Pride of Mayfield Star Lines Beached in Devastating Storm (short story)

Pride of Mayfield Star Lines Beached in Devastating Storm was the first short story and third release exclusively published on the North West Historical Society website on 4 May 2011 by the BBC and Punchdrunk to coincide with the immersive experience The Crash of the Elysium. This short story was another part of a range of fiction published on tie-in websites as part of the viral marketing for the experience, by a fictional transcription of an article reporting on the Elysiums crash on 17 July 1888. The faux newspaper also appeared to recycle genuine articles from newspapers of the era.
== Plot ==
=== Transcription ===
On their website, the North West Historical Society provides a transcription of an article about the crash of the Elysium from the 18 July 1888 issue of The Manchester Guardian. The Elysium was reported to have beached herself "on rocks one half mile away from the extremities of the South Coast" and that her crew went mysteriously missing. Curiously, no storm warning had been issued in that sector and the weather was known to have been calm.
The Elysium had been transporting a confidential cargo under government warrant and when asked about it, Whitehall refused to comment. However, crew records left at Mortimer House suggested that the cargo was some sort of statue, and several eye witnesses claimed to see an angelic woman emerge from the wreckage, although officials dismissed the claims as "wild fancy".
=== Pride of Mayfield Star Lines Beached in Devastating Storm. All Hands Lost at Sea as the Elysium Crashes ===
However, the actual article was at odds with the transcription, as it instead told the same story yet gave a different explanation for the Elysiums crash; in the article, the Elysium had not been reported as transporting any confidential cargo, and was instead was crashed due to a force 12 storm, on the Beaufort scale, with winds reaching up to ninety knots.
=== Other articles ===
# 	Title 	Summary
1 	Pride of Mayfield Star Lines Beached in Devastating Storm.All Hands Lost at Sea as the Elysium Crashes	see above
2 	Inquest on Mr. Mandeville. 	to be added
3 	Shocking Wife Murder. 	to be added
4 	End of the Match Girl's Strike. 	to be added
5 	A Fishing Boat Run Down. Two Lives Lost. 	to be added
6 	Summary of News 	to be added
7 	Foreign 	to be added
8 	The Vatican and African Slavery 	to be added
9 	Commercial Intelligence 	to be added
10	The Parnell Commission Bill 	to be added
11	The Situation in Zululand 	to be added
12	Corruption Among Public Bodies 	to be added
13	Foreign Telegrams 	to be added
14	(Reuters Telegrams) 	to be added
15	The State of Zululand 	to be added
16	Germany and Russia 	to be added
17	France 	to be added
18	Commercial Intelligence 	to be added
19	The American Cotton Markets 	to be added
20	The American Cotton Crop. 	to be added
21	The Egyptian Cotton Crop. 	to be added
== Characters ==
=== Referenced only ===
(In order of appearance)
* Captain T. A. Solomon
* The Princess Helena
* Mr John Mandeville
* Mr Rice
* Mrs Mandeville
* Mr William O'Brien, M.P.
* Mr Thomas Condon, M.P.
* The Macdermot, Q.C.
* Mr T. Harrington
* Dr Moorhead
* Mr Ridley
* Alfred Webb
more to be added
== Worldbuilding ==
* The Elysium was a commercial steamer built by Mayfield Star Lines.
* The Elysiums cargo also included valuable metals, such as gold ingots, as well as industrial machine parts for the cotton trade.
** The gold ingots were worth over £1000.
* Captain T. A. Solomon is the Elysiums skipper, and he, with the rest of the eight man crew, were reported missing.
** They were reported to the coastguard's office in the early hours of the morning.
* The salvage rights were contested by several local agencies.
* The Elysium was launched in Manchester 1887 by the Princess Helena.
* The Elysium had over thirty successful voyages.
* There have been 18083 issues of The Manchester Guardian by 18 July 1888.
* 18 July is a Wednesday.
* The newspaper costs 5s 6d every quarter or a penny per issue.
== Notes ==
* This faux newspaper appears to have been compiled from various old news stories.
* This faux newspaper seems to have been mistaken for a genuine newspaper by the Conrad First archive of the works of .The Manchester Guardian (Manchester, UK) at conradfirst.net via the Wayback Machine
* The imprisonment of William O'Brien and John Mandeville (the latter of which later died) was a real incident that occurred at Tullamore Gaol in the 1880s, as they had been taken as "political prisoners".John Mandeville and the Irish Crimes Act of 1887 jstor.org via the Wayback MachineThe famous suit of ‘Tullamore Tweed’: a story from the Land War of the 1880s by Maurice Egan on offalyhistoryblog.wordpress.com via the Wayback Machine
== Continuity ==
* The steamer Elysium and its crash plays pivotal role in the marketing and tie-in stories for STAGE: The Crash of the Elysium, however ironically, doesn't play a large role in the immersive experience itself as another Elysium, a spaceship, took narrative precedence.
* Captain T. A. Solomon shares a name with Captain T. Solomon who appeared in STAGE: The Crash of the Elysium.
== External links ==
== Footnotes ==
Category:North West Historical Society sources
Category:Stories set in England
Category:2011 short stories
Category:Weeping Angel short stories