Morning journal and courier., 1880-12-11
The Voyage of the Victoria.

Chief Officer James Neish and Purser Burnside gave to a World reporter the following account of the twenty-five | days voyage of the Victoria: 'We
 passed Gravesend from London on the 14th
 Besides ouB passengers we had on board Blue Gown and two breeding mares. It was at first proposed to build box stall on deck for the horse, but it was finally decided to put 1t down on No. deck, where comfortable quar- ters were fitted up. The seas we encountered
 in the Channel would certainly have swept deck-stall away. Westerly winds with very heavy squalls of nights met us until Thanks giving day. On some of the days we made no more than one hundred miles, but we lost nothing, and all were well on board. About nine o'clock on the night of the 25th, when the weather had moderated
 little, the chief officer, who was on the bridge,
 noticed that the ship did not keep the course and sharply reprimanded the man at the
 wheel It soon discovered that the trouble was with the rudder, and lantern lowered over the stern showed that the rud- der had parted on the water line about foot
 below the spur. The sheetiron plates had
 been torn and the lower half of the rudder
 resting on the lower pivot in position,
 but beyond control. We set the fore and aft
 sails and managed to keep on our course.
 Backing the ship would;probably have broken our propeller. Our last observation, taken at noon on that day, put us in lat. AZ 56' north, long. 450 2O' west, about fifteen hun dred miles from this port. We set to work to rig drag to give us some control of the steamer and got it overheard on the morn ing of the 27th, but 1t did not seem to work.
 We played cut more hawser and then brought the drag up close to the vessel, and by shift ing the lines to 1t from one quarter to anoth- CT did get some result About six o'clock on the evening of the 18th, after we had pot tered for two days with the drag, we sighted the Volmer and signalled her. The mate of the Volmer came on board and Captain Mur- ray went back with him, the two vessels be- ing half mile apart, with only small job ble of sea on. We had a 13-inch and a 15- inch hawser, and the Volmer a chain cable, and we made the vessels fast about six hundred feet apart We parted the cable about $40 a. m., and had to get them on board again. We made them fast to the port quarter, and then we started out. We went ahead because we only wanted drag to keep us on our course. They steered, and if we went of the controlling vessel forced us into the course again. We steamed up, but the Volmer only steamed enough to pre- vent her from becoming too much of dead weight We had a very good run after that We were lucky in freeing the Volmer, for we did not see another craft of any kind until we arrived off Sandy Hook The weather continued to be of the worst sort, snow squalls coming up on several occasions and the blows being very heavy at night especially. One of our cables parted on the 1st and delayed six hours. The passengers were not in the least alarmed. Three children were born in the steerage and all are well, thank you. Blue Gown died of exhaustion early on the morning of the 25th. He got to be very fractious, and plunged and reared when any one went into his stall. The motion of the ship increased his irritation and he fairly worried himself to death. There were two men in charge of him, and Hewitt, the groom, who had been with the horse for several years, sat down and had good cry when he found that the racer was dead. The sailors rigged up a tackle and lifted the body out of the hold and over the bulwarks and let it drop into the sea- Both the mares are all right, though one of them slipped foal a few days after Blue Gowns death, and the foal of course died.