In June 1863 RMSP ordered Rhone from the Millwall Iron Works on the Isle of Dogs, London and her sister ship Douro from Caird & Company in Greenock.

[7] In January 1867 Rhone made her final voyage to Brazil, after which RMSP transferred her to the Caribbean route, which at the time was more lucrative and prestigious.

The original coaling station they needed had been moved from the then Danish island of St. Thomas due to an outbreak of yellow fever.

As was normal practice at the time, the passengers in Rhone were tied into their beds to prevent them being injured in the stormy seas.

It was ordered to be cut loose, and lies in Great Harbour to this day, with its chain wrapped around the same coral head that trapped it a century and a half ago.

Between those two islands lay Blonde Rock, an underwater reef which was normally a safe depth of 25 feet (7.6 m), but during hurricane swells, there was a risk that Rhone might founder on that.

The ship broke in two, and cold seawater made contact with her hot boilers which had been running at full steam, causing them to explode.

[11] The bodies of many of the sailors were buried in a nearby cemetery on Salt Island which remained relatively unchanged until being destroyed by Hurricane Irma in 2017.

[12] A long-held belief that due to her mast sticking out of the water, and her shallow depth, she was deemed a hazard by the Royal Navy in the 1950s and her stern section was blown up, was refuted by Twice She Struck author Dr. Michael D. Kent.

Kent's research indicated that Rhone was blown up during salvage by hardhat diver Jeremiah Murphy and that the bow section, made famous by Jacqueline Bisset,[12] had probably rolled during another hurricane in 1924.

[13] Rhone has received a number of citations and awards over the years as one of the top recreational wreck dives in the Caribbean, both for its historical interest and teeming marine life, and also because of the open and relatively safe nature of the wreckage.

Very little of the wreckage is still enclosed, and where overhead environments do exist, they are large and roomy and have openings at either end permitting a swim through, so there is no real penetration diving for which divers usually undergo advanced training.

Her entire iron hull is encrusted with coral and overrun by fishes, and the cracks and crevices of her wreckage provide excellent habitats for lobsters, eels, and octopuses.

The Rhone National Park was closed for a short time from 29 August 2011 because the container ship Tropical Sun had run aground on rocks near Salt Island very near the wreck.