Marcus Garvey, known as the "black Moses", was a "back to Africa" evangelist,[1] and his ideas, although radical and controversial in his own time and today, still remain influential.

On 3 May in 1887, she arrived in Yarmouth and under the command of Captain Harvey Doane and Pilot S. F. Stanwood, she made her first trip to Boston a few days later on 7 May.

Baker foresaw that the shipping company would bring in tourists to the province, and open up opportunities for building hotels, rail connections, and the development of "ports of call" along its route.

[8] Soon after, he established the Yarmouth Line in May 1885, with the purchase from the Nova Scotia Steamship Company of Clements Wharf and the SS Dominion of 450 tons.

[12]: 128  Together both these ships operated regular services on the key routes for transportation and commerce in the region; Yarmouth and Boston, Halifax and St. John.

In January 1886 Baker acquired the SS Alpha, and with the Dominion, the line was able to offer passenger and freight services from Yarmouth to Halifax, Boston, and Saint John.

[8] In 1916, the CPR replaced her on the Digby – Saint John, New Brunswick route with the SS Empress,[16] and sold her to the North American Steamship Company (NASC).

NASC was owned by a cotton broker, W. L. Harriss,[18] who bought the Yarmouth for $350,000 and made back his investment by using her several times on trans-Atlantic convoy routes.

[1] As a part of this effort, he established the Black Star Line with funding from a stock issue, at $5 a share from members of his United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

[21]: 566 [19] Cockburn had initially trained with the Royal Navy as a lighthouse tender, then worked for the UK-based Elder Dempster Lines from 1908 to 1918,[19]: 78  which had given him significant experience with freighters plying routes between British and West African ports,[21]: 566  especially Nigeria.

[20]: 271 [17]: 153 The BSL and other Garvey projects had already been infiltrated by agents of J. Edgar Hoover's Bureau of Investigation, one of whom was Dr Arthur Ullysses Craig.

The seller had therefore good reason to ignore the BSL's inexperience and shaky financial credentials, which had aborted previous purchasing attempts by Garvey and his followers.

The Negro World, a paper founded by Garvey, made a great play out of William Monroe Trotter having sailed on the Yarmouth as a waiter and cook on his way to the Paris Peace Conference.

In fact, she was on lease prior to completion of the terms of sale from the North American Shipping Corporation, so no official renaming could take place.

On arrival in Cuba on 5 December, Cockburn complained to Garvey that the white officers were causing trouble and had tried to run the ship aground.

On return from Cuba she had a full passenger list and cargo manifest,[17]: 154  though hampered by repair problems, controversies amidst the officers and a crew shortchanged on wages.

[17]: 154  The deal for carriage of the whiskey was 10 percent of what it would have cost the distiller from any other shipping company and it had onerous full indemnity clauses attached, something unusual at the time.

[20]: 208  The Reverend Dr. R. D. Jonas, Secretary of the League of Darker Peoples, was to claim that the captain had thwarted a hijacking plot involving a following vessel, and sabotage of a seacock being opened by an engineer to start a leak.

[28] On the Yarmouth's arrival in Cuba, the Evening News (Havana, 25 February 1920) reported that she had been proclaimed the "Ark of the Covenant of the colored people and a bright harbinger of better days".

[21]: 566 In April 1920, Black Star bought its second ship, the Shady Side (a Hudson River excursion boat), and by early May 1920, the Kanawha, a yacht.

[6] The BSL in its lifetime was to visit ports in Costa Rica, Cuba, Jamaica, Panama, and other countries; however, it was never to reach Africa.

[3] The Black Star Line collapsed through mismanagement, and Marcus Garvey's downfall was complete when irregularities in his business dealings left him open to charges of mail fraud.

[30] This trial proved to be a source for future historians of verifiable and contested facts; for example the subject of the actual value of the Yarmouth when bought in 1919 was brought up.