The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-26 00:00:00

Loss of a Hull Steamer and Seven Lives.

Intelligence has been received in Hull of the total loss of
the screw steamer Zealand, a fine vessel of 700 tons re-
gister, the property of Messrs. Bailey and Leetham, ship-
owners, Hull, with seven of her crew, during a storm in the
Baltic, on the 11th of September. The ill-fated vessel was
on her passage from Konigsberg to London with a cargo of
oats, and had on board, in addition to a crew of 14 men, 12
passengers. During the progress of the voyage, on the 11th
inst , and when distant about 40 miles from the Horne reefs,
the Zealand was caught by a heavy gale of wind from the
W.N.V. There was also a very heavy sea, and the vessel,
owing to the light nature of her cargo, rolled very much. One
of her engines broke down, when all sails were set, and the
remaining engine was kept in motion, but, of course, the
progress of the steamer was seriously impeded. The second
engine soon broke down, and the vessel becoming unman-
ageable, she was left to the mercy of the raging seas. This
latter mishap was accompanied with one of more serious
consequences, for the engine in its fall started one of the
iron plates in the ship's hull, and caused a considerable
leakage. Water was fast gaining on the vessel, the fires
were quenched, and the position of the Zealand appeared
hopeless. The boats were then lowered, and the mate (Mr.
Walker), the chief engineer (J. Spiby), carpenter (J. And-
sell), and tour of the crew, named J. Brenton, E. Morris,
W. Page, and W. Andsell, and 12 passengers, left the
steamer, and were received safely on board the Norwegian
barque Christina, which vessel was luckily in sight about
ihree-quarters of a mile distant from the Zealand. Captain
Lewis and seven of the crew of the Zealand remaine d on
board that vessel in order to save some valuables and await
the return of the boats. The mate, as soon as he had placed
the passengers on board the Christina, endeavours d to re-
turn to the Zealand, but owing to the violence of the gale,
it was found to be impracticable. The barque attempted
to approach the Zealand, but as she was lightly laden,
she was driven considerably off to the leeward, and as
the night set in she lost sight of the steamer. During
the night, however, the men on board the Christina ob-
served that rockets and blue lights were being fired peri-
odically as signals of distress from the Zealand, but at
length they suddenly ceased, and nothing more was seen
or heard of her. The barque waited about during the
night, and when morning broke not a vestige was to be
seen of the ill-fated steamer. The Christina made sail for
Laurvig, in Jutland, where she landed the crew and pas-
sengers that wero saved. From that port they lett in the
steamer Scandinavian for Hull, where theyarrived yesterday
morning. Nothing has as yet been heard of Captain Lewis
and the remainder of the crew, and it is supposed they have
met with the same melancholy fate as attended the vessel to
which they belonged. The following telegram from Thisted,
dated Sept. 17, has been received :—" Yesterday a vessel
was observed from Steenberg Strand, distant from the coast
one English mile, sunk in 10 fathoms water. She was exa-
mined, and found to be a ship with three masts, one of which
was broken, and according to the distance between the masts
supposed to be a steamer. Some yards were driving by the
wreck, but nothing else was seen of it. IV eather very bad,"

Aurora Floyd. By M. E, I3raddon. Sixth Edition.
One vol., pp. 487. Tinsley Brothers.

