The French ship Isère carried the Statue of Liberty from France to New York Harbor in 1885.
France gave the statue to the United States to commemorate the alliance between the two countries during the American Revolution and to celebrate shared republican ideals. Sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi designed the figure, while Gustave Eiffel’s company engineered its internal framework. The statue was dismantled into hundreds of crates for its Atlantic voyage.
The Isère reached New York in June 1885 after transporting the carefully packed sections from France. Workers reassembled the statue on Bedloe’s Island, now Liberty Island, where its pedestal had been designed by American architect Richard Morris Hunt. The completed monument was dedicated on October 28, 1886.
The statue’s formal name is Liberty Enlightening the World. Its tablet bears the date July 4, 1776, linking the monument to the Declaration of Independence. The ship is often confused with famous colonial or early-American vessels, but the Isère was a nineteenth-century French transport ship.