Tag: Kanawha

Kanawha was a 471-ton steam-powered luxury yacht initially built in 1899 for millionaire industrialist and financier Henry Huttleston Rogers (1840–1909). One of the key men in the Standard Oil Trust, Rogers was one of the last of the robber barons of the Gilded Age in the United States. He was also a “secret” philanthropist.
Rogers was a major developer of coal and railroad properties in West Virginia along the Kanawha River. Aboard the Kanawha, he frequently hosted his friends, including American humorist Mark Twain and black educator Booker T. Washington.
After Rogers’ death in 1909, the Kanawha served the U.S. Navy during World War I. After the war, it was sold to Marcus Garvey’s ill-fated Black Star Line and renamed the S.S. Antonio Maceo. However, the former luxury yacht was apparently in poor condition by this time. A boiler, used to generate steam to drive the ship, exploded, and a crew man was killed, while the vessel was located off the Virginia coast on its first voyage from…