TERRIBLE COLLISION AT SEA.

Press, Volume XXXV, Issue 4823, 19 January 1881, Page 3

TERRIBLE COLLISION AT SEA.

Before daylight on the morning of November 24th the French steamer Oncle Joseph name into collision with the Italian steamer Ortigia, near Spezzia, off Leghorn. Of three hundred persona on board the Oncle Joseph two hundred are known to have been drowned and fifty saved. The fate of the remaining fifty has not yet been ascertained. The moat heartrending acenes occurred after the collision, there being no sufficient means of rescuing those on board tbe French steamer, and most of them were drowned without any efforts being made to aave them. Eye witnesses of the cataatrophe atate that they cannot underatand how the collision occurred. The Ortigia belongs to the Florio Company. The following particulars of this terrible disaster are telegraphed from Rome : —" The collision of the Oncle Joseph and the Ortigia will be long remembered aa one of the moat tragic episodes in the sad annals of Italian emigration. The former vessel, an j emigrant ahip of 500 tons burden, of tbe j Valery Company, hailing from Naples, had on board some 300 passengers of the humbler o_sa, bound for Genoa, whence they intended ; to aail for South America, the treacherous j El Dorado of the Italian peasant. The Ortigia, belonging to the Florio Company, ia a steamer of about 1000 tons burden, and was carrying, betides her crew of forty-four men, thirty-six passengers. According to the atatement of her captain, Stofano Paratore, ahe waa holding a straight course for Leghorn, when off Spezzia ahe met the Oncle Joseph, j which, following the bend of the coast, was running acron her bow. The collision up to this moment is not accounted for further than by this circumstance, and the faot of the j night being pitch dark. The Oncle Joseph ! when struck sank rapidly, and though the crew of the Ortigia did their best to reaoue the drowning, only forty-three or forty-four —the number, owing to the confuaion that prevailed on board, not having bean exactly ascertained —were aaved. Among these are the first mate, the engineer, the boatswain, and aome of the Bailors. The captain himself perished. The Italian Government has ordered the captain of the Port of Leghorn, where the Ortigia ia now anchored, to appoint a commission of inquiry, and all on hoard are strictly guarded, to prevent them holding communication with the ahore. Curiously enough, the Ortigia experienced two years j ago a disaster similar to that she has just j inflicted. During a violent storm then raging in the Bay of Naples, a ship broke loose from her moorings in the harbor of Frocida, and j ran her bow into the Ortigia'a side with ' with such violence as to sink her immediately." The following further deI tula are furnished by the first mate of the Ortigia, who was on the look-out at the [ time of tbe collision. Seeing a single light about a kilometre ahead, he thought it was the light of a merchant veisel, and gave the I order to turn the ahip'a head to the right, ! expecting the* auppoaed merchantman to do the aame. The Oncle Joseph, on the contrary, veered round to the left, till, seeing I the Ortigia bearing down upon ber, she ported [ about, describing a semicircle, and expoain g her flank. The first mate of the Ortigia then gave the order to back, but it was too late. Her prow drove in the side of the Oncle Joseph aa if it had been a nutshell. The ahock brought on deck the crew and passengers of the Ortigia, which now became the scene of the wildest confusion; for, imagining they were sinking, the passengers tried to leap into the boats as these wero lowered to reaoue the drowning emigrants. Very different waa the scene on board the Oncle Joseph. Few, indeed, of the sleepers in the hold and cabins had time to rush up the hatchway before the vessel sank. Such as came to the surface were picked up by the crew of the Ortigia, and reatorativea were applied. Two were wounded, one having hiß arm broken, and hia head severely battered. Those who witnessed the cataatrophe describe it as terribly impreaaive from its suddenness. r