TRAGEDIES OF THE SEA.

NZ Truth, Issue 124, 2 November 1907, Page 8

TRAGEDIES OF THE SEA.

THE PRINCESS ALICE, A London Excursion Steamer* SUNK BY A TRAMP COLLIER. Seven Hundred Drowned m the Dark.

"And ;tHe 'dull wave sounds ever like .a knell. ■The dead lies still and listens to the strain ; For when the radiant spirit leave* its shell The poor corpse seems to call it back again. It seeks the soul througft the air's dim expanse ; !A.nd the pale lip saith to the sun- i ken eye, ! "Where is the beauty of thy kindling elance •?" ! 511 And where the balmy 'breath?' 1 " it makes reply. i —Victor Hugo. One of the most awful disasters of modern times occurred m the Thames on September 3rd, 1878. The Princess Alice, a popular excursion steamer, running between London G-raveserid, and Sheeraess, started from Gravesend on her return journey about six o'clock m the evening, and reached Woolwich m safety about eight o'clock. There was a slight river mist, but the weather was fine and warm for the time of the year, and her decks were conseauently crammed with a crowd of happy, ■holiday-makers, who. fully enjoying their evening river trip, were singing and dancing, unconscious of THE TERRIBLE FATE which was to overtake the majority of them, . They were m the reach known as G-allion's Reach, and had just rounded Tripcock's Tree Point, when they saw the lights of a big iron screwsteiamer, the Bywell Castle, at a distance of about half a mile, coming down the stream towards "them. What happened then it is difficult to say. The rules of the river are as clearly laid down as the rule of the road or the footpath, but apparently each captain thought that chc other was doing wrong m steering the course which he was taking, and each broke the rules of the river m order to avoid the other, like two nervously polite people who try to avoid each other on the pavement, and who end by falling into each other's arms. It at length became obvious that a collision was inevitable, and both went FULL SPEED ASTERN, Hails were exchanged between the look-outs on the two ships, and m a few. seconds more the Bywell Castle drove her iron nose straight into t-he side of I?he crowded excursion steamer, striking her at a pomt ' jus fc, about the engine-room, and cutting ••her way clean through the thin side as if it had been tissue-paper. Tile water rusted into the Princess ; Alice m torrents, and she immed- . lately began to sink, the decks of the unfortunate steamer being simply black with people, and as the crash of the collision was heard numbers , attempted to rush up from below, with the result that the narrow com- j panionway was speedily choked— corpses being found m heaps at the I oot of the companion-ways when the i wreck was raised a few days later. A few men who had been standing amidships were fortunate enough to j jump into the iprecastle of the Bywell Castle, and were able by ; means j of rppes • TO SAVE MANY LIVES.'The scenes which were witnessed. Were truly heartrending. Law, the second mate of the Princess Alice, was m the saloon at the time of the collision. He immediately rushed on deck to his fiancee, a i girl of twenty, and, taking her on ■ his shoulder, plunged into the muddy ' water just as the ship sank. But so ! great was the crush of drowning people that the poor fellow's sweetheart was dragged from his arms by someone, and although he dived again and aeain he never saw her alive. He lived, however, to do some very good work by saving others who were unable to swim. Reed/ a passenger, was more fortunate. He and his wife were thrown into the water by the shock, but managed to grasp a piece of floating wreckage. Three j other persons were clinging to the same piece of wood, one of whom was a widow, whose little child had been torn from her arms. The POOR MOTHER'S SCREAMS were frightful, and she seemed utterly careless of her life, They managed to hold her on, however, until they were all picked up. One man dived into the water and called to his wife to throw him his three children, who were on board at the time. She did so, but owing to one cause or another he was unable to reach any of them, and they were drowned before the very eyes of the agonised father. His wife was dragged down by the sinking steamer, and neither she nor the little children survived. The father, when rescued, was nearly frantic with grief. In an accident, of this kind, a good swimmer does not stand very much chance unless he is able to get clear of his fellows, for no sooner lias the vessel gone down than there rises to the surface a crowd of struggling forms, each member • CLUTCHING WILDLY m a panic of uncontrollable fear at anything that has a tendency to float. If it is a spar or piece of wreckage, all well and good ; if it is a weak swimmer, the drowning nerson hangs on with a vice-like clutch to any part of his body which "is most convenient — it may be an arm, or a leg, or a throat ; there is a short struggle, and the two go down locked m death-grip, and the greedy water closes over their headsAn eve-witness stated that lie saw several men who appeared able to swim dragged down m this way. Branksome, the second mate of the Bywell Castle, did some '•'-•lcndicl work. He was at the wheel at the time of the collision, but as soon as

