The Sun.
London, England, 1866-11-07 00:00:00

The Loss of the Evening Star.

The steamship Evening Star left New York for
New Orleans on the 27th September. Besides a
crew of over 60 persons she had on board more
than 200 passengers, 132 of whom were women.
These passengers were divided into three classes,
each occupying a separate part of the ship. The
after cabins and a portion of those on the main
deck were allotted to the ordinary passengers. The
main deck was occupied by an Opera troupe just
arrived from Paris, and transferred from the Havre
steamer without landing in New York ; a negro
minstrel company shared with them this accommo-
dation. The forward cabins were appropriated by
93 courtesans on their way south from New York
and various parts of Europe. The vessel was valued
at $400,000, no portion being insured. The Even-
ing Star was a crank ship, too lightly built for
ocean voyages, constructed for speed rather than
for safety, and fitted with poor and insufficient
machinery. On a previous voyage she narrowly
escaped the fate now befallen her, and the facts
were published by the passengers she then carried.
Competent mechanics declared the machinery to be
defective, the lifeboats deficient in number and
in construction, the vessel overloaded, no surgeon
on board, and other facts detailed, showing a dis-
regard not only for the comfort, but even for the
safety, of the passengers. So strong was the im-
pression made by that passage that a gentleman,
writing to the New York Times, declared he could not
trust himself in her on the return voyage, but came
home in an opposition boat. Her passage was fine
till off Hattaras Light, when, on the afternoon of
the Ist October, a beeeze set in which drove the
light vessel along, the steam being aided by canvass.
As night darkened the breeze grew into a gale, and
the morning of the 2d dawned on a wild sea and a
strong and increasing tempest. By the afternoon
a furious hurricane was blowing, the engines were
practically useless, and the vessel labouring in the
trough of the huge Atlantic billows. At 4 o'clock
she was struck by a wave which swept away the
hurricane deck, with two of the crew and some of
the passengers. At 6 a green sea fell on, board and
tore away the wheel-house, snapped the rudder
chains, stove in the bulwarks, and loosened every
joint in the weak and trembling vessel. The hatches
were damaged, and every succeeding wave threw
volumes of water into the engine-room. The Even-
ing Star now became a fac-simile of the London.
The fires were extinguished, the engines useless, the
water gaining fast, and already inundating the floors
of the upper cabins. All through that dreadful
night the passengers laboured incessantly to save
the sinking ship, the women setting an example of
courage and devotion. Buckets, baling the water
out, were passed from hand to hand, the cargo got
up and thrown overboard, but these efforts were
soon seen to be futile, and no sophistry could disguise
the terrible doom now quickly approaching. The scene
on board the London was re-enacted in even greater
horrors. At 5 o'clock the captain went into the
main cabin, where the majority of the passengers
had assembled, and notified that the ship could not
live more than an hour. All class distinctions had'
long been broken down. Although the majority,
especially of the women, displayed calmness and
courage in the trying emergency, others gave way
to the wildest despair. Wardrobes were ransacked
by many of the unfortunates, who were quickly
arrayed in extravagant costumes, and loaded with
trinkets and jewels. The floors of the cabins were
strewn with costly silks and furs, and rings and
watches lay scattered about, with specie and paper-
money in wild disorder. Some sought to pray,
while some cursed ; some cried, some laughed, some
shouted. Foreigners wildly gesticulated, and fren-
zied exclamations were raised in German, French,
and Italian. A few of the most desperate of both
sexes broke into the bar-rooms, seized the liquors,
and conveying them into the state-rooms, enacted
the most horrible orgies. But fate was rapidly
settling on the doomed ship. The lifeboats, six in
number, lay on their ways, as it was impossible to
lower them, and were crowded with the passengers
and crew. Tremendous seas swept over the vessel,
while after each she showed less buoyancy and in-
clination to rise. At a quarter-past 6 the ship
gave a lurch to one side, then an equally violent
lurch to the other, and instantly sank. Every
boat capsized in the tremendous whirl. Four
of them succeeded in getting away from the
wreck, the last not until ten hours after the
catastrophe. One of these boats contained the
purser, chief engineer, 3 passengers, and 6 sea-
men. A second contained the third mate, the
steerage steward, three seamen, and three passen-
gers. A third boat contained the pilot, assistant-
engineer, four passengers, the cook, the butcher,
and one fireman. A fourth boat contained the
second mate, and 13 of the female passengers. If
the other boats succeeded in leaving the ship they
probably perished, as nothing has been heard con-
cerning their fate. The first boat was picked up
by the Norwegian barque Fleetwing ; one passen-
ger had died from exposure. The second boat
arrived at Fernandina, Florida, on the morning of
the 7th ; two of the passengers had died ; the
bodies still remained in the boat, the survivors
being too weak to throw them overboard. The
third boat was picked up on the Bth by the
schooner Morning Star; four of her passengers
had died. The fourth boat reached Maryport
Mills, Florida, on the 11th ; this boat originally
contained the second mate and 13 women ; 11 of
the women. had died, the other two were lost in
landing—one of them being snapped up by a shark.
Thus, out of a total (passengers and crew) of 278
persons, only 24 were saved. The sufferings en-
dured by the survivors are almost too horrible for
description. The weather was cold, and the water
had .become thoroughly chilled, yet the life-boats
were constantly capsizing. One of them capsized
15 times. Many of the rescued passengers became
insane from hunger and thirst, for the provisions
placed in the lifeboats were all washed out, and,
through some blunder, the beakers had been filled
(probably by an ignorant passenger) with salt water.
Some of the passengers drank sea water, and lost
their reason in consequence ; and the seamen were
compelled to threaten that any person who drank
sea water should be thrown overboard before the
terrible evil could be checked. The occupants of
one of the boats were without food for more than 70
hours ; and the more fortunate had nothing to eat
for 50 hours. The gale continued during two days.
The scanty clothing of the survivors was washed
away by the sea or torn to shreds in the struggles
that ensued upon every upsetting of the boats. The
two women who were picked up by the Morning
Star were in a state of complete nudity when rescued,
and several of the passengers in the other boats
were in the same condition. It would be difficult to
conceive anything more terrible than the condition
of these unfortunate people—without food, without
water, many without clothing, the attention of the
minority divided between the duties of looking out
for vessels, righting the boats when they capsized,
and guarding the insane. Thus perished the ill-

