The Wreck of the "Royal Charter" / Compiled from Authentic Sources, with Some Original Matter

by Frank Fowler

‘There is a true savour of sea-salt in the grim irony of that couplet in one of Dibdin’s sea-songs, where Jack is contrasting the freedom and security of life aboard ship with the continual jeopardy to which landsmen who walk about streets and dwell in houses are exposed:—

“While you and I, Bill, on the deck

Are comfortably lying,

My eyes! what tiles and chimbly pots

Around their heads are flying!”

‘The recklessness of temperament which sends a lad to sea, and which, hardened and confirmed by conflict with the elements, laughs at real danger, and yet is apt to shrink with a sort of dismayed disgust from the vulgar inconveniences of artificial existence, is happily and humorously expressed. The dweller in cities, on the other hand, with all his habitual scepticism and indifference, who peeps at the moon as at a raree show, and takes a return ticket to go and gape at an eclipse from some distant hill in the country—your acute, hard-headed, practical man on Change, in the Law-court, in the Club, stares and marvels like a mere baby when he is brought face to face with the terror and mystery of Nature in any of her sublimer moods. A fashionable public at Brighton running out to see the effects of a gale of wind upon real “water” is surely as sorry and ludicrous a combination as the genius of mockery can devise for the laughter of the stars. Accidents and offences, fires and murders, burglaries and poisonings, are as dull and stale as taxation, or as births, deaths, and marriages; they are the “useful and the beautiful” of well-regulated society; and who but a dry statistical philanthropist reads the wreck-list, or ponders the significance of the annual catalogue of casualties among merchantmen and coasters? It is only when the great meteorological staple of English conversation derives a certain freshness and novelty from a sudden attack of winter upon the rear of autumn, or when a hurricane has torn up a tree in the park and blown an old woman into the river or a child into the canal, that our inland world begins to feel that the universe is not absolutely done to order yet.

‘Last Tuesday night, when town and country were well abed, and let us hope not without thankfulness of heart, nor without having taken thought of “all those who travel by land or sea;”—when even the rancid haunts of vice in London were emptying, and the homeless were slinking off to snatch forgetfulness somewhere out of reach of wind and rain:—in the dead hour of a desolate night, desolate enough among street lamps flickering in a clammy fog, more desolate still when a sickly moon peered dimly through a drift of ragged cloud, and the wind howled and moaned with a roar of rage and anguish—in that desolate night and that dead hour one of those terrible calamities which are remembered for centuries was hurrying near five hundred of our fellow-creatures to sudden death at sea, after a safe and prosperous voyage of twelve thousand miles, within six hours of port, and within stonethrow of the long-wished-for land. Heartrending and disastrous is the shipping intelligence of this week all round our coasts, but the wreck of the “Royal Charter” will be a melancholy fireside tale among our children’s children. If, indeed, what is called “progress” be truly defined as an increasing dominion over time and space, then England, marching at the van, atones for her pre-eminence by many a hostage. We talk of bridging seas by the size and speed of our ships, but every now and then we offer up costly sacrifices to avenge our triumphs, and correct our pride.

‘It would be easy for some glib interpreters of Providence to pronounce homilies on the fate of a ship laden with the root of all evil, and of men hasting to be rich; for it is certain that the “Royal Charter” had at least 500,000l. on board, and that many of her passengers were returning from Australia with fortunes in their hands. But this catastrophe may point, we think, a safer and more serviceable moral. To mortal sight human destinies are at best a chaos, and it is not for mortal wisdom to presume to fabricate out of inexplicable chances a providential order of its own. Here, for instance, was a ship touching at Queenstown, and landing thirteen passengers, one of whom left his wife on board to pursue her voyage to Liverpool, and, as it turned out, to meet death on the way; here were ten poor riggers, just returned from working a vessel to Cardiff, taken on board from a steam-tug in the Channel, and five of them condemned to perish with a ship that had come all the way from Australia in safety. Who will presume to judge? “The one was taken and the other left.” Let us be content to moralize more humbly and humanely on the fate of our fellow-creatures. It were a miserable task, while the bodies of the poor castaway people are still awaiting Christian burial, to look about for whom to blame, when all but a score are beyond the reach of blame or praise. It is easy for us to wonder and regret that the “Royal Charter” should ever have passed on from Queenstown and sailed up the Irish Channel without a pilot in wild and threatening weather—that without a pilot, and with a northerly gale coming on, she should have passed by Holyhead, and kept hugging a dead lee shore at night along the most dangerous line of all our coast. Any one who knows that coast, or who has even glanced at a chart, cannot fail to be struck with consternation at the bare thought of such a ship as the “Royal Charter” keeping that Welsh land close on board in the worst of weather, night coming on, without a pilot, in the hope of finding one, and for the sake of saving a few hours at the close of an astonishingly rapid and successful passage.

