The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-02-23 00:00:00

SEVEN LIVES LOST.

The barque Hamilton of Salem, Capt. Webster, arrived
at New York on the 6th inst., with the officers and a
portion of the crew of the British barque Thetis, which
was lost at sea, off Bermuda, in the early part of January
last. 'The Thetis, as we learn from her commander,
Capt. Acland Boyle, sailed from Patook, on the Mosquito I
Coast, on the 2611 of Noveihber last, laden with
mahogany, and bound to Falmouth or Cork. She
experienced fine weather till the 28th of December.
when she met with a succession of gales from the north
west and west, with a heavy cross sea, which caused her
to labour violently, straining her timbers severely,
carrying away her bulwarks, stanchions, and starboard
quarter galley, and causing a leak from• which she took
in large quantities of water, which induced the cap-
tain to lay her to. The men and officers were kept
constantly at the pumps night and day ; but finding
the water gaining on the ship. and the wind veering
round to the north-east, the Captain, on the 31st of,
December, in lat. 38, lon. 56, deemed it advisable to
bear up tc, Dertlll44 Captain B: experienced fine
weather and calms till on the evening of the 2d of Jan.
he espied Bermuda light bearing north west, and about
eighteen miles distant. Deeming it imprudent to
attempt to make the port in the night without a pilot,
the courses were taken in, the topsails double reefed and
the vessel hove td, to await daylight. At this time the
wind was S. S. W., which about midnight suddenly
shifted and blew a perfect hurricane froni the north
west, when the topsails were taken in and the ship was
hove to under a reefed mizen and foretopnlast staysail,
all hands being kept constantly at the pumps, except
such time as was required to take in sail. On the
Morning of the 3d of January, when the officers and
crew had been constantly en deck for forty eight hours,
the Captain discovered that there was twelve feet of
watet in the hold, and at noon of that day, finding the
water still gaining on them, 'notwithstanding the almost
superhttnian labout of the men at the pumps, and seeing
the impossibility of he2';.:l; into port, the vessel was
put and kept before the wind, the hurricane having
slightly abated. The Captain then ordered up a barrel
of water, a cask of beef, a cask of pork, and a quantity
of bread. The men continued to work the pumps as
Men only will wdrk for dear life, bat in spite of all their
efforts the water contidued to gain on them till three
o'clock on the morning of the 4th, when it had risen
above the beams, and the ship became entirely unmanage-
able. The men then got their clothes aft preparatory to
taking to the boats. At half past three o'clock, Captain
Boyle, , seeing the ship inclining to turn over to port,
ordered tbe starboard main rigging to be cut away ; but
before the order could' be executed the ship turned com-
pletely over keel out of water. Notwithstanding the
condition of? the vessel, they still managed to cut away
the rigging; when she righted, with the loss of her main',
mast, fore and mizmitop masts, and everything move-
able on her decks, including the water and provisions,
the crew's clothing, all the boats, four in number, the
poop deck and. stanchions, the sea violently breaking
clean over the ship. When she righted the men who
were forward took to the fore rigging and those aft lashed
themselves to the pooprail and taffrail. The captain was
washed overboard,. but fortunately rejoined the ship, and
succeeded in lashing himself to the rigging. At day-
light it was discovered that four men were missing, who
were, no doubt, drowned at the time the ship capsized.
The men lost Were t Jacobs, the cook (coloured) ; Wm.
Burr, steward ; James Hoev, boy • and William Bloem-
112Ptoell, ;:larterMaSter, allot London. On the 6th, the
barque Hamilton bore down and spoke the wreck,
but the weather was so rough that no boat could
be sent to the relief of the sufferers; so the Hamilton
remained by the wreck waiting for the storm to
subside. The men who were forward went into the fore-

