DREADFUL CATASTROPHE. LOSS OF THE 'EAGLE SPEED,' AND 265 COOLIES.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXII, Issue 2639, 2 January 1866, Page 5

DREADFUL CATASTROPHE. LOSS OF THE 'EAGLE SPEED,' AND 265 COOLIES.

The Times of the 12th October contains the following letter from its Calcutta correspondent : — On Sunday morning, the 19th of August, 425 statue adult coolies, or 300 men, 93 women, and 65 children under ten, and 39 infants in arms, miking 497 human beings, sailed from Fort Canning for Demerara in the ' Eagle Speed, ' Captain Brinsden. The ship was American originally, and pine-built ; she was not classed high at Lloyd's, but she seems to have been an average vessel. All the formalities and inspection necessary in shipping coolies seem to have been attended to by the Protector of Emigrants and the agent for the cojony, except one — the crew were not mustered by the pilot. Had this been done it would have been.fuund that though it was of sufficient strength in numbers, only six wero able for work. The captain was, or had been, ailing, but was on duty ; and he was anxious to get out to sea, that there his men might get well after a. debauch on land. The chief officer was ill, and off duty; even the coolie doctor was ill, but the port doctor tooKTiis place until the ship should get- to sea. The portmaster, Captain Hoskin.s, accompanied the ship down the estuary. The ship was towed by the • Lady Elgiu,' steamer, Captain Heath, on board of which, as a passenger, was Captain W. G. Maitland, of the 29th Punjaubees. At four o'clock on the subsequent day, when wind and weather were both bad, the rope connecting the steamer and the ship broke ; and during the two hours occupied in passing another rope the ship drifted on to the Roy Mutlah sands and sprang a leak. Professional men assert that, if she had been a uew or an iron ship, thi3 would not have happened ; and a correspondent of a Calcutta paper asserts that 73 per cent of all the vessels engaged in the coolie trade are not classed at Lloyd's at all. The Emigration Commissioners will see to this, doubtless. With a bad leak and heavy weather, the ship ought at once to have been towed back to Halliday Island, the nearest good anchorage. Instead of this the steamer took her out towards sea, till, at ten o'clock at night, the steamer also broke down, and both anchored. All this timp, from four to ten, the coolies had been at the pumps, and continued there till three next (Tuesday) morning, when the steamer was signalled for help, as the ' Eagle Speed' was sinking. The steamer, however, ueither towed the ship with her living freight back to Halliday Island, nor passed lives by which the coolies might have boarded her, nor sent off her own three boats to help in transhipping them. The sea was high, but all the witnesses assert that any one of these plans might have been adopted, and would have saved every soul on board. Instead of this only three of the ship's boats were lowered. The shrieking coolies clung to the gangways and bulwarks, eager to save themselves, and a few threw themselves into the water on hencoops and were picked up. One boat, manned by the pilot and crew, made one trip and never returned. A second, manned by the second officer and others of the crew, was stove iv after the first trip. Captiins Hoskins made five trips, till sunstroke disabled him. Then the steamer out down one of its three boats, and it was long till the offer of money and shame would induce the now saved ship's crew to man it. They positively refused to save their captain, who was still on the wreck. At last they made two trips, bringing him and the coolie doctor and others off. The scene on board that Tuesday forenoon must have been terrible. The interpreter had disappeared; the compounder and others had broken open the brandy-chest ; the pilot had not returned ; no one could speak a word of the language ; no orclers could be given. The captain left at half-past 12, and, although the ship did not sink for 18 hours after, the steamer returned to Port Canning with only 169 coolies saved, and leaving the rest withou advice or encouragement to their horrible fate. The excuse given is that there wa3 only oue day's coal on board. But, even at this stage of mismanagement and barbarity there was enough of coal to have enabled it to go to Halliday Island, deposit the coolies, and return for the larger number still abandoned. A fine boat hail been left on the wreck unlaunched, and as if to condemn the iguorant inhumanity of those on board .the steamer, it was launched by the coolies, wilh the aid of one sick European and four negroes. The boat actually passed the steamer, ai.d found it way up to port. Imagination refuses to picture the horrors of the 300 human beings when steamer and boat had left, all through that Tuesday afternoon and night with the ship sinking, the water coming over nearer, the breakers sweeping off the weak and derailing,and the utroug clinging and' clirabiiig'even higher on the masts Wednesday morning dawned, and still no hope, till about seven she went down, and vUlea. the two steamers, sent from Calcutta, arrived at the " - scene, they found only the top of the mizenmast with three boys . clingiug to it, ,and covered with • the rags o the poor wretches who had been washed off or had throwu themselves into the sea unencumbered in the hope of safety. When the * Lady H-lgin' returned she saved 50 who had fouud their way on pieces of the wreck to Halliday Island, and the ' Oudh ' steamer,' which bW since been searching the creek, has picked up ten more. _ No less than '26s of the 497 coolies are lost.. As if to add to the horrors of the story, several-of the poo wretches who escaped drowning, when they lande

