Canal Zone
Post Card of the United Fruit Company Great White Fleet Ship Quirigua
Postmarked Cristobal, Canal Zone October 2, 1934
Post Card of the United Fruit Company Great White Fleet Ship Quirigua
Postmarked Cristobal, Canal Zone, October 2, 1934
Franked with One Cent "William Crawford Gorgas" Definitive
This United Fruit Company Great White Fleet" post card depicting the SS Quirigua is franked with one cent "Major-General William Crawford Gorgas" Canal Zone definitive of 1928-1940. Gorgas, a U.S. Army physician and Surgeon-General (1914-1918), is recognized for his work in Florida, Havana and at the Panama Canal in limiting the transmission of yellow fever and malaria by controlling the mosquitoes that carry these diseases, thus contributing to the successful completion of the Panama Canal.
The SS Quirigua was named for a United Fruit Company banana plantation on a section of land purchased in 1910 that included an extensive complex of Mayan ruins. The ship was built in 1932 by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation of Quincy, Massachusetts for United Fruit Company. She was one of six sister ships subsidized by the United States Postal Service for service as mail boats driven by turbo-electric transmission. United Fruit placed Quirigua
on express liner services between Central America and New York, carrying up to 95 passengers to Central American ports and then returning to the United States with passengers and a cargo of refrigerated bananas and other 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 and resumed its previous use until 1958 when the company 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. The ship was scrapped in 1964.
Bibliography
"Canal Zone." Scott 1840-1940 Classic Specialized Catalogue. Sidney, Ohio: Amos Publishing, 2019.
"Quirigua." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 24 Dec. 2020. Web. 26 Dec. 2020.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirigu%C3%A1.
"USS Mizar (AF-12)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 21 Aug. 2020. Web. 26 Dec. 2020.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Mizar_(AF-12).
"William C. Gorgas." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 21 Dec. 2020. Web. 26 Dec. 2020.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_C._Gorgas.
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