S.S. Borinquen
Known in later life as the S.S. Arosa Star, the Borinquen was built at the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation's Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts. She was launched in September 1930, and continued to serve for the next forty years.
For the first two decades of her life, she sailed between New York City and San Juan, Puerto Rico. This routine was interrupted during the Second World War, when Borinquen was pressed into service as a military transport. During the war, she sailed the Baltic, Mediterranean and the Pacific, but never encountered hostile vessels; thus, she became known as the “Lucky Star.”
After the war, she resumed her New York-San Juan runs until sold to the Bull Steamship Company in 1949, and renamed S.S. Puerto Rico. Five years later, she was sold to the Arosa Cruise Line (a Swiss company, oddly enough) and given the name Arosa Star.
During most of the 1950s, most of her passengers were immigrants from Europe bound for Canadian and U.S. ports. However, as the cost of airline travel dropped during the late 1950s, Arosa Lines lost a major part of its clientele and ultimately, the company failed.
During at least part of this period, she transported immigrants from northern Europe to Canada and the United States, with regular ports of call at Halifax, Quebec City, Montreal and New York. With the advent of affordable air travel, the market for hauling immigrants quickly disappeared and the Arosa Line went bankrupt.
In 1959, she was sold to Eastern Steamship Lines and renamed S.S. Bahama Star. For the next ten years, she sailed between Florida and the Bahamas. During the 1960s, international maritime law passed new regulations prohibiting wooden superstructures aboard passenger liners. Retrofitting the Bahama Star was beyond the means of the company, and she was sold again to the Western Steamship Company.
Renamed the La Jenelle, she was brought to Hueneme, California, where on 13 April 1970, she was driven ashore by a northwester. At the time, there were only two crewmen aboard, who by themselves could do nothing.
For several years, the hulk of the former Borinquen lie in the harbor. Eventually, the U.S. Navy gutted the vessel and filled the hull with rocks to create a breakwater.
Like most vessels built prior to 1980, the old Borinquen's engine and boiler rooms were filled with asbestos insulation. This eventually became a real hazard for those who worked and sailed aboard her, and these fibers would eventually flake off (become friable) and the fibers would enter the closed-in environment below decks where anyone could breathe and ingest them. Asbestos is known to be the cause of several diseases, including mesothelioma, lung cancer and pleural plaques.
Those who were employed or sailed aboard the vessel are advised to share this information with his/her family doctor as mesothelioma navy cases are most common. Asbestos diseases like malignant mesothelioma have very long latency periods; symptoms may not show until decades after initial exposure to asbestos, so even if you are not showing symptoms today, it is important to get regular health monitoring in order to facilitate an early diagnosis.
Sources
Bonner, Carolyn. Great Ship Disasters. (New York: MBI Publishing Company, 2003).
Bowker, Michael. Fatal Deception: The Terrifying True Story of How Asbestos is Killing America. New York: Touchstone, 2003.
