Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1884-09-08
Mfsrrllanpnns
Disasters at Sea.
The LOSSES ON THE ATLANTIC IN FORTY
YEARS.

l.
| Human nature can be subjected to no
more agonizing suspense than that endur-
| ed by relatives and friends who anxiously
await the arrival of an overdue ship, on
board of which some one dear to them has
taken passage from a distant part. On the
18th of March, 184l, the President-one
of the finest passenger steamers OF her
time-left New York for Liverpool with
many passengers on board, Three or four
days after her departure she encountered
terrific storm not far to the south OF
Cape Race. and was seen by French sail
! ing vessel to enter thick cloud or rain
storm, which brooded upon the face OF the
deep and obscured the heavily-laboring
vessel from view. In half an hour or so
the cloud lifted. but no President met the
anxious eyes of the gazers, who, in the
phrase OF the French mariners, 'interro-
| gated the horizon" in search OF the miss
| ing object. There was no possibility of
her having run into an iceberg or come
into collision with another ship; but
against her name in the underwriters
books were inscribed those melancholy
words which, we are told, ought never to
be employed in connection with we'll
built and well-manded craft of any kind,
'.foundered at sea-" No trace of her ex-
istence was ever found except few spars
and part of boat believed to have be-
longed to her, which were washed ashore
after some weeks upon the coast of North
Wales. Among many other passengers
OF note whom she carried were included
Tyrone Power, the well known and
universally popular Irish comedian,
and Lord Fitzroy Charles George
Lennox, second son of the late,
and brother of the present duke of Rich
mond. Lord Fitzroy Lennox was an
officer in the guards, and was on his way
home from Canada in the expectation of
passing his twenty first birthday on the
following 18th OF June with his attached
parents He was his mothers favorite
son, and was named after Fitzroy Somer-
set, subsequently Lord Raglan, who has
has been his fathers friend and fellow
soldier on the Duke Of Wellington's staff
during the Peninsular war. There are
many still living and among them none
tells the story with more feeling than the
venerable and much respected earl of
of Stafford-who well remembered the
long protracted agony of hope and sus-
pense which the Duchess of Richmond
was doomed to endure, Some of those,
indeed, who knew her best, and were
acquainted with the singular depth and
warmth of her affections, held the opinion
that to her dying hour the bereaved moth.
er refused to give up all hope that she
might once again be blessed with the sight
of her lost son. The hope was not des-
tined to be realized but among the
mourners who year after year awaited
that message from the sea" which was
never to be received, the late Duchess of
Richmond will always occupy foremost
place.
Steam voyages backward and forward
across the Atlantic have latterly been per-
formed with such marvellous safety. and in
some cases with such astonishing rapidity
that the present generation of residents in
the old and new worlds are far less pre-
pared than their predecessors for the loss
of passenger steamer at sea. Yet the
records of that greatest highway of mari
| time nations, the North Atlantic ocean,
proclaim that during the first thirty years
of steam navigation voyages were very
far indeed from being as safe as is now
the case. Thus we learn from the Nauti-
cal Gazette of New York that from the
beginning of lS4l to the end of 1873 no
fewer than forty-eight Atlantic steamers
persisted at sea. the President being the
first and the Sille du Ilavre being the last
victim During these three-and thirty
years the Cunard company lost the Africa
and the Tripoli, but in each case without
the sacrifice of a life or letter while be-
tween 1851 and 1873 the Inman line lost
I Gix tho rDnla pnhnlv hoiner hot
of the City of Boston, whose fate is still a
mystery. The Allan line. again, which
commenced in 1852. was so unfortunate as
to lose seven vessels before 1874. The
Collins line. built and owned in the United
States, ran four vessels between 1852 and
1857, of which they lost two. The German
companies of Hamburg and Bremen. es-
tablished in 1855, had lost four vessels be-
fore 1874; the National line, one; the
Guon. established in 1868, one; the An
Choir, one; and the White Star line, estab-
lished in 1871, has also lost one, through
the fault of her captain. Twelve steam
ers belonging to smaller companies have
likewise met their dooms on the
bosterous Atlantic; while of the French
companies the Messageries Martimes,
with sixty steamers, had in 1884
lost fourteen vessels during its first
twenty-one years of existence, and the
Compagnie Translautique lost two, the
Darien and the Villa du Havre, the Royal
Mail with which the Compagnie Trans
lantique is in competition, lost fifteen
ships during the first thirty-two years.
ut has been computed" adds, however.
the National Gazette of New York, THAT
upward of 10000 voyages were made
across the Atlantic between 1910 and
1874 by these steamship lines" Among
the disasters to which we have referred
none was more calamitous than those
which overlook the Allan liner Hungarian,
wrecked off the coast of Nova Scotia on
the night of Feb. 10 and 20, 1860, with
more than 200 souls on board, and the
White Star steamer Atlantic, which struck
a rock off the same iron bound coast on
April Is, 1873, carrying at the time more
than 1000 souls, of whom 442, including
Captain Williams, were saved, and SOS
were lost. Many of her hapless human
freight who had climbed into the rigging
persisted from cold and hunger. and the
captain, upon whom the chief blame was
laid, underwent sentence OF suspension
for two years We have said enough to