawl, and can set square sails on both masts, spreading altogether seventy yards of canvas...she is also furnished with a two-bladed screw propeller, which can be worked either by hand or by a windmill...[She] carries three months' provisions, and 100 gallons of fresh water'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.