the crash" came and lie saw that the j Princess Alice WAS DOOMED, he jumped with a rope from the side of Ills shin on to the sinking steamer's paddle-box, and there assisted many people to climb the rope he had i brought over with him. • He saw a j widow lady who could not climb, and he was endeavoring to tie the rope j round her waist when the Princess Alice went down and the inrush of water took him with her. However, by a hard struggle Branksome came , to the surface, and, catching at the ] rope, he climbed dripping on board his ship, to the intense astonishment of the first mate, who asked him where m the name of wonder he had come from! Branksome had apparently not done enough TO SATISFY HIMSELF, for no sooner was he on deck than he rushed to a boat, lowered -it, and, with the cook's mate and the chief engineer, pulled out to the drowning crowd and saved no less than fourteen persons. Whilst doing this, the boat was as nearly as possible swamped, but evidently he was one of those men who are as much, at home an the water as upon the land, and, at the inquest, was highly Gommeiwled for his plucky deeds. On the next day, and on the days following, crowds of boats were at and around the scene of the wrecksightseers, who had come out of idle curiosity to view the feeene of the catastrophe, or with that : MORBID LOVE OF THE : HORRIBLE which is implanted m the breast of nearly everyone of us. There were police who kept a wary eye on the crowd, and who had great difficulty m keeping back the press of boats when the sunken ship was being raised ; and last, there were watermen, who looked to the tragedy to supply them with some good profit— the reward offered by the river police for a corpse being 5s per head. As the corpses were recovered, they were taken to Rainham, Becton, Barking, or Woolwich Dockyard, according to the place where they had been found. Terrible scenes were witnessed. Every few minutes a body was brought into the town by some hard-faced waterman, and undertakers' hearses rolled ' through the streets with maddening regularity. There were mourners, too—whitefaced men and women, who went about with desperately eager faces, seeking amongst the swollen and distorted bodies some familiar feature of a wife, a husband, or a child. At Woolwich one- saw all kinds of scenes. Down at the Dockyard, as the corpses were brought m by the watermen, they were greeted with COARSE JOKES AND RIBALD LAUGHTER, and were tossed about and handled just like so many fish. On the other band, the inhabitants of the better sort fully entered into the feelings of the mourners, and treated them with the greatest consideration and kindness, and the funerals of the unnamed dead were thronged with sadeyed men and women, who made a point of attending every funeral m order to pay a last token of respect to ■ the memory of someone whom, amongst the swollen corpses which had been recovered, they were unable to identify. The odor arisines from the vast concourse of -dead bodies became. so bad that the dock laborers, who had been hired at 7s Gd per day to move them, struck for 10s. As soon, however, as this was made public eighty soldiers from the Arsenal at once volunteered to undertake the work, bust their kind-hearted offer was not accepted. The raising of the wreck was" probably the saddest of all THESE HARROWING SCENES. . Many bodies of women and children were found shut up m the little! forecabin, • which the rush of the rising water had evidently closed by jam> ming the door, and which was sealed at the other end by an iron bulkhead. What a horrible death for women and children to die, locked up m a little cabin less than twelve feet square ■! One poor woman had a little boy clasped m her arms, whose toy trumpet was so entangled with her hair that it could not be disengaged. It was noticed that the majority of the corpses found on the wreck were those of women and children, while the men's bodies were found lower down m the bed of the river. This evidences that most of the men made a fight for life, while the women huddled together to await death on the Princess Alice. It was never ACCURATELY ASCERTAINED actually how many passengers were oarriod by the ill-fated steamer at the time of the accident- Only the approximate number of those who went on board is given, because there was a large number of children who had half tickets, and not a few infants m arms for whom no ticket was necessary. It is calculated that there were on the Princess Alice 800 persons all told, of whom 300 were children. Out of these only a paltry 130 ever again saw the light of day. Six hundred and thirty corpses were washed up by the tide. It seems hardly possible that m four minutes 600 persons could have p-one to their death, and yet here we have the hard fact m vast crowd of unnamed graves at Woolwich, which tell plainly the terrible tale of the night's disaster.

The "Opotiki Herald" is informed on reliable authority that the Hori Matenga scare which was published recently is absolutely without foundation. Another instance of giving a clog a bad name. Anyhow, if it wasn't Matenga, who was the wild man m the woods. Perhaps it would be better for Mclllveney, to go along and find out-