The Sun.
London, England, 1848-12-07 00:00:00

NOTICE.

ibetning 2int

LONDON, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1848.

Let us talk no longer of the unparalleled cruelties
of SURAJAH DOWLAH, the Nabob of the great pro-
vinces of Bengal, Orissa, and Behar. The awful
crime, which has rendered the Black Hole at Calcutta
a name hideous to the ears of Englishmen, has been
repeated in the December of 1848 on board the Sligo
steamer called the Londonderry. The horrors per-
petrated by the despot of Moorshedabad have been
renewed by the underlings of a mercantile commu-
nity ; and what makes the circumstance the more
deplorable and the culpability the more heinous,
if that be possible, is, that while these horrors
arose at Fort William from the motives of cu-
pidity and vengeance, they have emanated, in the
Irish Channel, from the most reprehensible negli-
gence. Whoever has read the history of the rise and pro-
gress of the British empire in Hindostan, whether
narrated by the frigid perspicuity of MILL, or
painted with the lavish and gorgeous colourings of
OR ME, will remember vividly that occurrence over
which he has shuddered with emotions only kindred
to the sensations inspired by the dismal story of Ugo-
lino. He will bear in recollection the fact that 146
wretched beings were crammed into a dungeon called
the Black Hole in that portion of the Hoogley which
was known then as Fort William, and which has
subsequently become famous as the great city of Cal-
cutta. He will not have forgotten how the miserable
prisoners who were packed together in that den, the
space of which was merely twenty feet square, raved
for air during many hours, trampling each other to
death in the delirium of suffocation, and exciting the
laughter of the savages who peered in through the
bars of the doorway, by their agonizing cries and
frantic gesticulations. He will remember, moreover,
that when the day dawned after that most awful
catastrophe twenty-three emaciated creatures stag-
gered out over the 123 dead bodies of the men who
on the previous evening had been their companions.
Horrible as this incident is, in every respect, it is
now, alas I no longer without a parallel. The fore-
cabin of a Sligo steamer has been the scene of tor-
ments as distracting as those which were once ex-
perienced in the stagnant atmosphere of an Indian ,
dungeon.

The circumstances of this dreadful calamity are
simple and terrible.
At about four o'clock on Priam, evening,l
of December, the steam-boat Londonderry eft the
a the Ist
harbour of Sligo with an average cargo,
of live cattle, and from 150 to 200 passengergs7stit
vessel was crossing over to Liverpool, from which
port the majority of the unfortunate passengers in-
tended to proceed as emigrants to America. Towards
nightfall a heavy gale came on, and at last blew with
so much violence, that shortly after midnight, or
rather towards one o'clock on Saturday morning, the
decks were cleared of all except the seamen. The
steerage passengers, nearly 100 in number, were
crowded into the fore-cabin—men, women, sad chil-
dren, all were driven below driven, we say,
because several struggled against those who forced
them down the companion-ladder. After some diffi-
culty, however, many remonstrances, and much op-
position, the poor emigrants were crammed into the
narrow compass of the fore-cabin—a compartment
little more than 18 feet long by 11 feet wide, and
seven feet high. The space was capable only of
accommodating about forty passengers, and here were
nearly one hundred of both sexes huddled together
indiscriminately, the old and the young, the robust
and the sickly, the adult and the infant. Meanwhile
th,,, sea was running high in the channel, so that the
waves repeatedly broke over the steamer. Then
was that, through the insane negligence of those who
were responsible for the lives of the people on
board, a measure of momentary convenience
was adopted which led to a catastrophe the like of
which has only occurred before in the notorious
prison of Calcutta. The companion —the only aper-
ture by which the fore-cabin received ventilation—
was closed, and over the companion was nailed down