THE LOSS OF THE STEAMSHIP LONDON,

Colonist, Volume IX, Issue 877, 27 March 1866, Page 4

THE LOSS OF THE STEAMSHIP LONDON,

{From the Sydney Morning Herald!)

Another great sorrow has fallen on the com inanities of Australia, and there is no city or scarcely any large circle where it will not create the pangs of bereavement and kindred mourning. This loss of hundreds, many old colonists or their clearest relations, although more than once our lot, stands out as an awful calamity. In the presence of such a catastrophe silence is impossible, but all words are vain. If the Press may ever give utterance to condolence with the full conviction that it expresses the public sympathy it is certainly now, when we tell our compassion for the large number of children who are made orphaus —the many who weep for wives and husbands, for brothers and sisters, they expected soon to greet, but whom they will see no more. The Bay of Biscay, notorious from all time for fatal storms, under whose fury numberless ships have sunk and thousands of human beings have perished, is the first great danger when the shores of England are passed. The passengers had quitted Plymouth on the sth, and on the Bth were in the midst of the gale which was destined to overwhelm them. They could hardly have overcome the sea sickness, which is the lot of many, although much accustomed to the sea, and which few escape when tossed in this Bay. The passengers could have but just settled into their births, or the children become accustomed to the motion, when they were in the centre of the storm. "We can scarcely imagine, a more fearful trial than the situation of these unfortunates, who found every hour the peril increase, and their fate opening with more or less clearness according to their suseeptibilitr or their intelligence. The wreck of the Dunbar was a terrible event, but probably the most of those who perished were xuiconscious of danger until the vessel struck upon the rocks. After a brief struggle, all was over. The spectators on that dreadful day had their feelings lacerated by the aspect of the scattered ruins, but the sufferers scarcely saw their danger before they ceased to live. But here they had the ever increasing sense of peril, the ineffectual effort, and then the visible termination of a five days' contest- in an inevitable fate. We may, however, take a sad satisfaction from the conduct of all parties. The clergymen on board were of different communions, but they felt and showed that they had one refuge, one consolation, and they mingled their prayers with their sympathies. We may be sure that at that awful moment in most minds every feeling gave-way to the sense of a common misfortune and a single hope. V;~e doubt not that all found a sorrowful alleviation in the sympathy which has a thousand times shone out in great calamities, and converted them into examples of moral courage and even divine heroism. "We may be certain that thoughts of many were divided between the home to which they set out, and that to which the Arbiter op Lij?e had destined them, and that in the bitter pang of relinquishing all hope of the first, they had yet the humble expectation of the last. We may feel certain that they did not limit their view to the stern fury of the tempest, raging with blind and relentless force, but that they saw in the storm the Beckoning Hand of the Almighty, and heard the still small voice which gives to human consciousness its last hope, its only possible consolation.

Like most great ship's companies, the passengers of the Londou belonged to every profession and every walk of life. The season of sorrow made them for the time one in heart as in destiny. The "Wesleyan clergyman and the " poor player," both in one great strait and brotherhood. The last message of (x. V. Brooke was an expression of his friendly nature. Others around him, and who shall say he did not join them, expressed doubtless the same emotions in prayer for those who would weep their fate —they know how bitterly. The loss of Dr. "Woolley will deprive the University of a ripe scholar and a large circle of a very kind man. His nature was open and his spirit free, and,-if we may say so, too indefinite in its views" on some great interests of life to form the minds of men wavering in the eddies of modern disputes. Save this, which some will deem an excellence, he had no serious defect, and many noble qualities. All seems elevated by the dignity and distinctness of his last hours, when the Befuge of the ■ child became the trust of the philosopher. The nanfes of the passengers are known widely in many instances, and several are connected with our largest families. Such is, indeed, in this ancient colony compared with the rest, the common consequence of any great catastrophe, for families are here established, and intermarriages wonderfully complicate them one with another. Clearly some names of those who perished comprehend whole households; parents and children met with one common fate. Probably they were persons coming out to settle in the colonies, whose design has been crossed by the destroying tempest. The conduct of the captain and his officers seems to have been worthy of their intrepid profession. The memorial a seaman would most deserve is that in the midst of ponfusion he preserved his self-possession,—that he alleviated agonies he could not prevent; that he shared the danger it was his duty to combat, and that in this noble conflict he yielded up at once his spirit and his charge. Since there were no means of saving the passengers, he stayed with them in "death. v - There are aspects of human nature which Ngeera to reflect upon all its piembers as* well.

as to concentrate on some individuals the dignity and glory of the race. Men seem to enlarge their moral stature in the face of these great crises, when all is lost but the force which sacrifices all for the sake of duty, and if we may confide in the description, this was the attitude in which those who best knew the peril waited to encounter its full force, and disdained to live at any other price. The saving of some seems to have resulted from their being a boat of special qualities their own property. Their parting must have been indeed a moment of agony to all, but self-preservation where no obligations of duty intervene must be admitted paramount. The acquiescence of the majority in those rights shows that even in that awful hour the equity of the preference founded on proprietorship was admitted in a common danger, and thus a rush was prevented which must have made it impossible to save a single life, or communicate to .the families of those who perished the full knowledge of their fate, or of that precious though mournful light which their conduct in peril has thrown about it. But who can help feeling that if a boat made to convey twelve persons carrried nineteen, and lived in such a storm, a provision suitable to these voyages might have made the loss of life as small as the numbers who have escaped; but regrets will avail us nothing.

Jhere is still a consideration of greater delicacy, because involving an awful responsibility. The excessive freight of such a ship, and its want of preparation for such a sea —the consequent leakage of the vessel, stoppage of the pumps, and the extinction of the fires, led by inevitable sequences to the loss of these hundreds of lives ? Who did it ? The owners of ships, covered by insurance, who took all on board, are they not guilty of blood? But—the captain?— yes, he may always refuse cargo—and go home and starve.