LOSS OF SHIP EURYDICE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 210, 5 September 1930, Page 10

LOSS OF SHIP EURYDICE.

CAPSIZE IN SQUALL RECALLED,

Mr. P. A. Eddy, of Kohimarama, writes: The account in. the "Star" of the loss by capsizing of the Royal George with nearly all hands when she was "safe in port," will remind some of your readers of a very similar disaster that overtook one of Her Majesty's ships, the frigate Eurydice. Used at that time as a training ship, she was returning to England from a cruise to the West Indies and was capsized off Spithead by a sudden squall. Slio sank, and all hands except two were drowned. I have an old picture of her, beating up _off Spithead Tinder three single topsails, inner jib and spanker, with royal yards sent down and the three top-gallant sails being clewed up simultaneously. With the White Ensign flying at her mizzen peak and her single row of ports, black and white, showing along her side, she looks an able sort of craft, and most seamen would wonder how it was that such a fine veseel could be capsized in sheltered waters and so' near to port. The following inscription, however, writ* ten under her name in the picture, goes to show that it was something out of the ordinary in the way of a squall that upset her:—"This fine frigate,. used as a training ship for young seamen of the Royal Navy, in approaching Spithead on Sunday, March 24, 1878,.0n her homeward voyage from an exercising cruise to the West Indies, was suddenly upset by a violent biast of wind from that shore and sank with 328 men, only two men being saved alive —Benjamin Cuddiford, A.8., of Plymouth, and Sydney Fletcher, firet-class bojr,- of Bristol/'