top ; those aft. except twl or three who went into the
wizen crosstrees, were exposed to great dangers and hard-
ships, as tho sea was continually breaking over them.
On the 9th of January abotit noon; Gibson, a sm-
itten, died from drinking salt .water, and was washed
overboard. During the afternoon, Joseph Bendy an
apprentice, died from the . same. cause, and during the
following night Lewis Seymour, a seaman, went down
from the foretop to drink some salt Water and never re
turned. On the morning of the 10th, after these poor
fellows had been six days lashed to the rigging, without a
morsel of food or a drop of water, save such as they
were able to obtain from occasional showers by opening
their parched mouths to receive the precious drops as they
descended from the sky, a boat from the Hamilton came
to their relief, and took them all, captain and 15 men,
on board that barque. The geater portion of the Thetis's
deck had been torn up, her bowsprit unshipped, her
port fore-rigging carried away, and the ship having
become, in fact, a perfect wreck, the Hamilton left
her, and proceeded on her way to New York, where
she arrived late on the 6th instant. When the
crew of the Thetis were taken from the wreck
they were, of course, almost famished, and many
of them reduced to skeletons, and although the Hamilton
was short of provisions for her own crew, Captain
Webster freely divided such as they had ; but was
compelled to put all on short allowance, and when his
vessel arrived in port many of the rescued seamen were
still extremely emaciated and very weak from' their ex-
treme sufferings and want of nourishing food. Some of
them were unable to walk, and presented a pitiable
condition as they appeared at the office of the British
Consul. The Consul furnished them with lodging and
supplied their' pressing necessities in other respects,
and would send them to London, where they all belong.
The Thetis was a barque of 600 tons, owned by Messrs.
Fletcher and Brother of London and the Captain. The
loss on ship and cargo is at-out 60,000 dole. The cargo
was insured, but whether the vessel and' freight money
were insured is not known.

THE PAWNBROKERS' ACT.—At the Worship street (Lon
don) police court, on Saturday, Charles Surry', apistant to
Mr. Attenborough. pawnbroker, of Crown street, Finsbury,
appeared to answer a summons, charged with having unlaw-
fully taken in pledge certain articles from a girl under the
statutory age of 16,whereby a penalty of a had bsen incurred
in each case. Mr. S. Fitt, tobacco pipe manufacturer, in
Shoreditch, stated that for some time past his wife
and himself had missed large quantities of wearing
apparel, and were at a loss to account for it, until the
daughter, a diminutive girl of twelve years of
age, voluntarily confessed that she had taken it, and
pledged it at various pawnbrokers. The child was at first
given into custody, but he subsequently abandoned the
prosecution, and the magistrate directed summonses to be
issued against all the pawnbrokers who had taken in the
pledges. The girl Fitt prove 1 the pledging of articles with
the accused, who was fined 40s and ce sts. James Richard.
son, shopman to Mr. Russell, pawnbroker, Shoreditch, was
convicted in the same amount; and Mr. Joseph Roche,
pawnbroker, of the Commercial road, was also fined 40s and
costs ; and there are several other cases, as the girl had
pledged goods with most of the pawnbrokers' for miles
around. Mr. Hammill expres,ed his determination to con-
vict in every case, as such practices on the part of pawn-
brokers and their assistants tended to the promotion of
juvenile crime.
STRANGE BPF.CTACLE.—TWiCe during the week a spectacle
that would seem strange, if not impossible, in the eves of
our Transatlantic cousins might. have been witnessed ia the
gallery devoted to distinguished strangers in the House of
Commons. On Thursday evening, in one part of the
gallery sat the negro ambassador of Hayti, and in another
Mr. Dallas. the Ambassador of the United States. No
contrast could be greater than the appearance of these two
men—the one black as night, woolly, and exhibiting, in a
marked degree, all the characteristics of hia race, the other
a perfect model of a white gentleman, with a venerable
aspect, and his head covered with a profusion of hair white
as flax; but the grretraes of the contrast was still more
remarkable than thie, that the one represented the most
downtreLen :zee cn the face of the earth, and the other
their most ironhearled taskmasters. What Mr. Dallas
thought I cannot tell, but probably the idea was not absent
from his mind that such a contiguity could not have
occurred in his own country; and it is not improbable that
the representative of the Emperor Soulouque may have in
his mind reflected with some pride on the perfect equality
which in this kingdom brought them together in such
circumstances. On Friday night, during the statement of
the ,budget, the two ambassadors again occupied their.
respective seats in the same gallery, and the circumstance
attracted some attention.—London Correspondent of
Dumfries Courier.