SS Naronic was a British cargo steamship built in 1892 by Harland and Wolff in Belfast, Ireland, for the White Star Line.

A sister ship of SS Bovic, she was built at a time the company wanted to increase its market share in the transport of live cattle on the North Atlantic route.

Along with other company's ships of the same type, she was responsible for transporting goods from Liverpool to New York City, United States, and bringing back American cattle on the return trip.

The commission of inquiry formed to determine the causes of the sinking of Naronic found no explanation; tests carried out on her sister ship, the Bovic, proved that her stability was good; and no ice fields were reported on her route.

Naronic and her sister ship, the Bovic, were the largest freighters in service on their first crossings (a record which two other cattle carriers of the White Star Line, the Cevic and the Georgic, then succeed).

[8] The White Star Line then set itself a goal: to transport goods on board these ships to the US and bring back cattle on the return trip, in the best possible conditions.

It was indeed not uncommon on contemporary ships that the animals perished because of travel conditions and mistreatment, causing financial loss to the owner.

[10] When Naronic was launched on 26 May 1892, and completed on 11 July 1892,[11] she was then the largest steam cargo ship in the world, with her 143 metres length and her 6,594 GRT.

As usual in this direction, the ship did not transport cattle for the crossing, but had on board two horses, as well as several cages of live pigeons and chickens.

After leaving Liverpool, she stopped briefly at Point Lynas, Anglesey, North Wales, to put her pilot ashore before heading west into heavy seas, never to be seen again.

[2] It took several weeks for the concern to begin to emerge in the US, but the White Star Line was then reassuring, recalling the high quality of the ship.

The next day, the captain of the Teutonic arrived in Queenstown, County Cork, Ireland, declaring that he had diverted his route south in the hope of finding Naronic, but to no avail.

Having had, moreover, confirmation that the ship was not in the Azores, the White Star Line resigned itself to declaring on 15 March: "We still hope that it can be safe, but it is unlikely that it will be found, because the Atlantic is crisscrossed by steamers and sailboats, and it would certainly have been spotted if it had still been afloat".

[19] In the months following the disappearance of the ship, hoaxes and rumours began to circulate: several messages in bottles supposedly written by members of the crew of Naronic, were recovered from both sides of the Atlantic, but their authenticity was too doubtful to be taken seriously.

[20] In addition to the 74 casualties, the disappearance of Naronic caused a net loss for the White Star Line, which had not insured the ship that was worth £121,685.

However, as early as 1894 another cattle transporter replaced it, the Cevic, which was much larger, and another one was ordered to compensate for the loss, the Georgic, which was put into service in 1895.

[23] In June 1893, when hopes of recovering the ship had vanished, a commission of inquiry was convened at the initiative of the Board of Trade at St George's Hall, Liverpool.

The ship's course, estimated with the help of Captain Thompson, however, passed well south of Newfoundland, and investigation concluded that Naronic was at least 100 miles from the nearest ice.

"[25] Naronic's cargo list, published in the New York Herald in March 1893, included several chemicals (acids, potassium chlorate, sodium sulphide, calcium hypochlorite).

Under certain conditions, these products could have caused an explosion resulting in the sinking of Naronic if the storm had displaced them or freed them from their bottles, which led historians John P. Eaton and Charles A. Haas to evoke a century later this hypothesis which had not been considered by the official inquiry.

[26] In October 1893, a newspaper reported the testimony of the captain of the Norwegian ship Emblem, who declared to have spotted in July a lifeboat of Naronic, floating upside down and covered with barnacles.

A similar situation exists with the first bottle found, in that the signature, "L. Winsel", is also not on the manifest, the closest being crew member John L. Watson.