on the mud islets near, were carried off by tigers. A story is told of two children who floated to shore. One had left his companion for a moment and returned to see him in a tiger's jaws. He again threw himself into th« sea and was pioked up at the last extremity. I cannot repeat to you the curses, not loud but deep, which are heard in almost every circle of society, but are checked by the fact that a Court is trying the pilot. No one defends the sailor*, who are acknowledged on all sides to have acted as Englishmen are, thank God, but seldom known to act. All feel that Captain Hoskins did his duty, and wonder that he did not insist on the steamer towing the vessel to land, or at least waiting longer by her, though he had no power. Even the captain of the coolie ship is less blamed than the pilot, who, knowing the language and being in charge, never returned to the wreck, excusing himself on the ground that the orew would not work, and his boat was smashed forsooth, as if there were not other boats. But the most culpable seems to have been the steamer s captain. "he lives of these 500 people were in his hands, and ho saved only 169 of them. As usual, ■when any such catastrophe as this or the cyclone happens at any other time than the cold season, both the supreme and local Governments are away — the former enjoying the cool delights of Simla, and the latter in Assam. I trust this catastrophe will open the eyes of the English authorities to the character of the coolie trade. The Emigration Commissioners in their last report, for 1864, write very pleasantly About it, and certainly all that the Government of India can. do for its emigrant subjects up to the time that they go to sea is done. But such a disaster as this, asimilarihipwreckandlostoflifeofftheharbourofthe Natal capital some months ago, such barbarity *a the Mauritius colonists were guilty of nine years ago, when, under the baseless fear of cholera, they massacred 150 by exposing them for days on a rock in the Indian Ocean ; the travaux forces of the French planters in Reunion, which our agent's report exposed some time ago in > ;u. >wn columns ; the mortality on board the shi^s, amounting, say the Commissioners, in many special cases to 22f per cent. ; the incompetent surgeons, "two of whom are said to be constantly intoxicated,"— l quote their own report,— all these facts, in the iuterests of humanity alone, ought to put a stop to our coolie trade, and to such, convention as Lord Russell has made with the French Emperor, which is as bad as the old Assiento treaties. But there is another argument. Is it or is it nof a fact that India is under-peopled ; that she cannot grow more cotton for want of hands to pluck it ; that the infant industries of tea and coffee cultivation in the hills are being strangled by the difficulty of getting labour ? If so, surely it is suicidal in the Government of India, whether at home, where it is pressed by coloni»l, Parliamentary, »nd French interests, or here, where the Viceroy is but the head clerk of the Secretary of State, to give encouragement to such a trade — to do more than allow its subjects to carry their labour to any market hey like, under a Passenger Act such as that which regulates emigration in England. In the past 21 years India has sent half a million of her subjects to the colonies. Of these, 310,202 have gone to the Mauritius, 90,200 to the West Indies, and the rest to the French colonies and Ceylon. These figures having a meaning beyond what they would have in little England. Not only do early marriages, zenana excesses, poor food, and past anarchy limit the growth of an Asiatic population, but the mass of the people are peasants with small holdings, and there is no labouring class except the 4,000,000 or 5,000,000 of indigenous tribes in the hills, one-sixth of whom, at least, have thus been shipped out of the country. Is it right for the home authorities thus ignorantly to sacrifice our Indian subjects and the best interests of India, at a time when there is a cry for cotton, only to help a few colonists to grow sugar, and in the vain hope of bribing French planters to atop the "free labour" slave trade from the east coast of Africa ?