The Portland daily press., 1866-02-08
Correspondence Of NsU York Tribune.l
The Wreck of the City of London.

LONDON, Jan. 20, 1866.
Our talk is still of the sea, and OF shlpwreck,
and DEATH The terrible account OF the loss
of the Australian steam-packet London, has
really shocked and saddened the people 10 an
exIent altogether unusual, occurring as it did
go shortly after the departure OF the unfortu
nate vessel from Plymouth. The details, as
nubished in the newspapers, are heart-rend-
ing-I have seen women break down and into
tears while endeavoring to read them. That
wild Winters morning, when London woke
up to find itself five inches deep in snow, with
its telegraph wires making draggled festoons
over the house-tops, aid its streets SO many
open sewers of filthy slush-what ghastly
scene was then transpiring on the merciless
waters of the Bay of Biscay, now more than
ever synonymous with marine disaster! The
preceding days of tempest, the savage cross
seas continually breaking over the doomed
vessel, drenching out hope and eifort-but not
power of heroic endurance-the carrying
away of the masts and lite-boats, the extin-
gushing of the fires in the engine room, the
passengers assembled in the saloon-husbands,
wives and little ones-there to wait for lnexor-
able death, all combine to form series of
pictures that will haunt ones memory for
many day. Then the entrance OF the hero
ic captain who preferred to 60 down with the
Ship" to tell them there was no longer room
for hope the piteously patient acceptance of
their fate-and the end. Every nObly," says
The Telegraph, in the finest piece of writing
that has appeared on the subject, ''our broth :
ers and sisters took the message. There was
great silence, broken only by the waves fin
ishing their work and then crew and passen-
gers mingled together to die; no ranks-no
servant or master any more; and some knelt
with the clergyman and prayed, some opened
the Bible, and others just as fifty, just as pa
tiently, held hands with their loved ones, and
waited meekly for the pang and the change.
gave their souls to God, and when His savage
sea had done its mission, we think it did but
send them by a brief anguish to a better port
than that which the good ship London foun-
dered in trying to reach" Poor actor Brooke,
too; how many in America will remember
him his good looks, and too social qualities;
nothing in his life became him better than his
leaving it. HE had worked" says the report,
wonderfully, and in fact more bravely than
any man on board that ship. Attired only in
a red Crimean shirt and trousers, with no hat
on and barefooted, he went backward and for
ward to the pumps, until working at them
was found to be useless, and when last seen,
about four hours before the steamer went
down, he was leaning with grave composure
upon one of the half-doorS of the companion.
III you succeed in saving YOURSELF he said to |
one of the survivors, give my farewell to the |
people of Melbourne" He thought of those |
kindly Australian folks with whom he was so |
popular, and met his death like the man he |
was, in spite of his faults. l remember his
first appearance in London, in 1848, and how
handsome he looked in Sir Giles Overreach.
There has been the usual, perhaps natural
tendency, to find a scapegoat for the calamity
in the poor Captain, the owners and the YES
sci. Capt. Martin should not have started,
says The Telegraph, with the barometer at
29o ~, the storm-signals hoisted on the
coast. He should have turned back in time,
ct cetera. Others assert that the engineer and
his subordinates stole away, basely deserving
the sinking ship and passengers, and that the
story of the wreck, derived from the former
and supplied to the papers by the reporter ola
journal exclusively supported by ship owners,
cannot be depended on; that the ship had no
duplicate appliances to replace those swept ov-
erboard, not even battens to replace the en-
CINE hatchway. Sailors ask, Why not set a
storm try-sail, when the object was to steady
the ship? But the fact seems to be that the
gale was one of unexampled fury. We have
had no such weather on the coasts, nor such
glut of maratime disaster, since the year 1924
before my recollection. Another steamer,
the Amalia-one of a new line from Liverpool
to India, by the diterranean-foundered in
that same perilous Bay ofBiscay the day after
the unfortunate London, with the loss of
6 100000, her crew happily escaping, and the
wrecks of from 20 to 80 vessels strewed the
coast about Torbay on that dismal Thurs |
day. faf |