From May 13-16, 1888, Dr. Jose P. Rizal stayed at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. It was one of the best hotels in
New York City at the time and the building is now the location of the International Pencil Factory located
at the Madison Park (incidentally where the Filipino Independence Day festival is held every year.)
On May 16th, Jose Rizal gathered enough funds for a trip to London onboard the luxurious liner CITY OF
ROME. The Statue of Liberty was only 2 years old when the ship departed the New York harbor.
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The Barrow Shipbuilding Co. built the second largest steamer in 1881. She was a 8415 gross ton vessel -
length 560.2ft beam 52.3ft, clipper stem, three funnels, four masts, iron construction, single screw and a
speed of 16 knots. There was accommodation for 271-1st, 250-2nd and 810-3rd class passengers. In
September 1898 she was used to repatriate 1690 Spanish troops from Portsmouth, USA to Santander, Spain
after the Spanish - American war. She was considered by many to be the most beautiful steamer ever built.
There is a certain 'poetic justice' in the fact that the ship that Rizal traveled on was also the same ship that
carried defeated Spanish troops back to Spain. I think that Rizal would have appreciated that. (noted by Ian
Rogers, Hong Kong, China.)
Another irony was that Rizal might have boarded the ship again in September 1898, because he was
accepted as a volunteer physician to work with the Spanish army in Cuba. Instead he was brought back to
Manila in 1896 for his trial. He was sentenced to death by firing squad on Dec 30.
It is interesting to note that Maria Clara who we associate our woman and Rizal's early sweetheart was
Leonor Rivera who broke his heart when she married an English engineer who was working on the first
Filipino railway. Rizal in his early letters to his friend Bluementritt wrote from Manila, "The first hammer-
blow in the railway has fallen on me!"
He had political explanation; "I do not blame her for preferring Kipping..an Englishman is a free man and
I am not."
He was very fun of Tottie according to other books written, but I was able to get this info from the 1881
UK census. I was excited so I will post it here just to say that the girls of Rizal were real.