A THAMES TRAGEDY.

Northland Age, Volume IV, Issue 49, 27 July 1908, Page 8

A THAMES TRAGEDY.

THE LOSS OF THE PRINCESS ALICE.

.The Princess Alice was a fine little steamboat, small, indeed, compared with the vessels which now run up and down the Thames in the summer time. She was only 251 tqns gross, with a length of 220 feet, and a bread til of 20. Still, when she was lost on the 13th of September, 1878, she had no fewer than 900 people on board. All these were returning from a holiday spent at Sheerness. Song and laughter and choruses of joyous sounds arose from them as the steamer glided on the smooth surface of the river.

I was looking along the stretch of water at the Gall ions when I saw a screw steamboat coming towards us. She was a fairly big vessel, being abqut 1400 tons. What she was then I did not know, but I and the rest of" the world soon knew her to be the By well Castle, an outwardbound cqllier. For the first few moments, I had no misgivings of disaster. I was playing with some children. Then I heard a startled cry. I looked up in fear and amazement and saw the Bywell Castle actually looming over our starboard bow. She lqoked like a great monster which was deliberately coming up to strike her prey. The captain—he went down with his ship— just passed me to go on to the bridge. As for myself, I sprang on to a form and shouted—- “ She will be into us !" As the words left my mouth the great bow crashed into the very heart of the Princess Alice, just as a strong knife may be driven through a matchbox, doubling up and smashing her into two pieces. Almost before you could think, the fore part settled down and sank/ and the after-part tilted up in the air. Cannot you picture for yourself, without any words from me, what that sudden change from merriment to death meant ? It was eventide, and the loud laughter was succeeded by the wildest and most pitiful shrieks that could rend the still air. Some of the merrymakers—and they were fortunate, because they were spared much terrible suffering—were killed on the spot, both on deck and below ; others were hurled overboard by the shock ; some in their frenzy sprang into the water and were drowned.

All of us seemed to drop down like skittles. Then there was a frightful struggle both on deck and in the water. Men and women and children rolled over and clutched and tore at each other, and with it all there were the ceaseless screaming and hqpeless appeals for help. The entire surface of the river was a mass of struggling, panic-stricken, and despairing humanity. Everything that was within reach was seized and held in the convulsive grip of death. Merciful indeed it was that at the very outset so many sank and never rose again. I saw that the only hope of safety for me lay in reaching, if I could, the deck of the Bywefll Castle.

But hqw was I to achieve the seemingly impossible—how reach that towering deck up those smooth, straight iron sides ?

Half of the Princess Alice was already almost submerged, and it was merely a question of moments for the entire ship, broken in two pieces as she was, to disappear altogether. I glanced swiftly about me, and saw that there was only one way of reaching the place of safety I mentioned. That was to swarm up one of the chains supporting the funnel of the Princess Alice, and clamber from the top of it to the By well Castle, the bow of which, still sticking into the dreadful, gaping wound which it had made, was within reach. How I did it I do not know to this day, but in my frenzy and despair I swarmed up the funnel guy just in my earlier days at see I had climbed afloft.—G. W. Linne Car and Walter Wood, in the “Royal Magazine."