Cleopatra (ship, 1839)
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The Cleopatra was a side-wheel steam frigate built in 1839 for the British East India Company , which went down in a cyclone in 1847 with almost 300 people on board.
Construction and technical data
The ship ran in 1839 on the shipyard of William Pitcher in Northfleet ( Kent , England ) from the stack . The steam engine of the ship, which was built with a round stern and made of wood and rigged as a frigate , powered two side paddle wheels, delivering 220 nhp . The ship was 54.38 m long and 9.45 m wide (without the wheel arches). Its load capacity was given as 760 "tons burden" according to the then customary "Builder's Old Measurement" method. A speed of 9-10 knots could be achieved under sail . The crew consisted of up to 150 men.
fate
The Cleopatra , which had actually been ordered for the purpose of fighting pirates , did not arrive in Bombay on April 19, 1840 on her ferry trip from London via Portsmouth to India , because she had lost her foremast and sails in a storm on December 5, 1839 and on Arrived in Lisbon on December 9th to have the necessary repairs carried out for three weeks. She was then used by the British East India Company mainly in the freight and mail service between Bombay and Karachi , Aden and Suez .
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On April 14, 1847, the Cleopatra ran from Bombay for a trip to Singapore , where it was supposed to deliver around 100 Indian prisoners . On April 15, 1847, she got caught in a cyclone between the south-west Indian Malabar coast and the Laccadives and sank. In the sinking, their entire crew of 151, all prisoners and their entire guards, consisting of marines , were killed. Even before the sinking, the ship was not in the best shape. a. criticized that on the previous voyage from Aden to Bombay the wheel arches had to be secured and lashed with chains running across the deck.
monument
In St. Thomas Cathedral in Bombay, the first Anglican Bishop of Bombay at the time, Thomas Carr, had a monument made of white marble erected for the victims of the downfall; his son was a ship's doctor on the Cleopatra . The Indian prisoners are not mentioned on the memorial.
literature
Web links
- http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?139287
- Tim Willasey-Wilsey: The loss of the steamship Cleopatra with Indian convicts bound for Singapore
Footnotes
- ↑ Tim Willasey-Wilsey: The loss of the steamship Cleopatra with Indian convicts bound for Singapore
- ^ Charles Rathbone Low: History of the Indian Navy (1613-1863) , Volume II. R. Bentley and Son, London, 1877, p. 194
- ↑ Tim Willasey-Wilsey: The loss of the steamship Cleopatra with Indian convicts bound for Singapore