The cargo steamer Sacrobosco was built in 1882 by Bartram, Haswell & Company in Sunderland, England for Wilkie & Turnbull of South Shields. On Jan. 14, 1890 she was badly damaged by a grain elevator fire at Baltimore, three crewmen were killed and the ship was all but destroyed. Later that year she was bought by IMM (International Mercantile Marine) rebuilt and renamed Conemaugh.

Her last voyage took her to the Territory of Hawaii for a load of sugar, she left Honolulu on Jan. 26 bound for New York via Coronel, Chile and St. Lucia, B.W.I. where she would coal. Conemaugh sent a wire message from Coronel on February 28, 1904 stating that they had coaled and were about to depart. After leaving Coronel rather than go through the Straits of Magellan Conemaugh was to go around the horn. If she made it or not nobody knows as she was never seen again.

In June the recently commissioned cruiser USS Tacoma was dispatched from San Francisco to South America to search for the missing ship. Capt. R. F. Nicholson sailed from San Francisco to Hawaii, then to Chile, around the horn and arrived in New York on Nov. 5 never having found a trace of Conemaugh or her forty crewmen.