In the course of the day after her departure, when steaming at the rate of about 9 miles an hour against a stiff south-west gale, the bearings of the paddle-shafts became so hot from the excessive friction of the new machinery, that on two occasions the engines had to be stopped to cool them, in one case for two and a half hours; after which everything appeared to be in order. But at midnight of the evening of the 4th January, when the Amazon was somewhere about 110 miles west-south-west of the Scilly Islands, the watch on deck, to their dismay, discovered that a fire had broken out suddenly on the starboard side forward between the steam-chest and that portion of the deck whereon the galley stood, the flames at once rushing up the gangway in front of the foremost funnel. So sudden, indeed, was the conflagration that when the alarm bell, instantly sounded, brought the captain upon deck, it was only to witness the inevitable destruction of his ship; the force of the gale then blowing having spread the flames with such rapidity that every appliance, by means of wet swabs, buckets of water, and at last the fire pumps (for they had not been ready), proved alike utterly futile to check the progress of the fire.
The most terrible consternation and confusion now prevailed. Passengers and crew rushed on deck in the wildest dismay, while the gale which raged overhead increased their fears. To add if possible to the terrors of this awful calamity, the smoke and flames had driven the engineers from their stations, so that the machinery could not be stopped; consequently the Amazon dashed through the waves at full speed. Thus the raging fire, made more fearful by the storm, consumed everything animate and inanimate within its reach, spreading with the most alarming rapidity over the deck of the ship and extending to the cabins below, where many of the passengers were either suffocated by the smoke or consumed by the flames.
Recourse was now had to the boats: of these there were nine, including four life-boats. As too often happens in cases of emergency, the boats were neither clear nor ready for lowering. In this instance, too, the life-boats had been fitted with crutches on which their keels rested. These fittings now obstructed their clearance from the sides of the ship, and but for this fatal arrangement so serious a loss of life might have been lessened. To make matters worse, the two best and largest boats had been stowed on the top of the sponsons, which were now surrounded by the flames and could not be approached. When the mail-boat was lowered, it was immediately swamped with twenty-five persons on board, all of whom perished; the pinnace, when lowered, sheered across the sea before the people in her could unhook the foretackle, and they too were all washed out and drowned, except two men who had clung to the thwarts and were enabled to scramble back to the deck of the ship: the boat itself, which hung by the single tackle, was soon afterwards dashed to pieces against the side of the vessel. By extraordinary efforts fourteen of the crew and two of the passengers were enabled to remove from the cranes and lower in safety one of the starboard life-boats, while nineteen of the crew and six of her passengers escaped in another: these, with a young midshipman, named Vincent, who displayed great bravery and intrepidity, the chief steward, one passenger (a young lady), and two of the seamen, who had managed to lower without accident a small boat, the dingy, were the only persons saved out of the 161 who had embarked on board the Amazon only two days previously. All the others perished, including the captain, either by the flames or the waves; and, perhaps, in the melancholy annals of the sea, there is no shipwreck more appalling than that of the Amazon.
Terrible sufferings.
No writer of romance in the wildest dreams of fancy could have pictured a scene more terrible than this reality. Young Vincent, in his vivid narrative, describes two passengers rushing from their cabins enveloped in flames and falling lifeless upon deck. He speaks of a lady, with an infant in her arms, entreating some one to take care of her child, heedless of her own safety, but before assistance could be rendered perishing with her child amid the flames. Others, he says, fled from them, only to be engulfed in the ocean. One lady passenger, who had been lifted into the boat, was so terrified by the waves which dashed over the sides of the ship that she preferred death among the flames, and wildly rushed back to her destruction. Others fell through the burning decks or hatchways, and were instantly consumed, while some resigned themselves calmly to their terrible fate; when Vincent left the ship he states that “some of those who yet lived were kneeling on the deck in prayer, while others, almost in a state of nudity, were running about screaming with terror.”
Between three and four o’clock in the morning the masts of the vessel fell over her sides; the foremast on the port and the mainmast on the starboard, but the mizen still stood while the fire raged from stem to stern. One poor fellow then appeared perched on the extreme end of the jib-boom, the only living thing amidst the burning mass; but he, too, perished. About five in the morning, when the life-boat was “passing the ship in a leewardly direction,” the gunpowder in her magazines exploded, and in about twenty minutes afterwards, the mizenmast went by the board; the vessel herself then making a heavy lurch, as if eager to escape from the flames, went down, her funnels still standing, but red hot, with everything on board which the fire, in its fury, had left unconsumed.
Loss of the Demerara.
The destruction of the Amazon following so quickly upon the stranding of the Demerara at Bristol (another of the five additional vessels which the company had just launched), materially inconvenienced the directors in the fresh arrangements they had made with Government for the more expeditious delivery of the mails. They had now only the Oronoco, Magdalene, and Parana to conduct the direct service between Southampton and the isthmus of Panama; but these misfortunes appear to have stimulated the shareholders to renewed exertions. Other vessels were engaged and fresh contracts entered into for the construction of steamers of a still finer description.[279] When, at length, Government relieved the company from the condition of building wooden vessels adapted for purposes of war, and the directors themselves discovered that iron was preferable to wood and the screw a better mode of propulsion than the paddle-wheel, they produced vessels equal to most of those now engaged in Transatlantic navigation. Of late years, their average of loss, until very recently, has been comparatively small.
Additions to their fleet,
There are not now many finer steamers afloat than their Tagus and Moselle, which were launched in the year 1871 from the yard of Messrs. John Elder and Co. The former, a vessel of 2789 tons builders’ measurement and 600 horse-power, attained a mean speed of 14·878 knots per hour on the occasion of her official trial; while the Moselle, a sister ship, of about 3200 tons gross register, surpassed her, having made 14·929 knots per hour as the average of four runs over the measured mile. Equally satisfactory results have attended many of their other vessels, and not the least remarkable is the case of the Tasmanian, an iron screw-vessel they purchased from the unfortunate European and Australian Steam Navigation Company. This vessel, which was also fitted in 1871 by Messrs. John Elder and Co. with engines on the compound principle, accomplished her first voyage to St. Thomas in 338 hours (14 days, 2 hours) on a consumption of only 466 tons of coal, though she formerly consumed 1088 tons on a run of 349 hours (14 days, 13 hours).