Clara Clarita
Clara Clarita was a fast screw steamer built in 1864 in Williamsburg, New York, for financier Leonard Jerome. She was named after Jerome’s wife Clara and/or his daughter Clarita. She began life as a luxury steam yacht, but her first engine failed on trial and was replaced. Jerome soon sold the yacht.
The ship was rebuilt as a towboat for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and quickly earned a reputation as the fastest towboat in New York Harbor. In 1870 she became a fireboat for the New York Harbor Protective Company. While towing a burning ferry, the tow rope burned through, and a court later ruled the tug was at fault.
In 1873 she was converted into a passenger steamer for the Fox Island & Rockland Steamboat Company in Maine, where she proved faster than a rival steamer on the route. By the mid-1880s Clara Clarita had become an oceangoing tug for the Knickerbocker Steam Towage Company and was among the company’s largest tugs.
She helped refloat the steamboat City of Richmond after it struck a rock near Millbridge in 1887. In the late 1890s she was sold to the Boston Towing Company and, during the Spanish–American War, was used to tow the aging monitor USS Lehigh to a defensive station in Boston. She also towed various barges and vessels on other missions.
In 1903 Clara Clarita towed the barge Benjamin Franklin, carrying eight granite columns for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. The voyage was challenging, but the columns were delivered for installation over time.
After a long and varied career, Clara Clarita was abandoned in 1908. Her crew earned heroism awards for rescuing sailors in at least one notable incident.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 12:33 (CET).