Biggam that on 23 August 1879 brought 419 Portuguese immigrants from Madeira to the Hawaiian Islands to work as contract laborers in the sugar plantations.

The ship left the Madeiran port of Funchal on 23 April 1879 and took exactly four months to cross the Atlantic Ocean, round Cape Horn, and then sail across the Pacific to Honolulu.

[3][4][5] Among the passengers were Manuel Nunes, Augusto Dias, Jose do Espirito Santo, and Joao Fernandes, who are credited with introducing the ukulele to Hawaii.

[13][14][15] Biggam, still under the employ of the Allan Line, is shown as captain of the Ravenscrag in an 1885 trade journal,[11] the same year the ship was sold to John Crow Richardson of Swansea, Wales.

The article further states that the Ravenscrag was "an iron vessel, built at Greenock in 1893, hails from South Shields, Eng.

"[16] Allowing for misspellings and incorrect reporting of dates, this is clearly the same ship that Captain Biggam and 419 Portuguese immigrants sailed 19 years earlier to the Hawaiian Islands.

Though feared lost a sea, the Ravenscrag did arrive at the port of Callao several days late, having been delayed by unusually strong currents while crossing the Atlantic.

[23] The Ravenscraig at some point was outfitted with a steam engine and converted to a whaling ship, which on 23–25 June 1873 was involved in the arctic rescue of the crew of the USS Polaris, which had been trying to reach the North Pole on an ill-fated expedition of the U.S.

[25] Another ship named the SS Ravenscraig was a 243 feet (74 m) long, 2,301 tons steamship built in 1900 at Port Huron, Michigan as a bulk freighter by the Jenks Shipbuilding Company for hauling iron and copper ore on the Great Lakes.