Designed to outclass their chief rivals from the British-owned Cunard Line, Pacific and her three sister ships (Atlantic, Arctic and Baltic) were the largest, fastest and most well-appointed transatlantic steamers of their day.

However, after only five years in operation, the ship, with her entire complement of almost 200 passengers and crew, vanished without a trace during a voyage from Liverpool to New York City, which began on 23 January 1856.

Like her three sister ships, she had straight stems, a single smokestack, three square-rigged masts for auxiliary power, and a flat main deck with two single-story cabins, one fore and one aft.

Pacific was powered by two side-lever engines built by the Allaire Iron Works of New York, each of which had a 95-inch cylinder (2.4 m) and 9-foot stroke (2.7 m), delivering a speed of 12 to 13 knots (22 to 24 km/h; 14 to 15 mph).

Steam was supplied by four vertical tubular boilers, with a double row of furnaces designed by the Line's chief engineer, John Faron.

[7] Customer service innovations on the Collins Line ships included steam heating in the passenger berths, a barber's shop, and a French maître de cuisine.

On 23 January 1856, Pacific departed Liverpool for her usual destination of New York, carrying 45 passengers (a typically small number for a winter voyage) and 141 crew.

Her commander was Captain Asa Eldridge, a Yarmouth skipper and navigator of worldwide reputation; in 1854 he had set a transatlantic speed record on the clipper Red Jacket from New York to Liverpool.

[12] Captain Eldridge and his chief engineer, Samuel Matthews, were both still new to Pacific, making only their second roundtrip voyage on her, and some comments blamed the disaster on their inexperience.

[14] Coogan's article goes on to relate that Stephen Fox wrote: Supporting the sceptical view, a later book argued that in the absence of further information about that wreck, the note in the bottle that washed ashore in the Hebrides still represented the best explanation of the steamer's disappearance.