Amazon (ship, 1852)
 |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
The RMS Amazon (I) was a paddle steamer built in 1851 by the British shipping company Royal Mail Line , which burned down, exploded and sank due to unexplained circumstances on its maiden voyage in the North Atlantic in January 1852 . 104 passengers and crew members were killed.
The ship
The paddle steamer Amazon was on September 1, 1850 the shipyard R. & H. Green Ltd. laid down in the London borough of Blackwall and launched on June 28, 1851 on the Thames . The ship was far from finished, but the shipping company chose this date for reasons of prestige, because it was the 13th anniversary of Queen Victoria's coronation . Numerous guests of honor were invited to the ship's christening, including William Hare, 3rd Earl of Listowel, General Lord Alfred Henry Paget with his wife, Agustín de Silva y Bernuy, 9th Count of Salvatierra, Admiral Sir Baldwin Walker, Sir Edward Belcher and General José María Paz Cecilia Wyndham, Lady Paget, named the ship Amazon .
The ship displaced 2250 British tons . The wooden hull of the Amazon was 91 meters long, 13 meters wide and had a draft of 6.58 meters. It had three decks. The three-masted steamer was driven by two piston engines from Seaward and Capel on two paddle wheels, each with a diameter of 12.40 meters. The machines made a total of 800 hp. The average cruising speed of the ship was 11.6 knots. During the test drives from the Thames to Southampton , however, a top speed of 13.6 knots was reached at times. During the test drives, which went to everyone's satisfaction, representatives from the shipping company, the government and the machine manufacturers were on board. Steam was generated in 26 furnaces in the boiler rooms. It was estimated that the ship would use around 1000 tons of coal per trip .
The Amazon was built for the Royal Mail Line, founded in 1841 and based in London, which was also their home port. The company operated a very successful liner service to South America and the Caribbean . The Amazon was supposed to bring passengers, cargo and mail from the UK to the West Indies . She was the largest ship of her shipping company until then. On December 16, 1851, the completed ship arrived in Southampton and was prepared for its maiden voyage. William Symons was appointed captain of the Amazon . By then, Symons had commanded the Medway , which entered service in 1841 . In all his years of service there had never been an accident.
Downfall
On Friday, January 2, 1852, at 3:30 p.m., the Amazon set sail with 111 crew members, two representatives of the British Admiralty and 50 passengers on board in Southampton for her maiden voyage to the West Indies and the Gulf of Mexico . A total of 163 people were on board. Many high-ranking representatives of the shipping company had come to the pier to watch the departure. The value of the charge was reduced to about 100,000 pounds sterling (in today's money value estimated at about 11.6 million £). This included £ 20,300 in bullion coins and 500 bottles of mercury worth £ 5,150. 1,133 tons of coal were stored in the coal bunkers.
At around 12:45 a.m. on January 4, the Amazon was 180 km southwest of the Isles of Scilly when a fire broke out in the forward area of the ship on the starboard side , which quickly got out of control. The fire was discovered when flames broke through a hatch in front of the forward mast. The alarm was quickly triggered. At the time, the second officer Charles H. Treweeke was in command of the bridge. Captain Symons and First Officer Henry Roberts fell on deck in shirt and underpants. The passengers also woke up and came on deck in nightwear. Fire hoses and pumps were used, but after a short time they could no longer be manned due to the increasing heat of the fire and the spreading flames. Strong winds from the southwest fanned the flames additionally. All the panes began to burst in the heat.
The attempts to lower the lifeboats into the water ended almost without exception catastrophic. The first boat to leave the burning ship with two dozen people on board, after touching down on the water, struck full and sank; none of the inmates survived. The next boat got stuck with the front halyard on the davit , so that everyone in it was thrown into the sea. Another boat broke loose and crashed at the top of the keel. One disappeared without a trace in the stormy waves. Only two boats were successfully launched. Many passengers were burned or suffocated in their cabins, while others drowned while trying to lower the boats. Meanwhile, heavy rain set in. One after the other, all three masts overturned. Some people climbed onto the paddle wheels in their panic.
At around 5am there was an explosion in the ship's magazine ; half an hour later it sank. 104 of the 163 people on board were killed in the accident. The brig Marsden , which was en route from London to North Carolina under the command of Captain Evans , rescued 21 survivors from one of the lifeboats around noon on January 4 and brought them to Plymouth the following day . At first it was feared that these were the only ones saved. Shortly afterwards, however, it became known that 25 more people had been picked up by the Dutch Galiot Gertruida (Captain Teinelaer) and brought ashore in Brest . On January 16, the lifeboat Royal Charlotte (Captain Lilburn) docked with 13 other survivors in Plymouth. He had picked her up from the Dutch ship Hellechina .
A total of 14 passengers and 45 crew members survived. There were only two women there, passengers Miss Anna Maria Smith and Mrs. Elenor Roper McLennan. Mrs. McLennan's 18 month old son was the only child who survived. 104 people were killed, including 36 passengers, Captain Symons, all officers and the only female crew member, stewardess Elizabeth Scott. The prominent fatalities include the French author Gabriel Ferry and the Irish novelist and travel reporter Elliot Warburton, who was also popular at the time . The cause of the accident is still unknown today. Reports at the time assumed that the boilers had overheated and started the fire.
Web links
- The Lost Steamer: A History of the Amazon , contemporary account of the sinking of the Amazon (published in 1852 by Partridge and Oakey, London)
- Sorrow on the Sea. Being an Account of the Loss of the Steam-ship Amazon, by Fire , contemporary report on the sinking of the Amazon (published in 1852 by J. Mason, London)
- The Annual Register, Or, A View of the History and Politics of the Year 1852 , contemporary account of the sinking of the Amazon (published in 1853 by JG & F. Rivington, London)