‘How the “Royal Charter” ever had the right to get into that atrocious Dulas Bay, where the rocks stick up like jagged teeth, is a question quite as easy to ask as it is difficult to understand how the “Royal Charter” should have ventured to pass Holyhead in a gale without a pilot. From Holyhead to the point where the ship struck is all danger; and though with the wind off the land and a pilot on board the course for a ship bound to the Mersey may be in shore, was it the safe course, it may be asked, under opposite circumstances? Yet it is not to be presumed for a moment that the common signs of weather, or the rules for approaching land, were deliberately set at nought, or that the weather-glasses were not consulted, or that the tidal currents and the notorious indraught on the Welsh coast were forgotten or neglected by the lamented commander of the “Royal Charter” and his officers, none of whom, alas! remain to tell the story. From the moment when it was found that the ship could not make head against the hurricane and the indraught, and that it was impossible to make the Mersey, the fate of the ship needs no explanation. Blue lights and rockets were burnt for a pilot; but, as no one who knows Welsh pilots will be surprised to hear, no pilot appeared; and, pilot or no pilot, it was now too late. The ship was hove to, and drifting helplessly into Dulas Bay. Here she let go her anchors, “keeping her screw working to ease the cables.” One after the other the cables parted with the strain; at half-past two she struck, the tide ebbing, and with the flood she went broadside on to the shelving beach, literally split in two amidships, and was smashed to pieces on the rocks. We are guilty of no presumption in drawing one conclusion, and that is, the worse than uselessness, the absolutely fatal mischief of the so-called “auxiliary” screw. The “Royal Charter” was, it should be remembered, an iron ship of 2,749 tons, “originally intended for a sailing vessel,” but transformed into a screw steamer, “with engines of 300 horse power.” The value of these screw engines to a ship of this size and quality seems to us at least problematical; at best it could only serve her in making way across the “calm belts;” and as a set off to this exceptional service, there was the dead weight of the engines and the space they occupied, often to no purpose. Whatever may have been the use of the auxiliary screw in calms, it is too certain that in working off a lee shore it was not only not serviceable, but disastrous; it not only failed to claw the ship off, but it failed to ease the cables, and when the spars were cut away, the screw got fouled, and ceased to work. Is it absurd or unjust to suppose that had there been no auxiliary steam power in the “Royal Charter” she would never have been permitted to hug a lee shore at night in search of a pilot, with a hurricane dead on her weather bow, and strong indraught to the shore? Had she trusted to her sailing powers only, would she not have consulted her weather-glasses more anxiously, and kept well out to sea? We do not attempt to answer these questions, but we ask them deferentially, sorrowfully, and under a due sense of responsibility.