fated Evening Star, bringing home to America the
identical lesson taught us by the equally disastrous
loss of the Landon: Both vessels were ill-constructed
for ocean voyages—both were over-loaded, and both
sank in a sea way in which open boats had lived.
The loss of the London excited in England the
liveliest commiseration, for she sank but a short
distance from our shores, and the storm which had
caused the catastrophe had howled over our own
homes, and laid waste our own coasts. But more
clearly than in the case of the London is the
foundering of the Evening Star to be traced to the
sacrifices offered to the almighty dollar. There are
few coasts which more demand well-built and well-
fitted traders than the sea-board of the United
States. Gales of fearful violence and of prolonged
duration blow furiously on these shores, tumbling
in on them the unbroken roll of an ocean. Seldom,
indeed, has a greater hecatoiub of victims been more
ruthlessly sacrificed, and we trust that a close and
rigid inquiry will be made into the circumstances,
and such a horrible catastrophe be prevented for
the future, so far as human means can avail to con-
trol the violence of nature.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

_______4.-

TIMES.—A suit of considerable interest in its
bearing on the question of the Colonial Episcopate
was yesterday decided by the Master of the Rolls
in favour of Bishop Colenso. The proceeding arose
out of the judgment of the Privy Council on the
"Colenso Case in March, 1865"—a judgment of
which the effect was to disturb almost all received
opinions as to the constitutional position of the
Colonial Church. The Judicial Committee of the
Privy Council did not, indeed, negative the right of
Bishop Colenso to assume the episcopal character,
or that of Bishop Gray to call himself Metropolitan
of the South African Church, whatever spiritual
authority such titles may import ; but they denied
that any coercive jurisdiction could be exercised by
either, inasmuch as the patents which purported to
confer that jurisdiction were null and void in law.
They declared that " there was no power in the
Crown, by virtue of its prerogative, to establish a
metropolitan see or province, or to create an eccle-
siastical corporation whose status, rights, and
authority the colony should be bound to recognise."
" It may be true that the Crown, as legal head of
the Church, has a right to command the consecra-
tion of a bishop, but it has no power to assign him
any diocese, or give him any sphere of action,"
either within the United Kingdom or within any
colony which has received legislative institutions,
unless by special provisions of an Act of Parliament.
Upon the delivery of this judgment Bishop Colenso
applied to the trustees of the " Colonial Bishoprics'
Fund" for the arrears of the income annually payable
out of that fund to the bishopric of Natal, which
had been withheld and carried to a separate account
since his illegal deposition in the previous year. The
trustees, however, among whom are the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Mr. Gladstone, Vice-Chancellor Page
Wood, and Mr. Hubbard, took a different view of
their duty. `They contended that, inasmuch as
Bishop Colenso was not a suffragan bishop within
the Province of Cape Town, he was not a bishop at
all in the sense contemplated by the original promo-
ters of the fund, and could receive no benefit from
it. They did not, so far as we are aware, draw the
corresponding inference that Bishop Gray, having
no such metropolitan jurisdiction as was contem-
plated in the endowment of his See, was also disen-
titled to his salary ; still less did they apply the
same principle, by parity of reasoning, to other
colonial diocesans. Bishop Colenso, therefore, sought
redress from the court of Chancery, and Lord
Romilly has allowed his claim, condemning the de-
fendants in the general costs of the suit. The
grounds of this important decision, though somewhat
complicated in their nature, are happily removed
almost equally from the province of technical law
and of technical theology. It would have been pos-
sible to raise issues of the latter kind had the trustees
thought proper to rely on Bishop Colenso's alleged
heresy ; but no such defence was pleaded, and the
matter really turned upon two points—the inten-
tions of those who subscribed to the Colonial
Bishoprics' Fund, and the legal consequences of the
Privy Council judgment. Now, as the greater part
of the endowment for the See of Natal was provided
by Miss Burdett Coutts, the simplest plan would
obviously have been to remove all doubts by a refer-
ence to that lady. The law, however, does not
allow legal acts to be modified or reversed by sub-
sequent verbal explanations, and, although a letter
