Design and Construction
In the second quarter of 1909, American-Hawaiian, looking to expand its fleet, placed an order with the Maryland Steel Company of Sparrows Point, Maryland, for three new cargo ships—Kentuckian, Georgian, and Honolulan. The contract for the ships required that American-Hawaiian pay $1,000,000 in cash and a further $650,000 in twelve monthly notes at 5% interest. Provisions of the deal allowed that the monthly notes could be converted into longer-term mortgages at 6% interest, and secured by the ships themselves. The final cost of Kentuckian, including financing costs, was $58.33 per deadweight ton, which came out to just under $579,000.
Kentuckian (Maryland Steel yard no. 104) was the first ship built under the contract. She was launched on 19 March 1910, by Miss Nancy Johnson, the daughter of U.S. Representative Ben Johnson (D-KY), who christened the ship with sparkling spring water from the Kentucky farms of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. The completed ship, delivered to American-Hawaiian on 1 June, was 6,479 gross register tons (GRT), and was 414 feet 2 inches (126.24 m) in length (between perpendiculars) and 53 feet 6 inches (16.31 m) abeam. She had a deadweight tonnage of 9,925 DWT, and her cargo holds had a storage capacity of 428,145 cubic feet (12,123.7 m3). Kentuckian had a single quadruple-expansion steam engine powered by oil-fired boilers that drove a single screw propeller at a speed of 11 knots (20 km/h).
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