‘The “Royal Charter,” like others of her class, was probably built for speed rather than for strength; and it is no secret that these Australian clippers are severely strained by “carrying on.” It is no matter of surprise, then, that the ship “split amidships” after she struck, “letting her engines and passengers through,” and afterwards parted longitudinally “at the forehatch.” Even the “Great Eastern” would have been’ [was] ‘sorely tried by such a sea on such a shore. Let us draw a veil of pity over the horrors of that scene. The poet of “The Shipwreck,” with all his imagination, aided by all his terms of art, has not conceived anything more terrible than the sudden, complete and indiscriminate destruction of the “Royal Charter” with her four hundred and seventy souls on board, and her chests of gold—all going down together in that hungry sea, and torn to pieces by those cruel rocks. Yet even a calamity like this has its compensations; for all on board, from Captain Taylor—who by his stedfast devotedness and unalterable courage preserved discipline to the last, and died like a British seaman at his post of duty—to the poor seaman who volunteered to carry through the blinding hurricane and the foaming surf a hawser to the rocks, and the good clergyman who calmly said the last prayers for the dying, all met death unflinchingly, and in their last moments left an example to the few who survive, and to all who mourn them.’

The above is the most notable article which has appeared on this disaster. It deals with gale, ship, captain, causes, and results. Its penultimate paragraph seems to me to hit the secret of the casualty direct.

The Morning Chronicle is rather didactic than descriptive:—

‘The loss of the “Royal Charter” is an awful illustration of that solemn text, the vanity of all human expectations. It preaches the humiliating lesson which divines and moralists are ever urging with an impressiveness which must make its way to the dullest and most callous mind. When the poet or preacher of old drew his illustration of mundane instability from the perils of the sea, and bade men look how “a dark night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea, and a broken cable, a hard rock and a rough wind, dashed in pieces the fortune of a whole family,” his imagination fell far short of the fearful fact we now deplore. A noble vessel, which had sailed round the world in safety, has been totally destroyed within a few miles of its port; and nearly four hundred human beings, whose eyes had already been gladdened by a glimpse of their native land, have found a fearful death on the morning of that day whose evening should have made that land again their home....

‘We hardly know whether to note with satisfaction or sorrow that, so far as can be gathered at present, this melancholy catastrophe was not the result of negligence and overconfidence on the part of any one. Whilst it is most gratifying to think that no prudence could have averted the disaster, and that no blame attaches to the memory of a man who perished as Captain Taylor did, at his post, it is lamentable to reflect that no application of human ingenuity is able to withstand the elemental rage. Here was a large stout ship, one of the kind and size which assumed to enjoy an immunity from the power of the tempest—left to work its will on small craft and old crazy tubs—well manned, well commanded, nothing neglected that art or experience could suggest, offering as useless a resistance to the storm as the worn-out hulls in which greedy owners were wont to convey poor Irish emigrants. A blunder on the part of some one would have allowed us to cherish the idea that security is possible, and may be guaranteed, to stout material and good seamanship; but the new ship, the “Royal Charter,” completely destroyed within sight of port, with the loss of 400 lives, although it may read a useful lesson of humility, and warn men against too great an assumption of victory over natural forces, is a terrible blow to that confidence which the past immunity of ocean steam navigation had fostered.’

Thus—judicially—the Morning Post:—

‘Out at sea such a vessel as the “Royal Charter,” if well commanded, ought to be proof against any gale of wind; and in point of fact hardly any ship can pass from Australia to these shores without encountering as heavy seas in mid ocean as that which raged a few days ago so fearfully in the Irish Sea. It is only when such a ship accidentally fouls land that much danger is to be apprehended. Captain Taylor has shared the fate of his crew and passengers; and one may hesitate to criticise one who is not here to answer for his seamanship. But it seems clear that Captain Taylor knew perfectly well where he was, and that, instead of putting out to sea, there to ride out the gale of Tuesday night, he stood in for the Welsh coast, burning lights for a pilot in a sea in which no pilot, it may be assumed, could have joined him, with the whole force and scope of the Irish Sea to windward and an iron-bound coast to leeward. The result was, as a mere instinct in dynamics would suggest, that the force of wave, wind, and current was greater them the steam power of the “Royal Charter.” Captain Taylor soon found that his anxiety to keep in the most direct track to Liverpool was fraught with fatal results. The ship gradually made leeway; and when he attempted at length to put out to sea he could not. At last he threw out two anchors; but the chains of one of them broke. The ship, steaming away from the rocks, gradually neared the rocks; and at length came the first fatal crash. Then the masts and rigging were instantly cut away in a forlorn attempt to save her; but it appears that the falling rigging fouled the screw, and from that moment it ceased working. From that moment, probably, in spite of desperate exertions and words of encouragement, all hope was really abandoned. After the first thump against the rocks, the ship rebounded, only to thump again with fearful force in a few moments by the stern; for it was in the attempt to steam away from the coast, nearly head to wind, that the first crash took place. Then she was completely at the mercy of wind and wave; and as soon as the screw ceased working her position changed, and she went broadside against the rocks. Still she did not lurch. At this juncture a negro sailor volunteers to swim through the surf with a hawser, and thus to gain a communication with the shore. Lucky fellow! he was well rewarded for his heroism. He escaped the wreck first, and two others, according to the most reliable accounts, got to shore by the rope thus thrown out.

