The purser (Mr. Lewis) was one of the best men that ever walked the earth. He did justice to passengers and owners, and at the time when we ran short of food, I knew him, with all the ship’s stores at his command, to abstain from dinner, that the children of the intermediate and steerage passengers might in turn receive his share of the slender stock of dainties left to us on board. He has gone where stewards cease from troubling!
But why continue these memorials of the dead? We call on the names of the good and brave men in vain. Saddest of all sad stories is that which I have attempted to tell. The cheek of the boldest grows pale as he reads it, and my pen falls from my fingers as the old familiar faces rise before me.
THE PRESS ON THE CATASTROPHE.
The Times, after some preliminary observations on the gale of Wednesday, contents itself with a general record of the calamity:—
‘The “Royal Charter” was built about four years ago; she was of 2,719 tons register, and 200 horse power. Her owners were Messrs. Gibb, Brights, and Co., of Liverpool. She was an iron vessel, worked by a screw. On the 26th of August last she sailed from Melbourne, having on board 388 passengers, and a crew, including officers, of 112 persons. She accomplished her passage in two months as near as may be. On Monday morning she passed Queenstown, and thirteen of the passengers landed in a pilot-boat. The next day the “Royal Charter” took on board from a steam-tug eleven riggers who had been assisting in working a ship to Cardiff. Thus, at the time of the calamity there were on board 498 persons, and of these only 39 were saved. The ship, as we are informed, had on board but a small cargo, mainly of wool and skins. A more important item of her freight was gold and specie, which at the lowest estimate is put at 500,000l. On Tuesday evening there was blowing from the E.N.E. a violent gale, which fell with full force on the ill-fated ship. She arrived off Point Lynas at six o’clock in the evening of Tuesday, and for several hours Captain Taylor continued throwing up signal rockets, in the hope of attracting the attention of a pilot. None made his appearance. The gale increased in violence; the ship was making leeway, and drifting gradually towards the beach. It was pitch dark; no help was at hand. The captain let go both anchors, but the gale had now increased to a hurricane, and had lashed the sea up to madness. The chains parted, and, notwithstanding that the engines were worked at their full power, the “Royal Charter” continued to drift towards the shore. At three A.M. she struck the rocks in four fathoms of water. The passengers till this moment had no idea of the imminence of their peril. The masts and rigging were cut adrift, but this gave no relief. The ship continued to grind and dash upon the rocks. The screw became foul with the drift spars and rigging, and ceased to act. The consequence was, that the ship was thrown broadside on to the rocks, and now the terror began. The officers of the ship either hoped against hope, or endeavoured to alleviate the agony of the passengers by assuring them there was no immediate danger. A Portuguese sailor, Joseph Rogers—his name deserves to be recorded—volunteered to convey a rope on shore through the heavy surf, and succeeded in his attempt. Had time been given no doubt every person on board could now have been safely conveyed on shore; but it was fated that the end should be otherwise. One tremendous wave came after another, playing with the “Royal Charter” like a toy, and swinging her about on the rocks. She divided amidships, and wellnigh all on board were swept into the furious sea. A few minutes afterwards she also parted at the forehatch, and then there was an end. Those who were not killed by the sea were killed by the breaking up of the ship. In the course of a very few moments the work was done, and four hundred and fifty-nine persons were numbered among the dead. It was about seven A.M. on Wednesday that she broke up.
‘It is said by those who have visited the scene of the calamity that never was destruction more complete. The ironwork of the vessel is in mere shreds; the woodwork is in chips. The coast and the fields above the cliffs are strewn with fragments of the cargo and of the bedding and clothing. In the words of one of our reports, “A more complete annihilation of a noble vessel never occurred on our coast.” Worse still, the rocks are covered with corpses of men and women frightfully mutilated, and strewn with the sovereigns which the poor creatures had gone so far to seek, and which were now torn from them in so pitiful a way. Of course, as is usual in all such cases, the reasons given for the occurrence of the calamity are various. In one account we see it attributed to the order given before midnight to veer out on the starboard cable. This, as it is said, brought too much strain upon the port cable, which parted, and then the other parted also, and then the ship drifted ashore. Others tell us that if the screw had not been fouled by the drift rigging and spars, the “Royal Charter” might have been saved. These, however, could have been but secondary and minor causes. The origin of the calamity seems to have been that in a wild night, with a gale blowing that soon became a hurricane, the ship was brought up dangerously near a lee shore. Let it be remembered, however, that Captain Taylor was the last man seen alive on board.’
The Morning Herald, after chronicling the disaster, concludes with this valuable paragraph:—
‘This greatest and most terrible of the results of the late hurricane—for it cannot be otherwise described—will argue strongly either on behalf of those who demand ports of departure less channel-bound than Liverpool, or for those who urge the great necessity for a national system of providing life-boats which shall give, even in such wild bays as this where the “Royal Charter” went to pieces, a chance to some of the passengers of ill-fated ships that may be driven into them in such a storm as that of Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. Unfortunately the outcry on these subjects rises only while the mind of the public is resting on such a disaster as that which has just befallen the “Royal Charter,” or at a time when the whole country is deploring such a series of wrecks as those which have strewn our coasts within the last three days. The life-boat question should certainly not be left to private benevolence, or to the efforts of companies. Governments have gone too far in their neglect of such subjects or their refusal to interfere, and we are certain that there is no other mode of using the public money which would meet with more hearty popular assent than that which would devote it to the provision of life-boats and harbours of refuge.’
The colony may study these words with equal advantage to ourselves.
The Daily News is none the less able on the subject, because for once disposed to be smart. Does “Singleton Fontenoy” speak in the following?—