SS Boniface (1928)

History
United Kingdom
Name	Boniface (1928–49) Browning (1949–51) Sannicola (1951) Mizuho Maru (1951–61)
Namesake	Saint Boniface (1928–49) Robert Browning (1949–51) Sannicola (1951) Mizuho (1951–61)
Owner	Booth Line (1928–49) Lamport and Holt (1949–51) Cia de Nav Niques (1951) Muko Kisen KK (1951–61)
Port of registry	Liverpool
Route	Liverpool – Brazil
Builder	Hawthorn, Leslie & Co
Yard number	554
Launched	4 May 1928
Completed	July 1928
Identification	UK official number 149685 call sign GNSK (1934 onward)
Fate	Scrapped 1961
General characteristics
Type	cargo liner
Tonnage	4,877 GRT tonnage under deck 4,453 3,030 NRT
Length	407.8 ft (124.3 m)
Beam	53.8 ft (16.4 m)
Draught	25 ft 2+1⁄2 in (7.68 m)
Depth	26.0 ft (7.9 m)
Decks	2
Installed power	668 NHP
Propulsion	triple-expansion steam engine low-pressure steam turbine single screw
Speed	12.5 knots (23.2 km/h)
Sensors and processing systems	wireless direction finding
Notes	sister ships: Basil, Benedict

SS Boniface was a UK-built steam cargo liner that was launched in 1928 and scrapped in 1961. She spent most of her career with Booth Line. After Alfred Booth and Company sold its shipping line in 1946 the ship changed hands three times and was successively named Browning, Sannicola and Muzuho Maru.

Boniface is notable for being the first UK-built ship to combine a triple-expansion steam engine and low-pressure steam turbine driving the same propeller shaft by the Bauer-Wach system.

Hawthorn, Leslie and Company built Boniface on Tyneside. She had two sister ships: Basil and Benedict. Hawthorn, Leslie built Basil four months before Boniface. Cammell, Laird and Company built Benedict in 1930.^[1] Neither Basil nor Benedict had a Bauer-Wach turbine system.

All three sisters were built for Alfred Booth and Company, which named all of its ships after Christian saints.^[2] Saint Boniface was an English missionary bishop and apostle to Germania early in the eighth century AD. Booth Line had a previous Boniface, which the German submarine SM U-53 had sunk in 1917.^[3]

Booth Line lost nine ships in the First World War.^[3] But after the 1918 Armistice shipbuilding costs rose rapidly, so Booth Line did not order any new ships until the late 1920s. Nor did it buy any second-hand ships until 1927, when it acquired a German-built cargo ship that it renamed Dominic.^[1]

Basil and Boniface were Booth Line's first order for new ships for a decade. They became the start of a fleet renewal programme that continued until 1935.^[4]