Arctic (ship, 1850)

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Arctic
USM steamship Arctic (1850) .jpg
Ship data
flag United States 31United States United States
Ship type Passenger ship
home port new York
Shipping company Collins Line
Shipyard William H. Brown, New York
Launch January 28, 1850
Commissioning October 27, 1850
Whereabouts Sunk September 27, 1854
Ship dimensions and crew
length
87 m ( Lüa )
width 14 m
Draft Max. 9.6 m
displacement 6200  t
measurement 2,860 GRT
 
crew 130
Machine system
machine Two-cylinder steam engines by Thomas Farren on two side wheels
indicated
performance
Template: Infobox ship / maintenance / service format
300 hp (221 kW)
Top
speed
12 kn (22 km / h)
propeller 1
Transport capacities
Permitted number of passengers 1st class: 200
2nd class: 80

The Arctic was a passenger ship put into service in 1850 by the US shipping company Collins Line , which was used for transatlantic passenger traffic between Liverpool and New York . She was one of the largest and most modern American passenger ships of her time and was awarded the Blue Ribbon . On September 27, 1854, the Arctic sank off Cape Race ( Newfoundland ) after colliding with the French steamship Vesta . About 350 passengers and crew drowned, including all women and children on board. The sinking of the Arctic is one of the worst civil shipping accidents in American steamship history and the Collins Line's greatest accident.

The ship

Construction plan of the Arctic machines (1849)

The Arctic was commissioned in 1849 by the New York & Liverpool United States Mail Steamship Company (better known as the Collins Line ), a New York-based steamship company founded in 1848. The founder and owner of the line was the ship magnate Edward Knight Collins. The shipping company established itself quickly and was soon considered the American equivalent of the British Cunard Line . Collins had set himself the goal of surpassing the ships of the Cunard Line in size, equipment and speed. In 1849 he therefore ordered four new ocean liners , which were between 2,123 and 2,860 GRT in size. Two of the of wood built paddle steamer emerged in the New York shipbuilding yards of William Brown and Jacob Bell. The Arctic was built by Brown. Her sister ships were the Pacific (1849), the Atlantic (1850) and the Baltic (1850). The cost of building the Arctic was $ 700,000.

The Arctic had three decks, a round stern and was one of the first ships with a straight stem . Their hull was mainly built from oak . Their two - cylinder side lever machines were built in the factory halls of the Novelty Iron Works by Stillman, Allen & Co. They made 3000 PSi with a daily coal requirement of 87 tons. The naval architect George Steers , who had already designed the schooner yacht America , was hired for the design . The interior, for which Voorhis & Pousot was responsible, was luxurious and set new standards. The lounges were decorated with mirrors and laid out with carpets. There were separate washrooms, a smoking salon and a hair salon. Cabins and public spaces were equipped with steam heating and a ventilation system. Stewards and stewardesses could be called into the cabins at the push of a button.

On Monday, January 28, 1850, the Arctic was launched . The launch was widely announced by Edward Collins and met with great media coverage. Collins had sent invitations to press representatives and anchored the Atlantic in the neighboring dock so that spectators could watch the launch from the decks of the ship for an additional charge. An estimated 20,000 people attended the event. On the same day two more ships were launched from William Brown; It was the first time that a shipyard in New York State had launched more than one ship in one day. The Arctic operated between Liverpool and New York and participated in the Transatlantic Packet Service, an arrangement for the transport of mail between the Collins Line and the US government . On October 18, 1850, the ship took a test drive .

In February 1852 the Arctic won the Blue Ribbon , the award for the fastest passenger ship on the transatlantic route between Europe and New York. She reached the record speed of 13.06 knots on an easterly crossing and made the journey in nine days, 17 hours and 15 minutes. She broke the record set by her sister ship Baltic the year before . It held the Blue Ribbon for four years. An incident occurred in 1854 when the ship ran into rocks at Tuscar Rock on the south coast of Ireland . Personal injury was not to be complained about.