from Miss Coutts was read by the Court, it was not
received as a conclusive piece of evidence. Miss
Coutts has, perhaps, more reason than any other
person to complain of the blunders which have defeated
in some degree the objects of her munificence, and
she plainly states that she would not have guaranteed
the funds had she not believed that a bishopric, in
the full Church of England sense, and with " effec-
tive jurisdiction," could be established in the colony
of Natal. Of course, she had still less idea of help-
ing to found a Church of South Africa repu-
diating the supremacy of the Crown, and claiming
an ecclesiastical jurisdiction from which there would
be no appeal. Still, as Lord Romilly observed,
ignoratio juris neminem excusat, and parties must be
presumed to act subject to the existing provisions of
the law. " Effective jurisdiction," if by that term
be meant a jurisdiction like that conferred by acts
of Parliament on English bishops, cannot be exer-
cised under letters patent in any colony where there
is an independent Legislature, and where there is no
Established Church. On the other hand, Lord
Romilly seems to hold that " effective jurisdiction"
—founded, we presume, on contract—may be exer-
cised by the Bishop of Natal through the agency of
the civil tribunals, so that Miss Coutts's intentions
cannot be said to have been altogether frustrated by
the judgment of the Privy Council. According to
the doctrine laid down by him, the letters patent,
though void for the purpose of giving coercive juris-
diction, are 'valid for two other distinct purposes.
They enabled Bishop Colenso, after his own conse-
cration by the archbishop, to confer ordination, to
consecrate churches, and to hold confirmations,
even beyond the limits of his own diocese, since
these are powers universally belonging to a bishop
as such. But they also made him " a territorial
bishop within the diocese of Natal," with the right
of appointing officers, and of collating persons to
benefices, though without that of enforcing obedience
without recourse to the secular courts. This last
prerogative, valuable as it may be, is not essential
to episcopacy, and the Master of the Rolls declines
to unsettle the whole organisation of the Colonial
Church by pronouncing Dr. Colenso to be no
bishop of Natal, because he does not possess it.
Whether or not Lord Romilly's exposition of
the law be confirmed on appeal, it is much to be
regretted that such a course should have been
adopted, doubtless frcm the most conscientious
motives, by the eminent trustees of the'fund. It
was an ill-advised measure to refuse Bishop Colenso
his salary upon his so-called deprivation by a so-
called Synod, owning no allegiance to any recog-
nised power in Church or State. It was still more
questionable, when the illegality of the sentence had
been affirmed by the Court of Final Appeal, to
change the ground of the refusal, and to allege rea-
sons which, if good at all, were equally good against
Bishop Gray. It is inevitable that his success in
resisting a blockade of this kind should be hailed as
a triumph by his friends, while a different result
would probably have failed to dislodge him from his
see. At the same time, it is highly desirable that a
basis should be laid by judicial interpretation of the
existing laws for a legislative settlement of the ano-
malous relation between the British Crown, the
Church of England, and the Episcopal Churches of
the Colonies. The bill introduced last session by
Mr. Cardwell purported to be little more than an
embodiment of principles already sanctioned by the
' Privy Council ; but it was received by one party in
the Church with a degree of favour which naturally
aroused the suspicions of the other. It would per-
haps have been well had no attempt been made by
the Legislature to extend the Anglican system of
the mother country to the colonies. The Church of
England is essentially an English institution ; it is
the product of historical conditions which never
existed in any other nation, and are never likely to
be repeated in any future age. Nor is it possible to
watch its adaptation to modern colonial society
without a certain sense of its incongruity. If we
could begin again with the advantage of past expe-
rience, few statesmen and few Churchmen would
fall into the errors which have almost brought about
a dead-lock in the ecclesiastical government of
South Africa. As it is, we must retrace our false
steps as best we may. If the laity as well as the
clergy of Episcopal Churches in our colonies desire
complete independence, let it be conceded freely ;
but let us not give the sanction of a Royal Patent
and of a solemn consecration by the Primate of All
England to Bishops over whom no control can be
exercised either by our Civil or by our Spiritual
Courts.

