AN old ocean liner with a curious link to Hillary Clinton was a bizarre answer to housing shortages for Barrow workers at the end of the 19th century.

The town’s dramatic growth as an industrial community from the 1850s made it difficult for house builders to keep pace with the flood of new arrivals looking for work.

Thousands of people, mainly young men, had to put up with living in corrugated huts on Barrow Island and lodging houses all over the growing town.

Around 1899 the latest temporary beds in town were on the steam ship Alaska.

It had been sold for scrap but was quickly resold and was used an “accommodation hulk” or floating down-market hotel.

The ship was finally broken up for scrap in 1902 as builders had been busy putting up new homes for shipyard workers at Vickerstown, Walney.

The Alaska was a record-breaking passenger liner which won the Blue Riband for the Guion Line as the fastest liner on the Atlantic in 1882.

In 1883 Alaska became the first liner to make the crossing to New York in under a week.

It had been built by John Elder and Company of Glasgow and carried 350 first class passengers and 1,000 steerage.

The 520ft ship served the emigration trade on the Liverpool to New York route.

Among the passengers to use SS Alaska was Hugh Simpson Rodham, the future grandfather of US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

He travelled in far-from-luxurious steerage class to America with his mother Bella and seven siblings as a toddler in October 1882.

Alaska completed 100 voyages until 1894 and was chartered in 1897 as a troop transport.