The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1879-01-23
DISASTERS DURING 1878.
An Appalling Record of Loss Of Life on
Land and Sea.


An Appalling Record of Less of Life ON
Land and Sea.
The record of the disasters of 1878 is
an appalling one. On September s, the
iron screw collier Bywell CASTLE crashed
into the slightly-built excursion steam
or Princess Alice, as both were rounding
the bend OF the Thames at Tripcock's
point, and sank her almost instantly.
Exactly how many lives were lost will
never be known. Seven hundred is a
low estimate, and as the majority were
women and children out for days
pleasuring, the collision is certainly the
most distressing in marine history. The
report of the official inquiry declared
that the collision was caused by the bad
and careless steering of the Princess
Alice.
On March 25, the Eurydice capsized
in a squall off Dunnoee, isle of Wight,
as she was within half an hour of her
anchorage, and carried down, in sight
of their homes, 800 lads who were being
trained for the British navy. There
we're but two survivors but happily
their testimony established that the dis
aster was due solely to the danger of
the sea.
The German navy also suffered Sc
we're loss. On the last day of May, a
squadron was engaged in naval ma
neuvering in the English channel, when
the Grosser Kurfurst struck and sunk
the Koenig Wilhelm as they we're wear
ing ship to avoid a merchantman. Two
hundred and ninety lives were lost, in
cluding thirteen officers. The verdict
attributed the collision to mistake"
of the Koenig Wilhelms helmsman.
| On the night of November 25 the iron
bark Noel Eilian ran down and sank
| the Pommerania, one of the finest
I steamers of the Hamburg American line.
About fifty.6ve lives were lost by this
collision.
Seventeen lives were lost by the col
lision on October 81, off Tuscar light,
between the National line steamship
Helvetia and the British cutter Fanny;
and about $50 by the Byzantin- -Rinaldo
collision in the Dardanelles on the night
of December 1S.
An explosion of fre-damp in the Aber-
corn colliery, South Wales, on Septem-
ber IL, caused 251 deaths.
On October IL, the audience of the
Colosseum theater, in Liverpool, in
their mad rush for escape from the
building at a careless or malicious but
entirely groundless alarm of fire, tram
pied thirty-seven of their number to
death.
In this country there were but few
marine disasters. On the 31st of JAN
uary, in the same southeast gale which
caused the loss of seven lives at Man.
4 H.
houses into Sheepshead bay, the Metrop-
| oils, bound to Para, went ashore on
Carrituck beach, on the North Carolina
coast, and about twenty miles north of
the scene of the wreck of the ill-fated
Huron. Ninety-one lives were lost.
Murder or manslaughter, however, are
the only words properly descriptive of
the loss of fifteen lives by the explosion
OF the Adelphi's boilers on the 28th of
September, near Gregory's point, in
Long Island sound. On the inquest it
was shown that the boiler needed patch
ing within month after its inspection,
and that it exploded within month
after the repairs. The iron of the boiler
was only one-half the reported thickness,
and near the rupture it was actually
only one-thirty- of an inch thick.
Twenty lives were lost by the COLI.
sion on December l, between the Missis-
sippi river steamers Cotton Valley and
Charles Morgan, and thirty six by the
laundering on December 10, Of the
Emily B. Souder, on her trip from New
York city to Kingston, Jamaica.
A shocking disaster, which cannot be
called an accident, was the collision on
October 8, of an excursion train on the
Old Colony railroad with freight train
which was being switched. Twenty-Five
persons were killed and 120 were wound
ed. The inquest found conductors Of
both trains and the engineer of one,
guilty of negligence; and as one conduc-
tor testified that he was switching his
train because he supposed the excur-
sion train had passed, and when he saw
it approaching, sent out no signals be-
canse he supposed the engineer had
done so, he was held and indicted, but
has not yet been punished for man.
slaughter. The accident is estimated
TO ,st the railroad company 1926, 600.
Another engineer employed by the
Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and st. Louis
company, whose watch was slow, but
who supposed" he had time to go on,
killed fifteen persons by dashipg his
train into another on August 7.
The list OF railroad accidents may be
closed by the breaking under an ex.
cursion train of the bridge over the
Pennington river, on the line of the
Connecticut Western railroad. This
occurred on January 16, and it is moi
yet certain whether the bridge broke be
cause it was not originally strong enough
or because it had been suffered to decay
or whether the accident was not caused