The "Quaker City" sails from New York on a five-month tour of Europe and the Holy Land, with Mark Twain as one of the tourists.

The former Union 1428 ton warship U.S.S. Quaker City, now remodeled and in private hands, sailed this rainy Saturday from New York Harbor on a five month tour of the Mediterranean and the Holy Land, with a side trip to the Paris Exhibition.  Among the approximately seventy passengers aboard, each of whom had paid $1,250 for the privilege, was Samuel Clemens, who under his pen-name Mark Twain would in 1869 publish his famous The Innocents Abroad. The book made Clemens a small fortune and remains one of the best-selling travel books of all time. (By John Osborne)

Source Citation

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim's Progress... (New York: American Publishing Company, 1869), 29-30.

How to Cite This Page: "The "Quaker City" sails from New York on a five-month tour of Europe and the Holy Land, with Mark Twain as one of the tourists.," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/46610.