‘Then followed the last scene with appalling and unexpected rapidity. Time after time the “Royal Charter” was driven with the same heavy thump against the rocky shore; the darkness and the tempest mingled together in increasing confusion and relaxing discipline. Everything was felt and nothing was seen. The waves dashed with overwhelming force upon the ship, and the wind drowned every voice; for when the “Royal Charter” struck it was but two hours past midnight and by seven in the morning, when the sun rose, she had entirely broken up. The passengers during these successive collisions with the rocks, had huddled together in the saloon, where the chaplain was offering up a prayer. In the midst of this Captain Taylor came down to offer a few words of hope, couched in that ominous assurance that “there was no immediate danger.” But he had hardly spoken when the waves burst upon the ship with new force, and after being thus struck several times, she suddenly parted amidships, the machinery falling through, and the waves sweeping out the crew. Nearly at the same moment the fore part of the ship thus dissevered from the rest, is reported to have split longitudinally also. Then of course all perished but those few who, in a manner which most of them themselves cannot explain, found themselves on the beach. The force of the waves seems to have dashed some on shore before they knew what had happened, and before life had become extinct; while later in the morning the sea began to give up also its dead who had been tossed upon the ebb and flow. One child was thrown on the shore yet breathing, but it expired shortly afterwards. Most of the bodies washed ashore were found with sums of gold upon them, and all were placed in a field adjoining the churchyard of Moelfre for identification.

‘Such is the sad story of the loss of at least four hundred and sixty lives, of a fine ship, and of gold variously estimated between 300,000l. and 500,000l. The gold lost is again computed at seventy-nine thousand ounces; but it is hoped that the iron case which contained the treasure may yet be recovered. The ship had had a favourable and remarkably fast passage. It was supposed to be eleven days in advance of every other in its letters and information, and to anticipate the next overland mail from Australia. Probably the pride of all this contributed to the catastrophe; and the captain appears to have been resolved to make Liverpool as soon as possible after his successful passage. The scene of the wreck is in itself an ill-fated one. At Moelfre, some ten miles from Beaumaris, the wreck happened, and close to that spot the “Rothsay Castle” was also wrecked some years ago. Only one danger appears to have been experienced by the “Royal Charter” during her whole voyage from Australia to Queenstown, and that arose from proximity to an iceberg. All this seems a cruel result of so much hope, and so much apparent prosperity. All the care and watchfulness devoted to a voyage from the antipodes—all the prospects of return after long expatriation to one’s native country—all the sums hoarded through years of industry in the gold fields or in Australian farming—all the self-felicitations for a voyage thus far so favourably encountered—thus vain, thus useless, thus belied.

‘Viewing the shipwreck simply in its bearing on nautical management, we can hardly doubt that it might have been prevented; but the only utility of that reflection is now to warn other captains from hugging a Welsh shore in a gale from the North.’

