The steamer Miramar

Faced with the need to increase its fleet, and especially to improve the Barcelona line, Isleña Marítima contracted with the Odero shipyards in Genoa to build a steamer with greater tonnage than the Bellver and equipped with more sumptuous rooms. The ship was launched on December 17, 1903, after having had to endure a forty-day wait as a result of the bad state of the sea. A week later, on the following December 24, the official tests were carried out in the waters of Genoa, in which the ship reached 15 knots of speed at forced draft and 13 knots at normal draft.

The Miramar steamer docked at the Puerta de la Paz pier in Palma around 1905.

Captain Ricardo Terrasa and pilot Jorge Benassar in 1909

In the port of Barcelona. To the left of the image the Temerario gunboat.

On January 7, 1904, she arrived at the port of Palma for the first time from Genoa, under the Italian flag and with an Italian crew, under the command of Captain Gregorio Costa. Also traveling on board were the Director of Isleña Marítima Sebastián Simó, the counselor José Barceló and those who were going to be owners of the ship, Captain Juan Singala and the chief engineer Antonio Thomás.

Taken by its starboard quarter in Palma de Mallorca.

In the port of Barcelona in one of its usual berths.

The steamer Miramar remained in port for several months while the procedures for its flagging were completed and on April 9, under the command of Captain Juan Singala, left for Marseilles in order to clean up funds, returning to Palma on the 15th of the same month. Before docking on the regular line from Palma to Barcelona, the ship provided special services on the occasion of King Alfonso XIII's visit to Palma. On April 21, she went out to receive the royal yacht Giralda off Cape Regana with the members of the Governing Board of Isleña Marítima and many guests. The following day, together with her Balearic fleet companion, she accompanied the monarch to the caves of Artá, Alcudia and Pollensa and on the night of the 24th she left for Ibiza on the occasion of the King's trip to that island.

Miramar steamship watercolor by Ramón Sampol Isern.

A few days later, he joined the line from Palma to Barcelona, the steamer Miramar being the "flagship" of the Isleña Marítima fleet, and therefore, under the command of the dean of its captains and its first engineers, who in those years They were Juan Singala and Antonio Thomás, respectively, until the incorporation of the ship Rey Jaime II, in October 1910, relegated it to a secondary place. In 1918, when Isleña Marítima became a subsidiary of Compañía Trasmediterránea, the steamship Miramar began to sail on behalf of the nascent shipping company together with its fleet mates Rey Jaime I, Rey Jaime II, Balearic Islands, Bellver, Mallorca, Cataluña, Isleño, Lulio , Palma City, and Formentera, although chance made it do so for a very short time.

The steamship Miramar, shot down on its port side, on its deathbed on the cliffs of Gargacido.

The tragic end of his seafaring life : The scarcity of coal that caused the European war also made it advisable to separate the Miramar from its usual services in the Balearic Islands, and its hull painted black, as a cargo ship, at the beginning of 1918 it undertook its first trip to the port of Musel to load coal bound for Cádiz. At five in the afternoon on February 8, the Miramar left Gijón and around three in the morning of the following day ran aground on the cliffs of Gargacido, near the town of Cariño (A Coruña), in the area of Cape Ortegal, missing the ship completely