Ships are still lost at sea in our own time, frequently as a
result of regulations and standards being ignored rather than standards being
established in the first place to ensure safe operation. When reading of seafaring
in the 19th Century, and the vast numbers of maritime disasters, one
is struck by the fact that not only had standards not been established, but
that little thought went into recognising inevitable hazards and to identifying
measures to mitigate or eliminate them. The most glaring example refers to
provision of adequate numbers of lifeboats – a straightforward and obvious
measure, the absence of which resulted in heavy loss of life for decades until
the Titanic disaster in 1912 finally
made action unavoidable. Similar shortcomings applied as regards protection
against fire, an especially serious concern when steam-engines were installed
in wooden ships. In addition, one is struck, when reading about Victorian-era,
by what frequently amounted to an all but wilful blindness to signs of danger.
This latter was to be a factor in one of the most horrific of passenger-trade
tragedies, the loss by fire of the Royal Mail Steamer (RMS) Amazon, in 1852.
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| The horror of fire at sea, conveyed by the Victorian painter James Francis Danby (1816-1875) |
Constructed in 1850-51, the Amazon, at 2256-tons and 300-feet long, and her four sisters were
among the largest wooden-hulled steamers ever built, for by this time iron
construction was becoming commonplace. Intended for the mail service between
Britain and the West Indies, the 800-horsepower Amazon was paddle-driven and capable, under steam, of a maximum of fifteen
knots, though her usual cruising speed would have been closer to eleven. As
with almost all steamers of the time she also carried a sailing rig, in her
case of three-masted barque configuration. Her crew of 112 reflected the need
to operate under sail as well as to feed the furnaces and tend the engine.
There was accommodation for 50 passengers.
Commanded by a Captain Symonds, the Amazon left Southampton on her maiden voyage to the West Indies on
2nd January 1852. According
to accounts by survivors of the subsequent tragedy, alarm was felt immediately
by many passengers as regards risk of fire. The two engines installed appeared
to be overheating and the captain and engineer stopped them several times to
allow them to cool. A Mr. Neilson was too worried by this to go below decks and
another, a Mr. Glennie, attested that may of the crew were no less concerned.
Despite this, Captain Symonds was not prepared to return to Southampton.
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| The impressive-looking RMS Amazon, as seen before departure on her maiden voyage |
Thirty-six hours into her voyage the Amazon ran into a heavy headwind in the Bay of Biscay and soon
after midnight fire was seen erupting from just abaft the foremast. The
watch-officer sent the quartermaster to rouse the captain, who was sleeping,
and as he did alerted the passengers, apparently in a way that encouraged alarm.
Even before the captain reached the bridge – which ran across between the
paddle-boxes – the fourth engineer, a heroic man names Stone, attempted to go
below to stop the engines but was driven back by heat and smoke. Efforts were
in progress to drag a fire-hose forward when the blaze reached the oil and
tallow store, worsening the inferno. Terrified passengers were now crowding on
deck to be confronted with a wall of flame that spanned the deck and was as
high as the paddle-boxes, isolating the officers, who were aft, with most of
the crew, who were on the forecastle. The only way past the flames was to creep
up the curved surface of eh paddle-boxes and slide down the other side, a
manoeuvre so dangerous that few attempted it.
By this stage panic was already manifesting itself among
passengers and crew alike. An account of the tragedy in an 1877 publication
leaves little to the imagination: “It
would be needless to tell here of the screams and shrieks of the terrified
passenger, mixed with the cried of the animals on board; of the wild anguish
with which they saw before them only the choice of deaths, and both almost
equally dreadful – the raging flames or the raging sea; and of these fearful
moments when all self-control, all presence of mind, appeared to be lost, and
no authority was recognised, no command obeyed.”
Every effort was made to prevent the flames extending aft.
The Amazon carried nine boats and,
remarkably for this period, had in theory sufficient accommodation in them for
passengers and crew, but they could not be safely lowered as the unreachable
engines were still running and driving the vessel forward at some thirteen
knots. The captain hoped that the ship’s movement would finally be arrested by
exhaustion of the contents of the boilers but it transpired that when fire was
first detected one of the engineers, fearing a boiler explosion, had opened the
feed line from the water cistern to maintain a continuous feed. As the ship’s
headlong charge continued Captain Symonds ordered all boats to be kept fast until
he should order lowering. By the time he did, when the spread of the flames was
clearly unstoppable, the forward life-boats were already on fire. According to
the 1877 source: “When this was
discovered, al order and discipline seemed to disappear immediately, and
instead of fortitude and resolution, a selfish desire for preservation entered
almost every breast.”
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| The Amazon ablaze - contemporary illustration. Note boat hanging from davit. |
Unfamiliarity with the handling-equipment of the remaining boats
now played its role – a sad indication of inadequate crew-training before departure.
