The SS City of Boston was a British iron-hulled single-screw passenger steamship of the Inman Line which disappeared in the North Atlantic Ocean en route from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Liverpool in January 1870.

[2] On 5 November 1868, she rescued the passengers and crew of Wabeno or Wahens, which had struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean and was sinking.

[11] A message was found in a stone bottle at Waterloo on 6 May, dated 4 February, stating that the ship was on fire and the propellers broken.

Another letter was found in a bottle on 19 April at Princes Bay, Staten Island, dated 2 March, stating that the engine room had caught fire and that the ship was swamped while trying to launch the lifeboat.

[citation needed] In 1875, speculation emerged that a time bomb connected to an insurance fraud had been responsible for the ship's loss.

The bomb was planted by Alexander Keith, Jr., originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia (the City of Boston's last port of call).

[citation needed] Around the year 1900, Elisha Thompson signed up as a cabin boy on the cargo vessel the J. G. Norwood.

Thompson eventually managed to escape from the Sargasso Sea by fitting out a still intact lifeboat and rigging it with a small sail.