The steel ship Semantha was built by Hamilton & Co. for J.R. Haws of Liverpool in 1888. Registered at 2,280 tons, she measured 296½ feet in length and had a 43 foot beam. Unusually fast for a steel four-master, her best recorded passage was from Astoria, on the north west American coast, to Brow Head in 101 days in 1899. Sold to Norwegian owners in 1911, she was captured and sunk in the Atlantic by the German armed liner Kronprinz Wilhelm on 3 February 1915 whilst homeward bound with a cargo of Oregon wheat.