Byzantine
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
The Byzantine was a passenger ship put into service in 1854 by the French shipping company Compagnie de Navigation Fraissinet, which sank on December 18, 1878 at the entrance to the Dardanelles after a ship collision, killing around 150 people.
history
The 906-ton steamship Byzantin originated in 1854 on the shipyard Société Nouvelle des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée (FCM) in La Seyne-sur-Mer in Toulon . The passenger and cargo ship was 53.9 meters long, 10.7 meters wide and had a side height of 6.4 meters. The ship was powered by a steam engine whose 140 nominal horsepower (nhp) acted on a single propeller and allowed a speed of ten knots (18.5 km / h).
The Byzantine was built for the shipping company Compagnie de Navigation Fraissinet, founded in 1836 by Marc Fraissinet and based in Marseille , which operated a regular service from southern France to the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea and called at ports such as Constantinople , Sulina , Odessa , Varna and Galați .
On Wednesday, December 18, 1878, the Byzantine woman was on a journey from Marseille to Constantinople with about 260 passengers and crew on board. As the steamer Gallipoli approached the entrance to the Dardanelles, it got caught in a storm that had been blowing for several days.
At around 1 p.m. on December 18, the Byzantine wanted to drop anchor off Lampsaki next to the 1660 GRT British steamer Rinaldo , which was already at anchor. As the Byzantine approached, hurricane gusts pressed the ship against the bow of the Rinaldo , which bored into the hull of the Byzantine . Numerous passengers had already gathered on deck of the Byzantine beforehand and watched the collision. The captain of the British ship called over to them to jump on the Rinaldo , which some did.
The two ships separated again. Five minutes after the collision , the Byzantine capsized and sank, killing about 150 of its passengers and crew. The Lifeboats of Rinaldo were lowered into the water to accommodate the shipwrecked, but some of the boats were driven by the stormy waves in the open sea.
The Rinaldo team was able to save a total of 94 people. The steamer Vindomara took another five people. A lifeboat with three officers and eleven crew members was also found. The Flamingo of the Royal Navy helped with the rescue of the aborted boats. The damaged Rinaldo made it to Constantinople on its own, where it brought the survivors ashore and was repaired.