Cospatrick (ship)
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The Cospatrick was a three-masted Blackwall frigate owned by the British shipping company Shaw, Savill & Company, which brought passengers and cargo from Great Britain to New Zealand in the mid-19th century , mainly carrying emigrants . On November 17, 1874, the Cospatrick , which was en route to Auckland with 470 people on board, burned down about 640 km south of the Cape of Good Hope for unknown reasons and sank. Only two lifeboats with about 60 people were able to escape. A boat with five people, two of whom died after being rescued, was found ten days later, the other boat disappeared without a trace. The rescued had survived through cannibalism on the deceased from the boat.
The ship
The 58 m long full ship made of teak was built in 1856 in Moulmein, Burma (today Mawlamyine, Myanmar ) for the prominent London ship owner, wine merchant and millionaire Duncan Dunbar (1804-1862). She was a Blackwall type sailing ship that was very common between the 1830s and 1870s. Lloyd's Register of Shipping placed the Cospatrick in the highest possible category, 1A.
After Dunbar's death in 1862, the ship was sold to Smith, Fleming & Company in London. Most of her service time, the Cospatrick was used on trips from Great Britain to India , on which she transported passengers, cargo and occasionally troops. But she also made two trips to Australia . In 1863 she and two other ships laid a telegraphic underwater cable in the Persian Gulf .
In 1873 the ship was sold to the London-based shipping company Shaw, Savill & Co., for which she drove from Gravesend (England) to Auckland (New Zealand) at regular intervals . Due to the emigration, the company flourished and employed numerous ships on this route. Shaw, Savill & Company became the Shaw, Savill & Albion Steamship Company in 1882 .
Downfall
Cause and course
On Friday, September 11, 1874, the Cospatrick left Gravesend for another voyage to New Zealand under the command of Captain Alexander Elmslie. It was only her second trip in service with Shaw, Savill & Company. Elmslie, 39, had been the Cospatrick's first mate for years and became captain when Shaw, Savill & Company took over the ship. He was accompanied on this trip by his wife Henrietta and his four-year-old son Alexander. The ship again had British government mail on board on this voyage . On board were 44 crew members and 433 passengers, almost without exception British emigrants who wanted to start a new life in New Zealand. There were 125 women and 126 children among the passengers. Eight small children died during the trip and one was born. Thus, at the time of the accident, 470 people were on board the ship.
At around 12:45 a.m. on Thursday, November 17, 1874, the second officer, Charles Henry Macdonald, caught the sudden strong smell of smoke near the end of his watch . The Cospatrick was at this point about 640 km southwest of the Cape of Good Hope . When he went on deck to sound the alarm, he realized that the fire had broken out in a storeroom that was filled with many flammable items such as tar , tow , paint , pitch and varnish . The crew appeared to operate the fire hoses while the captain tried to turn the Cospatrick upwind to prevent the wind from fanning the flames. The fire spread rapidly, causing panic on board . About half an hour after the smoke was discovered, almost the entire upper deck was on fire. The wind drove the flames to the port side, rendering the lifeboats on that side useless. Most of the passengers then pushed to starboard and stormed the boats hanging there. One fell overflowing stern first into the water and capsized.
One after the other, the three masts overturned, hit the deck and killed numerous people. After the stern of the ship exploded, the Cospatrick sank within a very short time. Captain Elmslie stayed on the ship to the end. He pushed his wife and son overboard and jumped after them. He was followed by the ship's doctor Dr. James F. Cadle. All four drowned. There were a total of five lifeboats that could accommodate 187 people, but only one of them could be safely lowered into the water. The surviving occupants were able to straighten the overturned boat. A total of 61 people survived the sinking in the two lifeboats. One was commanded by First Officer Charles Romaine and the other by Second Officer Macdonald.
The lifeboats
On the night of November 21st, Romaine's boat disappeared in a storm . It had a total of seven crew members and 25 passengers on board. The survivors in the second boat drifted about half a mile in the ocean for ten days. Little by little, most of the boat occupants died; in order to survive, cannibalism occurred among the remaining castaways .
On November 27, 1874, the boat, in which five people were still alive, was found by the ship British Scepter under Captain Jahnke. Two of them, a passenger and a seaman, died after being rescued. The three survivors were second mate Henry Macdonald, ship carpenter Thomas Lewis of the Isle of Anglesey, and 18-year-old seaman Edward Cotter. The British Scepter entered St. Helena on December 6th . From there the rescued were brought back to Great Britain by the mail steamer Nyanza .
With 467 deaths, the Cospatrick disaster is one of the most serious shipping accidents in the history of emigration. The exact cause of the fire could never be determined. An investigation following the accident held it possible that an open candle, but also spontaneous combustion , could have caused the fire. The fact that there were too few lifeboats created a great stir. However, no new regulations in this direction were introduced.
literature
- Charles R. Clark. Women and Children Last. The Burning of the Emigrant Ship Cospatrick . Otago University Press (Dunedin, New Zealand), 2006
- Charles Hocking. Dictionary of Disasters at Sea during the Age of Steam: Including Sailing Ships and Ships of War 1824–1962 . Lloyd's Register of Shipping (London), 1969
- Basil Lubbock. The Colonial Clippers . James Brown & Son (Glasgow), 1921
See also
Web links
- Detailed description of the accident in contemporary newspaper reports
- Description of the Cospatrick in a listing of merchant ships
- Passenger list of the last trip
- Reports of the catastrophe in the newspaper Otago Witness from January and March 1875
- Description of the accident in a New Zealand online encyclopedia (with picture of the burning ship)