Remarkable though the success at once achieved
by Miss Braddon's first work, that is to say, her
first work of any importance, " Lady Audley's
Secret," its successor speedily attained for itself a
yet wider popularity. Nor can this be very well
wondered at upon a comparison—no reatter how cur-
sory—of those two romantic narratives. The extra-
ordinary capacity possessed by our authoress for
fixing the attention of her readers, for awakening
and sustaining their curiosity, for enthralling their
interest, for mastering their sympathies, not inter-
mittently, but continuously, by a sort of glamour,
from the first page to the last, from the instant her
story commences down to the very moment of its
completion—agreeably noticeable in the instance of
" Lady Audley's Secret," was pre-eminently so in
that of " Aurora Floyd." The mainspring of each
plot was, in a manner, so to speak, curiously similar
—almost, as one might say, identical. Although
the circumstance was not again frankly announced
upon the second title page, Aurora Floyd had her
Secret no less than Lady Audley herself. But the
Secret of Aurora was better preserved, was more
artful in its concealment, was less ghastly of its
kind—more lamentable, less criminal. Something
morbid there is, no doubt, in each tale, affecting the
imagination as we read on, almost at times as if we
were breathing an unwholesome atmosphere. By
a strange monotony of contrivance o❑ the part of
the authoress in building up the machinery of her
second plot, the root idea of it, is so far like that of
the first, that it has to do with Bigamy. While Lady
Audley, however, is to our mind simply repulsive
throughout, a wicked, sly, cool-brained, iron-handed
Lucretia-Briuvilliers in little, with her Lamia-like
halo of golden hair, her Becky Sharp-like blueness
of eye, and her Madame Lafarge-like deliberation
in sweeping out of existence, as though he were
some mere troublesome gnat rather than a " fellow
human," a husband who happened to be in her way
—Aurora Floyd is, on the contrary, often wonder-
fully attractive, occasionally nothing less than
bewitching, in spite of her wild, bold, sometimes all
but masculine impulsiveness. The reader—hardly
less, first of all, than handsome Talbot Bulstrode, or
than afterwards good, gentle-hearted John Mellish
—falls in love with her, in very despite of her
Secret, of her unladylike predilection for Bell's
Life, of her intimate knowledge of turf slang,
of her wielding so fiercely that pretty, stinging,
snake-like, jewelled riding-whip of her's over the
deformed shoulders of yonder wretched pale-faced
lameter, Steeve Hargraves, the Softy ! In defiance
of all which, the reader is fain at times to stumble no
less completely than does the proud heir to the Cor-
nish baronetcy, the fastidious Talbot himself, into
the pitfalls of her eyes, and to get entangled no lets
inextricably than honest John in the meshy network
of her blue-black hair ! And no marvel, either,
that so strange a heroine as this should exercise so
peculiar a fascination. Does not our authoress her-
self say of her, through the lips of Talbot Bulstrode
—" She is like Mrs. Nesbitt in the zenith of her
fame and beauty ; she is like Cleopatra sailing
down the Cydnus ; she is like Nell Gwynne selling
oranges ; she is like Lola Mentes giving battle
to the Bavarian students; she is like Charlotte
Corday with the knife in her hand, standing behind
the friend of the people in his bath ; she is like
everything that is beautiful and strange, and
wicked, and unwomanly, and bewitching." She
—this impulsive, terrible, captivating Aurora, for the
loss of whom as a wife that same Talbot 13u1strode,
isle Captain of the Eleventh Hussars, haughty as a
Hidalgo, daring as (whet he was) one of the cavalry
heroes of the famous Charge at 13 elaklava, sobs
aloud in an agony of despairing pride behind his cold
clasped hands! Of whom, as ho weeps, our authoress
says so exquisitely, " Do not despise him for those
drops of anguish : they were the virgin tears of his
manhood. Never since infancy had his eyes been wet
before. God forbid that such, tears as those should
be shed more than once in a lifetime ! The agony
of that moment was not to be lived through twice.
The hoarse sobs rent and tore his breast as if his
flesh had been hacked by a rusty sword ; and when
he took his wet hands from his face, he wondered
that they were not red; for it seemed to him as if he
lead been weeping blood." It is a woman who can
write thus powerfully and tenderly who has penned
this enthralling story of "Aurora Floyd"—it is of a
heroine who can be thus wept for that she writes !
No marvel is it to us that the book has won for itself
so wide a popularity. Whether it is a popularity
that will be lasting is another matter altogether.
But, for seizing upon the attention, for taking cap-
tive the imagination of her contemporaries, the
genius of Miss Braddon as a story-teller is indis-
putably great. It is purely and entirely as a
gory teller, as the inventor of a plot, as the nar-
rator of a fictitious series of events, a linked
chain not of " sweetness" but of terrors and
wonders and mysteries long " drawn out,'' that
Miss Braddon, among our romancists, extorts
from us, while we read her—at first our un-
questioning, but at last (we cannot but con-
fess it) our reluctant—admiration. Reluctant
we have said, and for this simple reason, that we
make acknowledgment of oar admiring these stories
of Miss Braddon as we might make confession of a
predilection for bang or opium! The atmcsphere
we seem to breathe while wandering through the
ghostland of " Aurora Floyd" or "Lady Audley" we
cannot, it is true, venture to pronounce distinctly
pernicious; but we must in candour admit that
it appears to us decidedly unwholesome of
its kind. Yet, while quaffing the literary
bang poured out for us by this Syren,
wo can't, for the life of us, help smacking
our lips over it. While masticating these delicate
morsels of intellectual opium, we are gazing upon
scenes and creations only to be gazed upon in
Dreamland. The popular edition of "Aurora
Floyd," hero published as a companion volume to a
similar issue of "Lady Audley's Secret," will open
a yet wider field to the already extended popularity
of a work which, in spite of, so to speak, its deleteri-
ous flavour, is still undoubtedly replete with feed-
! nation.