Meantime the pumps were set to work, but with little or no effect, the water pouring in through the opening in the ship’s side. The scene on deck was frightful. Many of the passengers were in their night-dresses; others had only such scanty clothing as they could secure on quitting their berths. Children were screaming for their parents, and parents searching in vain for their children; husbands and wives were hopelessly separated. The horror was increased by the darkness of night. The captain’s wife was placed with other women in the long-boat, under the charge of the boatswain; but the tackle being too suddenly set adrift, the boat was stove in.
WRECK OF THE “NORTHFLEET.”
By this time the City of London steam-tug, having perceived the signals of distress, reached the spot, and succeeded in rescuing nearly the whole of the occupants of the boat, as well as several others of the passengers and crew, to the number of thirty-four. She remained cruising about the spot till early next morning, picking up such of the passengers as could get clear of the wreck, and in the last hope, which proved vain, of rendering assistance to those who might have floated on fragments of the ship after she settled down. The Kingsdown lugger Mary was likewise attracted by the signals of distress, and succeeded in rescuing thirty passengers. The London pilot-cutter No. 3, and the Princess, stationed at [pg 266]Dover, also got to the spot, and succeeded in rescuing twenty-one, ten of them from the rigging. The total number thus rescued was eighty-five persons.
The ship went down about three-quarters of an hour after she was struck, the captain remaining at his post till she sank. One of the survivors states that he was standing close to the captain when she went down. The former managed to lay hold of some floating plank, and was borne to the surface. The captain, however, was not again seen. The pilot and ten others had taken to the mizen-mast, from which they were rescued. The whole of the officers perished.
It must seem remarkable that while the Northfleet showed lights and other signals of distress within two miles of shore during twenty minutes or half an hour no notice was taken of them. When a ship is in difficulties in the night, it is usual for her either to fire guns or to exhibit a flare of light. But here, even the vessels close at hand thought that the ship was only signalling for a pilot; and at the time there were nearly a hundred vessels at anchor in the roadstead, with their lights burning brilliantly. Those on board the three ships nearest the wreck would have instantly sent help had they imagined there was a vessel in distress, and they could have got to the ship in a few minutes, for, though the night was dark and squally, it was clear at intervals, and any boat could live, the sea not being rough. It appears that the Corona, an Australian clipper, was lying at anchor within 300 yards of the Northfleet when the disaster occurred, but neither the terrible shock of the collision, the subsequent cries for aid, nor the rockets continuously fired from the deck of the sinking ship, could arouse the man who was the only watch on deck to call up either his comrades or the officers of his ship. Various reports were at first current as to the name of the vessel which ran the Northfleet down, and which passed straight on her way, without taking any heed of the disaster she had caused, though it must have been clearly known on board of her, if not—it is to be hoped—to the full extent of the calamity. Suspicion attached to the Murillo, a Spanish steamer, bound for Lisbon from Antwerp. The Murillo arrived at Cadiz on the evening of Thursday, the 30th, having stopped at Belem, the entrance to the port of Lisbon, on the day before, and having then been warned by a telegram to go on to Cadiz without landing her Lisbon cargo. Upon her arrival at Cadiz an official inquiry was commenced, at the instance of the British Consul. From the report of Mr. Macpherson, Lloyd’s agent at Cadiz, it appeared that her starboard bow had been newly painted black and red to the water line, and her port bow showed marks of a slight indentation near the anchor davit. It was stated, however, on behalf of her owners, that the painting was done in London or Antwerp, before she started on her present journey, and that the indentation had been made on entering the port of Havre two years before. An inquiry was instituted in the Spanish Courts, and the committee appointed for that purpose declared that the Murillo was not the vessel which ran down the Northfleet. The Murillo was therefore released. But some time afterwards justice was avenged.