HERALD.-Mr. Bright has drawn down upon
himself a severe rebuke and damaging exposure
from Mr. Pope Hennessy, which will be all the more
effective from the courteous tone and temperate lan-
guage in which it is administered. In the course of
one of his Irish speeches, in which he endeavoured
to lay all the grievances and misfortunes of Ireland
to the charge of the Conservatives, the agitator re-
ferred to Mr. Henessey as a gentleman who had
always acted with the party which, supports the
Wrongs of Ireland. We have often had occasionito
differ with Mr. Hennessy on Irish questions ; and
the better on that account should we know how

utterly unfounded and unprovoked is Mr. Bright's
wanton attack upon his political course. Mr. Hen-
nessy has been from first to last the untiring, inde-
fatigable advocate of what he conceives to be the
rights and interests of his country, and particularly
of her tenant-farmers. He has risked his position
and popularity in the House of Commons by the
urgency with which, in season and out of season, he
has pressed the importance of Irish questions upon
the Imperial Legislature, and wearied it with ap-
peals on behalf of tenant-right, with descriptions of
Irish distress, and demands for votes of money for
public works in the sister island. It is no slight
proof of presumption on Mr. Bright's part, no
in-
significant symptom of the real motives which influ-
ence his sudden affectation of sympathy with Irish
troubles, that he should have made before an Irish
audience this groundless and reckless onslaught on
a man who has laboured incessantly in the cause
which he has only taken up at the last moment t°
serve ends of his own in which Ireland has little or
no concern. Mr. •Hennessy's reply affords a com-
plete vindication of himself, and retorts with telling
severity on his assailant. The O'Donoghue presided
at Mr. Bright's meeting ; and Mr. Hennessy
quotes
a brief note from The O'Donoghue expressing htg
hope that Mr. Hennessy may again be returned to
Parliament, where he has always acted as a true
friend of Ireland should act. Mr. Hennessy recites
the history of his repeated efforts to compel a settle-
ment of the tenant-right question ; and be asks
where, on each occasion, was Mr. Bright. Nowhere'
He never spoke, he never voted, in favour of the
object which has suddenly become so dear to 111.03*
He always avoided the house when it was to be as'
cussed. He never troubled himself to master tbs.
facts, or lend his powerful voice to the support 01
the one principle in which, rightly or wrongly, the
mass of the Irish people take a keen and eager le"
terest. He can flatter and coax the Irish ; can de-
ceive them by ascribing all their misfortunes to bast,
and malevolent legislation ; can abuse the landlords
.who have done more in one year for her welfare
than he in all his lifetime ; can insult and strive to
discredit her most faithful representatives, beeflse
.
they do not lend their aid to his selfish aims or act
with the faction Of which he is the chief ; but be
cannot take the trouble to do one stroke of real work
for her benefit. Whenever a special Irish interest
has been advocated in the House of Commons Mr.
Bright has either voted with the opponents of the
Irish members, or has more frequently stayed away
to avoid compromising his chance of conciliating the
support of Irish ignorance and prejudice ; his 01:
lowers have invariably voted against every attergu
which has been made to obtain relief for Irish d 1.8.-
tress or the expenditure of money on Imperial
works in Ireland. He and his followers gave their
most eager adhesion to the financial policy which
cheapened the luxuries of the rich at the expense 0
taxes levied on the luxuries of the poor ; which re-
duc,xl by three-fourths the duty on French wines,
and doubled the duty on Irish whisky, and thgs
shutting up, as Mr. Hennessy affirms, half the
dis-
tillers in the country. This is the history of the
man who takes upon him to point out as a traitor
to Irish interests their most earnest, able, ind_e"
fatigable advocate ; it is by one who has been toe
idle to give an hour of real thought or effort for thg
benefit of Ireland that Irishmen are to be schooled
in the choice of their representatives, and lectured
on the imprudence of trusting a Conservative Inv
man. •