They were suspended from davits in the usual way but their keels were held in protruding
cradles to prevent them swinging but the crew seemed unaware of this. Due to
this at least three boats were flipped over as they were lifted and they dumped
their occupants into the sea. The captain assisted in lowering the boats and
when no more could be done went back to the wheel, took it from the steersman,
and apparently perished at his post. The
remaining boats did get away, the first to do so carrying sixteen people,
including the Mr. Neilson previously referred to. It rescued a further five
from a dinghy that had also got away – it was almost swamped and the occupants
were bailing with boots – but the now empty dinghy drove into the stern of the
lifeboat and wrecker her rudder.
The gale continued another three hours and all that could be
done in the lifeboat was to keep her head to the wind by her oars and save her
from swamping. The blazing Amazon was
visible in the distance, her masts toppling over in succession as the flames
ate them away. A sailing vessel now appeared, heading out from the French
coast, and passed within four hundred yards of the lifeboat, which hailed her.
An answer was made by signal but she made no attempt to assist and continued on
her course. Around dawn an explosion was seen to engulf the Amazon. The funnels toppled over and
then she herself disappeared. The lifeboat pulled for the French coast and in
mid-morning was picked up by a British brig, the Marsden, which landed the survivors in France.
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| Burning ship by Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900) - it conveys how the Amazon must have looked |
The Amazon’s
pinnace had also got way although on launching its occupants had been tipped into
the sea. A few managed to clamber back on to the ship though a lady clutching
an eighteen-month old child, a Mrs. M’Lennan, managed to keep hold of the boat
until it was righted. It finally got away with sixteen occupants, including the
Mr. Glennie mentioned earlier. An ex-Royal Navy seaman called Berryman (“a fine fellow”) trailed a portion of a
spar as a sea anchor to hold the over-loaded boat’s head to. the wind and
later, when the sea had calmed, hoisted Mrs. M’Lennan’s shawl between two
boat-hooks as a sail. Mr. Glennie noted as he saw the Amazon drew away that “a
large hole was burnt out of her side immediately abaft the (port) paddlebox,
part of which was also burnt. The hole was nearly down to the water’s edge and
through it I could see the machinery.” The pinnace survived into the morning,
a leak that threatened to swamp her being stopped by Stone, the heroic
engineer, and it steered for the French coast. “the men plying their oars lustily, and Mrs. M’Lennan, as she lay in
the sternsheets, cheering them to their work.” Later in the day another
vessel was sighted and the lady’s shawl was again put to good use for
signalling. It proved to be a galiot, a small Dutch trading vessel called the Gertruda, which picked up the pinnace’s
occupants and set her course towards Brest to land them. On the way more
survivors were picked up from another boat.
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| A Dutch galiot |
The disaster had occurred on January 4th and it
was not until the 15th of the month that it emerged that another
thirteen persons had also been saved. They had been rescued by another Dutch
vessel, the Hellechina, en route to
Leghorn, which transferred them to a British revenue-cutter which took them to
Plymouth. These survivors’ experiences were no less horrific than those of the
others. The boat had been lowered safely from the Amazon, though a stewardess had fallen out and been drowned in in
the process. Command was adopted by a Royal Navy officer, a Lieutenant Grylls,
who had been a passenger on the Amazon
and who had been active helping fight the fire previously. The boat was however
leaking badly – “Fox, a stoker, stopped
the hole by taking off his drawers and cramming them into it, keeping them in
position for three or four hours by the pressure of his own body; and when
seized by violent cramps was relieved by Durdney and Wall.” Another ship passed between them and the
burning Amazon, though without seeing
them – though it must have seen the Amazon.
One wonders if it was not the same vessel that had acknowledged the lifeboat’s
signal but had carried on regardless. Gryll’s boat lacked oars and attempts
were made to paddle her with the bottom boards. In the course of the morning it
passed over the area where the Amazon
had gone down, strewn as it was with wreckage, but with no sign of bodies.
Later in the day rescue came in the shape of the Hellechina.
Of the 162 people on the Amazon
only 58 survived. The loss was regarded as a national tragedy with Queen
Victoria and Prince Albert heading an appeal for support of widows and orphans.
A subsequent enquiry was inconclusive as regards the origin of the fire. Though
blame was placed by some on the engine bearings running hot – and indeed insufficient
testing had been done prior to committing to the maiden voyage – this seems to
have been unlikely since the engines continued to operate without seizing until
the ship consumed herself. A further consideration was that the crew was
freshly raised, knew little of each other and had not exercised together. The rapid spread of the fire was attributed to
the use of much “Danzig Pine” in the construction, a timber known to be
particularly inflammable. The single most significant contributory factor was
most likely however to be the haste in which the ship had been rushed into
service without adequate shakedown of crew and machinery.
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| The iron-hulled RMS Atrato by William Frederick Mitchell (1845-1918) |
And one lesson was most certainly learned. The next Royal
Mail ship commissioned, the Atrato,
was constructed of iron.
Britannia’s Spartan
Six-inch breech loading guns represented the cutting edge of
naval technology in the early 1880s. In my novel Britannia’s Spartan they are seen in use on both British and
Japanese ships. The splendid woodcut below shows Japanese crews managing just
such a weapon in the war of 1895 against China. Click here for further details –
for UK and for US & Rest of World
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