The official report of the inquiry made—at the instigation of the English Government—by Mr. Daniel Maude, stipendiary magistrate, assisted by Captains Harris and Hight acting as assessors, stated that there was no doubt that the ship which came into collision with the Northfleet was the Spanish iron screw-steamer Murillo, trading between London [pg 267]and Cadiz, which left London on the 12th of January, proceeded to Antwerp, and, after leaving that port, arrived off Dungeness on the night of January 22nd. The Northfleet was anchored in an apparently most safe position, a mile and a half or more inside the usual fair course for vessels outward-bound. The Murillo came down inside the Northfleet, and struck her nearly amidships. It would appear, both from observation on board the Northfleet and also from the evidence given by the chief engineer of the Murillo, that the latter had slackened her speed some little time before the collision, or probably both ships would have sunk. There is no doubt the shock was a slight one; but the sharp stem of the iron steamer having struck the weakest part of the wooden ship will account for the mischief done. The master of the Murillo, in his log, stated that the reason for not laying by to inquire as to the injury sustained by the shock was that a boat had immediately left the ship and examined the damage, and that the boat and crew having returned again, he concluded nothing of moment had happened. The Court was satisfied that no such incident had occurred, nor was it mentioned by the witnesses who had previously been examined by the Court. The survivors of the collision were unanimously of opinion that if the Murillo had lain by, the whole of the Northfleet people could have been saved. They thoroughly believed that the Murillo steamed away, and left them to perish, in defiance of their signals, rockets, blue lights, and the shouts and screams of the whole ship’s company, which must have been noticed. On the other hand, it appears that Captain Knowles did not apprehend immediately the damage his ship had suffered, and that no rockets were fired for a quarter of an hour after the collision. During this time the Murillo was steaming away at half-speed, and was probably two miles off. Upon this evidence the Court felt they ought not to impute to the captain of the Murillo the full apparent brutality of his offence in not staying by the injured ship. The Court added a strong expression of opinion that no master of a ship should be allowed to take his wife to sea with him.
On Friday, the 7th of May, 1875, one of those sad events occurred which show the imperfection of many of the most carefully-devised schemes for life-saving at sea. Although it occurred in British waters, neither the ship nor the larger part of the passengers were British subjects. The Schiller was a fine iron steamship of 3,600 tons, belonging to the Eagle line of Hamburg; she was nearly a new vessel, having been built at Glasgow in 1873. She left New York on the 27th of April, having on board at the time 264 passengers, while the officers and crew numbered 120 souls. All went well till the 7th of May, on which day she was due at Plymouth, when, in the afternoon, a fog set in; nevertheless, the vessel was kept at full speed until 8.30 p.m., when the density of the fog having greatly increased, she was put at half-speed, and an hour after she struck on the Retarrier Rocks, off the Scilly Islands, and within two-thirds of a mile of the lighthouse on the Bishop’s Rock. Although going at slow speed at the time, and although the engines were immediately reversed, the unyielding rocks had done their work: the ship was immovable, and immediately filled. All was at once confusion, and a panic ensued, cries of terror rising from every lip. Orders were given by the captain to lower the boats, and until he was himself washed off the bridge, at about 4 a.m., and drowned, he did his best to preserve some order, even threatening the frantic crowd with his pistol. [pg 268]All the boats, however, except two, were swept away by the sea before they could be lowered, many perishing with them, and one was crushed by the funnel falling on it. The ship held together for several hours, and had there been any means of making their hopeless condition known at St. Mary’s, the chief of the Scilly Islands, a steamer, and a first-class lifeboat[82] belonging to the National Lifeboat Institution, might have arrived in time to save a large number of lives. Such, however, was not to be, and when the morning dawned all that remained of the crew and passengers who, a few hours before, had been looking forward to happy meetings in the Fatherland with fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and friends at home, were those who had succeeded in mounting the rigging of the fore and main masts, and a few others in the half-swamped boat, the only one which had been safely lowered. The women and children who had crowded the deck-houses and saloon, and the male passengers and those of the crew who were on the upper deck or the bridge, had perished. Alarm-guns were fired and signal lights thrown up continually, until the seas breaking over the ship prevented such efforts attracting attention; and some of the former were heard on the islands, but as steamers from America had been in the habit of firing guns to mark their arrival off the islands, they were not supposed to be danger signals. It is said, however, that at St. Agnes, the nearest island to the wreck, the guns were believed to be from a vessel in distress, but the fog was so thick that boats were afraid to venture out.
THE SCILLY ISLANDS.