The owner of the relieving vessel should have the right of being recouped to the full extent of the loss incurred by delay and service—though many would never accept it; and a ship’s insurance should never be vitiated by its calling at a port on a matter of any such necessity as landing a shipwrecked crew or obtaining provisions. It is certain [pg 263]that we should do all that is possible to reduce that annual list of ships whose only record is “Not since heard of.”
A successful mail-steamer passage or quick run, the first clipper from China with the season’s tea, make not only a certain stir in a pretty wide circle, but represent a considerable increase of actual wealth. The despairing cry of those few poor seamen—who, in their sinking craft, or who, perishing from hunger or thirst, see fading away on the distant horizon the white royals of some lofty ship which they had watched with such agonising alternation of hope and despair—is heard by God alone.
THE “NORTHFLEET.”
The wreck of the Northfleet, and loss of life to over 300 souls, on January 22nd, 1873, will illustrate some of the above remarks.[80] The Northfleet was a fine old ship of 940 tons, built at Northfleet, near Gravesend, and so named. After various vicissitudes in the service of Dent’s China and other lines, she had become the property of Messrs. John Patton and Co., of Liverpool and London, and was at the time of which we are about to speak chartered by the contractors of the Tasmanian Line Railway to convey 350 labourers and a few women and children to Hobart Town. The vessel left the East India Docks on Friday, the 17th December, 1872, with a living freight of about 400 persons. The cargo consisted principally of railway material. At the very last moment of leaving the docks, her commander for the previous five years, Captain Oates, was subpoenaed by a Treasury warrant to attend the Tichborne trial, and the command was given to his chief officer, Mr. Knowles. He was allowed to take on board the lady to whom he had been married about a month.
After leaving Gravesend the Northfleet encountered very stormy weather, and Captain Knowles felt it prudent to anchor under the North Foreland, where the vessel remained until the following Tuesday, when, the weather having moderated, she sailed down Channel, and was reported at Lloyd’s as having passed Deal, “All well” being the signal. On the Wednesday, at sunset, she came to an anchor off Dungeness, about two miles from shore, in eleven fathoms of water. She was then almost opposite the coastguard station. About ten o’clock the ship was taut and comfortable for the night; almost all the passengers had turned in, and none but the usual officers and men of the watch were on deck. Just as the bells were striking the half-hour past ten the watch observed a large steamer, outward-bound, coming directly towards them. She appeared to be going at full speed, and the shouts of the men on watch who called upon her to alter her course roused Captain Knowles, who was on the after deck. But in another moment the steamer came on to the Northfleet, striking her broadside almost amidships, making a breach in her timbers beneath the water-line, and crushing the massive timbers traversing the main deck.
“’Midst the thick darkness, Death,
The dread, inexorable monarch, stalked;
And, lo! his icy breath
Encircled the devoted barque, where talked,