The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1878-10-25
MARITIME DISASTER.
Thirty Years of Fatal shipwrscks

any catastrophe entaihng such lament
able loss of life as that which has marked
the sinking of the Princess Alice by the
Bywell Castle. Setting aside the loss
of the Grosser Kurfurst, the most fatal
accident of a like character that has
taken place in British waters, during the
period in question, was the running
down of the Northfieet emigrant ship,
while at anchor off Dungeness, on the
night of Jan. %, 1878, by the Spanish
steamer Murillo, when 293 persons
were drowned A collision almost
equally disastrous, and strongly recall
ing, In some respects, that which has
just occurred on the Thames, took
place on Lake Michigan Sept 7, 1868.
The steamboat Lady Elgin, which had
started from Chicago on a pleasure
trip, with nearly 400 excursionists on
board, was run into by schooner, and
sank, within quarter of an hour, with
2S5 people, among them Mr.. Herbert
Ingram, the member for Boston. The
year 1854 was marked by series of
fatal collisions. The Italian mail
steamer Ercolano left Genoa, on April
"a, with a number of passengers, in
Guiding several English, French and
italian families, and at midnight was
cut down to the waters edge by the
Stella. Only fourteen of the passen-
gers escaped, among them being Sir
Robert Peel, whose secretary, Mr..
Charles Halsey, the member for Hert-
forlshire, was among the drowned. On
April %, the emigrant bark Favorite,
from Bremen was run into off the Start,
by the Hesper, and went down like a
stone with POI of her passengers and
crew, six of the crew only saving them
selves by clambering over the Hespers
bows. On Sept 81, the Arctic, a
splendid ship of the Collins line, came
into collision with the screw steamer
Vesta in fog off the banks of New
foundland, and out of the 1853 persons
on board 1913 persisted, among them the
Due de Grammont and the Due de
Guynes. The same year was also rem
dered memorable in maritime disasters
by the disappearance of the City of
Glasgow, screw steamer, which left the
Mersey for Philadelphia on March /,
with 480 persons on board, all told, and
of the Lady Nugent, transport, which
sailed from Madras on May 10 with re-
Inducements ror the army at Rangoon,
forming, with her crew, total of some
400 persons. Neither of these vessels
was ever heard of again-a fate shared
by the Pacific, which left Liverpool on
Jan. %, 1856 with 1873. and the City of
Boston, which sailed from Halifax on
Jan. %, 1870, with 191 persons on board.
The mail steamship Europa, on her way
to England in July, 1S49, ran down the
emigrant bark Charles Bartlett, causing
the death of 1872 persons; and the Irish
steamer Mangerton Numbered into the
New Zealand clipper Josephine Willis
just off the South Foreland, and sent
her and sixty-nine people, mostly pas
sengers, to the bottom.
The laundering of the Captain off
Cape Finisterre on the night of Sept.
6, 1870, with Capt. Burgoyne and 500
officers and seamen, remains the heavi-
est calamity that has befallen the navy
during the latter half of the present
century. The severest loss suffered at
sea by the army was from the contin-
gent furnished by the Twelfth Lancers
and Forty-third and Ninety-second Foot
towards the 43S lives lost with the
Birkenhead off the Cape of Good Hope
Feb. rs, 1852. The American army sus,,
tanned an almost equal loss, when about
800 of the troops on board the San
Francisco were washed overheard, or
died from exhaustion and exposure,
during her passage from California in
December, 1853. The most disastrous
confagration in British waters was that
which caused the deaths of 178 people
on board the emigrant packet Ocean
Monarch in Abergele bay on the after
noon of Aug. "a, 184S. But its horrors
were even eclipsed by those attend
ing the burning of the steamship
Austria between Hamburg and New
York on Sept. ID, 1858, when 461
out of 528 persons on board were
burned or drowned. A like fate
overlook 204 of the 1913 persons on
board the Golden Gate on her passage
from San Francisco to Panama on the
9th of July, 1862: while the number
who persisted in a similar manner, with
Eliot Warburton, on board the Amazon
in the Bay of Biscay on the 4th of jan
uary, 1852, amounted to 102 out of 161
persons. The author of The Crescent
and the Gross" had written that since
the days of steam navigation the Bay of
Biscay was no longer formidable;' yet
the London steamship went down in it
on her way to Australia on the 18th of
January, 1866, carrying with her 239 out
of her complement of 25S, and among
them G.. V. Brooke, the actor. Two
most disastrous shipwrecks of recent
date were those of the Atlantic and the
Royal Charter. The latter homeward-
bound Australian clipper was crushed
like an egg-shell on the rocky coast OF
Anglesea just before daybreak on Oct
26, 1859, and 459 men, women and
children were drowned, some forty OF
so managing to scramble ashore. The
number of lives lost with the Atlantic
one of the White Star Line, was even
more appalling. She struck on sunk
EN- rock off the coast of Nova Scotia on
April 1, 1873, with 931 persons on board
and the breakers swept away 4S1 OF
them. The Anna Jane, of Liverpool
bound for Canada, with $50 emigrants
and crew of forty-five, was driven on