Downfall

Graphic representation of the downfall (1854)

On Thursday, September 21, 1854, the Arctic laid in Liverpool under the command of Captain James C. Luce (1806-1879) for another crossing to New York. There were 135 crew members and about 250 passengers on board, including about 100 women and children. Among the passengers were several members of the prominent New York lawyer and banking family Brown, whose bank Brown Brothers Harriman & Company owned large shares of Collins Line, including the 29-year-old son of the bank's founder, William Benedict Brown, and his wife, Clara Moulton Brown two-year-old daughter Grace and two of his sisters, a brother-in-law and a one-year-old nephew. Of this family group, only the brother-in-law, George Allen, survived. Also on board were Captain Luce's eleven-year-old, handicapped son William Fearing Luce and Mary Woodruff Collins, the wife of the shipping company founder Edward Collins, with two of their children, Mary Ann Collins (19) and Henry Coit Collins (15) and their brother, Samuel Woodruff . None of this family group survived.

Other better-known passengers included:

Six days after departure, on September 27, the Arctic steamed about 65 miles northwest of Cape Race on the Newfoundland coast with limited visibility through thick fog . At 12 noon, the 250 GRT French steamship Vesta suddenly came into view, which was cruising the Arctic's course . The engines were immediately reset to full power and the rudder turned hard to starboard . These measures were useless, only one minute after the first visual contact, the Vesta rammed her bow into the starboard side of the much larger Arctic .

The collision made three holes in the Arctic's side , two of them below the waterline. The Vesta was also damaged, but its bulkheads had withstood the collision and the ship was able to enter the port of St. John's on its own . The ship's captain was outraged that the Arctic had simply disappeared after the collision and not come to his aid. He didn't know what had happened to her.

As a first reaction, Captain Luce on board the Arctic tried to help the Vesta and launched a lifeboat that was supposed to cross over to the other ship. It was commanded by the Arctic's Chief Officer Robert J. Gourlie. The Vesta immediately disappeared into the thick fog. Only then was it noticed that the Arctic was sinking. The ship's carpenter was lowered with a rope to fill the holes with pillows and blankets. Captain Luce allowed the Arctic to approach Cape Race at full speed to put the ship aground and save it from sinking. In this way, however, only more water was pressed into the slit hull.

Pumps were used and a crew member fired the ship's signal gun at regular intervals. About half an hour after the collision, the water had extinguished all the fires in the boilers . An orderly evacuation of the steamer was not possible because there was great confusion on the ship. The lifeboat in which Mary Collins and her children were sitting capsized when it was lowered and threw its occupants into the sea. Another boat that held about 70 people was washed overboard before it could be lowered into the water. A raft was found after 26 hours when only one of the inmates was still alive. Dozens of people jumped overboard. Five fully manned lifeboats that had been safely lowered into the water disappeared without a trace.

The Arctic eventually sank 20 miles off Cape Race, killing approximately 350 passengers and crew, including all women and children on board. The exact number could never be determined because infants were not on the passenger list. Captain Luce survived but lost his son. Only 85 people were rescued, 61 crew members and 24 passengers, all of them men. The steamer Huron picked up the survivors and handed them over to the barque Lebanon , which took them to New York.

Consequences for the Collins Line

Edward Collins never recovered from the loss of his family or the ship. The sinking of the Arctic caused a lot of bad press for the Collins Line. When, less than two years later, the Pacific disappeared without a trace with 186 people on board, this meant the end for the shipping company. The US government stopped its subsidies and terminated the postal contract. In 1857 the Collins Line broke up. The remaining ships, the Baltic , the Atlantic and the new Adriatic , were auctioned and went to the Brown Brothers & Company bank on April 1, 1858.

literature

  • Robert D. Ballard , Rick Archbold: Lost Liners. From the Titanic to the Andrea Doria. Glory and decline of the great luxury liners . With illustrations by Ken Marschall . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag GmbH & Co., Munich 1997, ISBN 3-453-12905-9 (English: Lost Liners: From the Titanic to the Andrea Doria. The ocean floor reveals its greatest lost ships. Translated by Helmut Gerstberger).
  • Alexander Crosby Brown: Women And Children Last. The Tragic Loss of the Steamship Arctic. In: American Neptune. Vol. 14, No. 4, 1954, ISSN  0003-0155 , pp. 237-261, (also special prints).
  • David W. Shaw: The Sea Shall Embrace Them. The Tragic Story of the Steamship Arctic. Free Press, New York NY 2002, ISBN 0-7432-2217-2 .

Web links

Commons : Arctic  - collection of images, videos and audio files