City of Brussels
_circa._1876.jpg) |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
The City of Brussels was a passenger ship of the British shipping company Inman Line (Liverpool, New York & Philadelphia Steamship Company) put into service in 1869 , which was used in the North Atlantic passenger and freight traffic between Queenstown and New York . On January 7, 1883, the ship sank in the mouth of the River Mersey after colliding with a cargo ship. When total loss of the ship ten people came to life.
The ship
The iron- built ship was built in 1869 at the Tod and MacGregor shipyard on Meadowside in Glasgow as a combined passenger and cargo ship for service in the North Atlantic . The launch took place on August 10, 1869. The ship was taken over by the shipping company in October of the same year. It was 118.85 meters long and 12.30 meters wide. The City of Brussels was the first ship of the line on the North Atlantic with a steam-powered steering gear . In 1872 an additional promenade deck was built. The main drive originally consisted of a horizontal cylinder piston machine . This was replaced by a compound steam engine in 1876 .
The ships of the traditional shipping company could be recognized by the fact that all names began with the prefix "City of ...". They had a clipper stem that made them look almost like pure sailing ships . The use of the City of Brussels was a complete success for the shipping company , as it acquired the Blue Ribbon, which was prestigious for the time, on its second Atlantic voyage to the east . She was the first screw ship to win this title, but she was also rigged as a three-masted barque . The City of Brussels had space for 200 passengers of first class and 600 passengers in the third class.
The downfall
On Thursday, December 28, 1882, the City of Brussels set off for another Atlantic crossing to Queenstown and Liverpool . On Sunday, January 7th, 1883, she reached the lightship at the mouth of the Mersey on her way to the port of Liverpool at around 6 a.m. The first passengers disembarked in Queenstown ( Ireland ). The fog was so thick that Captain Frank S. Land initially did not want to continue the voyage but wanted to wait near the lightship. The ship was now floating in the light current. The foghorn sounded at regular intervals and lookouts were posted all over the ship. Land, the second and fourth officers and the pilot kept watch on the bridge .
According to Captain Land, the City of Brussels was stopped for 41 minutes when the sound of ship whistles was heard on both starboard and port side . He assumed that they were two different ships that would pass each other in parallel. Instead, white lights suddenly appeared on starboard, and a minute and a half later, around 7:00 a.m., the collision occurred.
The City of Brussels was hit on the starboard side of its bow by the 2,691 GRT cargo ship Kirby Hall of the Hall Line shipping company, which left Glasgow on its maiden voyage . Some passengers in the City of Brussels woke up, but initially saw no signs of danger. Only after some time were passengers and crew called to their boat stations. The lifeboats were properly manned and lowered into the water; lifebuoys were also distributed. Captain Land also had the leak covered with a leaking sail. According to eyewitnesses, the evacuation was orderly and there were no signs of panic . About 20 minutes after the collision heeled the City of Brussels hard and threw the few remaining people still on board into the water.
After the fog cleared, Kirby Hall took in all of the survivors and brought them to Liverpool. The captain, purser and officers were praised by passengers and the press for their behavior. It was attributed to their presence of mind and skill that the death toll was relatively small. Two Italian tween deck passengers and eight crew members, including the second officer and the ship's carpenter, were killed. All papers and the cargo were lost with the ship, only the mail survived the sinking, as it was ready to be unloaded in Queenstown. Since the chimney and the masts protruded from the water after the sinking and thus represented a danger to the local shipping, they were immediately removed by salvage divers. The hull was abandoned.
literature
- Tony Gibbons: The World of Ships. Bassermann Verlag 2007, ISBN 978-3-8094-2186-3 .