The Morning Advertiser:—

‘One of those awful calamities which carry mourning and desolation to hundreds of hearths, hearts, and homes—which send a pang not only through the bosoms of bereaved relatives, but cast a gloom over every thoughtful and feeling mind, has just visited us in the wreck and total loss of a noble steamer, the “Royal Charter,” which perished with more than 400 souls, on the Welsh coast, on the night of Tuesday last. There are circumstances which add largely to the melancholy facts, so far as they are yet known of this dreadful disaster. The stately steam-ship, with her rich freight and her numerous passengers, had gallantly ploughed the waters of the broad Pacific and breasted the waves of the rude Atlantic; she had sighted the noble haven of Queenstown; and there, fondly dreaming the perils of the deep were past, her joyful passengers had voted a testimonial of gratitude to the commander of the gallant ship, who had so far safely brought them from their far port of homeward departure at the antipodes. Among these 450 passengers and crew, how many anxious hearts already in anticipation embraced expectant kindred and friends!—how many—the “battle of life” fought out successfully, and competency gained—looked for that native shore, which they were only to see with despairing eyes in their death-struggle, as the haven of a peaceful life, to be closed by a calm death among those they loved best, in the land of their birth! We can well imagine the buoyant spirits of the young, and the calmer joy of the old, at the near prospect of the happy close of their long sojourn on the wide waters. But He, in whose hands are the issues of life and death, willed otherwise. The ship left the shores of Ireland on Monday last, all well; on Tuesday a gale arose, which towards night became a tempest of surpassing violence. The doomed vessel was driven towards the Welsh coast, and there her fate was sealed. There is at present no reason to suppose that in this sad disaster any want of precaution; any undue effort to effect a speedy passage by running a dangerous course; any miscalculation of rate of sailing, deviation of compass, or other neglect or accident, contributed to the lamentable catastrophe. It seems to have been one of those calamities beyond human foresight or wisdom to avert, to which we must bow the head in silent resignation, not, however, without thoughtful consideration as to whether human means might not have mitigated the sufferings of the wrecked, or diminished the loss of life. We are as yet without sufficient data to know whether a more efficient life-boat service at this part of the coast, a supply of life-lines, coast-mortars, &c., at the principal places near Moelfra, at Beaumaris, Penmanmawr, might not have enabled us to add to the scant list of the rescued sufferers. We repeat, we are as yet without details, and write merely in presence of an overwhelming calamity, hopeful that so solemn a warning to be prepared may have its effect, while yet the grief is new, of producing an increased energy in doing all that may be done by liberality and skill to save the lives of our brave seamen, and of those who “go down into the great waters.” The steamship “Royal Charter,” the loss of which has given occasion for these remarks, was a nearly new and splendid screw steamer. She had on freight 79,000 ounces of gold, valued at 316,000l., besides a large amount of gold and valuables belonging to her 450 passengers and crew. She sailed from Melbourne on the 26th of August, with 60 cabin passengers, ten of whom are saved, and ten others, we are happy to say, are reported as having been landed at Queenstown. Of the seamen 25 survive, thus leaving nearly 400 souls, including Captain Taylor and all the officers of the ill-fated ship, sharers in her sad fate.’

The Standard touches on the event with its usual calmness of utterance:—

‘But as the approach to Liverpool was more alive with shipping, of course the most terrible of the disasters were to be expected off the coast of Wales; and there has seldom been recorded a more awful wreck than that of the “Royal Charter” in Red Wharf Bay, near Bangor. The “Royal Charter,” a very splendid vessel, left Melbourne on the 26th of August, having on board about five hundred souls, and carrying seventy-five thousand ounces of gold. The power of the vessel may be concluded from the fact that she made Cork Harbour in less than two months. At this port some ten or a dozen of the passengers had the fortune to quit her, and she proceeded on her way to Liverpool as far as the Welsh coast, where she was overtaken by the terrible storm of Wednesday morning, and utterly lost in a wild bay some seven miles to the north-west of Beaumaris, and about three miles west of Puffin Island, in Anglesea. The circumstances are surrounded with unusual suspense and terror, for the railway has been at several points washed away, the embankment thrown down, and the action of the telegraph stopped. We are, in fact, acquainted with only the details of the distressing disaster which we have presented yesterday, and present elsewhere to-day. The rapidity of the voyage had led the passengers to offer to unfortunate Captain Taylor a testimonial, and everything in the shape of danger was taken naturally to be at an end when the unfortunate ship went down in sight of her port.’