The RMS Rhone was a royal mail steam packet ship that transported cargo between England, Central and South America, and the Caribbean from 1865 - 1867. The Rhone was one of the first iron hulled ships, powered by both sail (2 masts) and steam (single shaft, one screw). Built in 1865 at the Millwall Ironworks on the Isle of Dogs, London, the Rhone was 94.5 m (310 ft) long and had a beam of 12.2 m. Her propeller was the second bronze propeller ever built. The vessel was one of two ships deemed to be unsinkable by the British Royal Navy. (The second was not the Titanic.) During a late October hurricane, the (1867 San Narciso hurricane) the Rhone was thrown directly into Black Rock Point after a wind shift. The ship broke in two and cold seawater contacted the hot boilers which had been running at full steam. The boilers exploded and the ship quickly sank, the bow in 80 feet of water and the stern in 30 ft. Of the 146 souls on board, only 23 survived. Some 80 ships were wrecked during the hurricane and the 500 lives lost.
The stern section of the ship was deemed to be a hazard by the Royal Navy in the 1950's (no big rush in making that decision) and the stern section was blown apart.