The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-09-09
LOSSES AT SEA.
Friehtful Ocean Disasters In Early
Steamship Days.
The Names OF Some OF the Unfortunates
That DISAPPEARED with Hundreds
Of Human Beings On
Board.

From 1883. the time when transatlan-
tic steamship traffic was esta ablished,
till 1879 there were IA steamers of all
classes lost. says Prot. Dyer in the Scot
tish Review. OF these twenty-four
never reached the ports for which they
sailed, their fates being unknown; ten
were burned at sea, eight were sunk in
collisions, three were sunk by ice and
the others were stranded or lost from
various causes Many of these were
small, but some were of considerable
size and their loss caused much pub
lie feeling. The first which disap-
peared was the President, which was
never heard of after she sailed. in 1s41.
A Cunard steamer, the Columbia, was
wrecked by running ashore in 1843, but
it is somewhat remarkable that this
was the only Atlantic steamer lost In
thirteen years after the disappearance
Of the President, fact which speaks
volumes for the quality Of the work
manship Of the shipbuilders and engr
neers and the skill and care Of the nav
igators. In 1854 the City of Glasgow,
with 480 souls on board, was never seen
or heard of after she had sailed, and in
the same year the Arctic, of the Collins
line, was sunk by collision and 562
persons perished. and two years later
another of the same line disappeared
with 1s6 persons on board The Austria,
of the Ha1nbrrg- g-American line, was
burned at sea in 1858, with loss Of All
lives.
Some Of the most striking losses in
the following years were the city of
Boston of the Inman line, which disap-
peared in 1870 with upward of 200 per-
sons on board; the Atlantic of the
White Star line, which ran ashore in
1878, causing the loss of $50 lives; the
Vile du Havre of the French line,
which was sunk by collision in the
English channel and $50 persons
drowned; the State of Florida, sunk by
collision with sailing ship, and the
Cunard liner Oregon by the same cause
with coal schooner. Statistics show
q great decrease in the number of acci-
dents and losses during what may be
called the modern period steamships as
compared with the earlier, and espe-
cially with the transition period from
sailing vessels to steamships. The rec
ord for the year 1890 was of the most
kind, for, notwithstanding
all the risks involved, we find that
there were nearly 1900 trips made from
New York alone to various European
ports, and that about 200,0 cabin pas
sengers were carried, in addition to
S7S, 900 emigrants, all without any acci-
dent.
1t is an interesting fact to note that
In the large lines of steamers the aver
age safety of the sailors life is high.
The late Thomas Gray stated, for in
stance, that in the Union line to the
cape he found that only one passenger
had died in twenty years, and that
four seamen died in three years. In
the Peninsular and Oriental only one
seaman had died in one year in the
forty vessels of the line, and during
three years not single passenger had
been lost; the Inman liners had lost no
out of million, and only
eleven seamen had died in three years,
and the Cunard liners had no passen-
gers lost in three years and only nine
seamen dead.