Florizel
 |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The Florizel was a 1909 posed in service passenger ship of the Canadian shipping company Red Cross Line , which for the transport of passengers and freight between St. John's , Halifax and New York was used. It was the largest ship on its route until 1916 . On February 24, 1918, the Florizel hit a reef in strong winds and heavy seas off Cape Race ( Newfoundland ) and ran aground. It was not until the storm subsided that 17 passengers and 27 crew members were rescued 28 hours after the collision . 100 passengers and crew members were killed.
The ship
The Florizel was built in 1908 by the Charles Connell & Company shipyard in the Scotstoun district of Glasgow for the New York, Newfoundland & Halifax Steamship Company Ltd. built. This company, which was mostly just called Red Cross Line because of its house flag , was founded in 1884 and was part of the Bowring Brothers and Company, based in St. John's. The company's ships carried passengers and cargo from St. John's and Halifax to New York. The management had the subdivision Charles T. Bowring & Co. Ltd. based in Liverpool , which had a large number of shareholders in Newfoundland .
The Florizel ran on 26 November 1908 by the stack and was completed in January 1909th She was designed as a modern passenger steamer and, like all Bowring Brothers ships, was very luxuriously equipped. The three-cylinder steam engine enabled a speed of twelve knots (22.2 k / h). The decks were constructed of steel and they had wireless telegraphy and equipment to track down submarines . She was also one of the first passenger ships on Canada's east coast with a bow designed to break through the abundant ice on the Newfoundland and Labrador coasts.
A common practice of the Bowring Brothers at the time was to name their ships after characters from the plays by William Shakespeare . The Florizel got its name from the prince of the same name from Shakespeare's comedy A Winter's Tale . The Florizel had been commissioned by Bowring Brothers to replace their passenger liner Silvia , which sank on March 14, 1908 on the way from New York to St. John's off Martha's Vineyard on the coast of the US state of Massachusetts . She became the new flagship of her shipping company. Her sister ship was the Stephano (3,449 GRT) , which entered service in 1911 and was sunk on October 8, 1916 off Nantucket by the German submarine U 53 . There were no human lives to complain about as the passengers and crew were given enough time to disembark.
In addition to her usual passenger traffic, the ship was converted every spring to take part in the annual seal hunts off Newfoundland. The Bowring Brothers have long benefited from the deal. On many of these voyages, Captain Abram Kean was in command, who regularly set records. During the First World War , the Florizel served temporarily as a troop transport . In October 1914 she brought the first 500 volunteer recruits of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment , the so-called "Blue Puttees", to England. Right at the beginning of the war, Russia wanted to buy the Florizel and the Stephano to use as ice breakers in the White Sea . Despite the high bid, the owners turned it down.
In January 1916, the Florizel came to the aid of the Baltic, the White Star Line and other ships, the Greek passenger ship Thessaloniki , which had been floating in the Atlantic for ten days with a flooded engine room and 300 passengers on board.
Downfall
Depart from St. John's
On Saturday, February 23, 1918, at 7.30 p.m., the steamer left St. John's for another crossing to Halifax and New York. On board were 78 passengers (50 first class and 28 second class) and 66 crew members. The 43-year-old Captain William J. Martin was in command. Almost all of the crew were from St. John's and all but three passengers were from Newfoundland Province. The cargo included 11,700 barrels of cured herring and cod and 840 boxes of lobsters . The cargo was worth a total of $ 800,000 (in monetary value at the time).
Among the passengers were some well-known personalities at the time, including:
- John P. Kiely, owner and manager of the Nickel Theater in St. John's (survived)
- James H. Baggs, Bay of Island, Newfoundland businessman (died)
- Captain Joseph Kean, captain of the liner Portia of the same shipping company and son of the former captain of Florizel ¸ Abram Kean (died)
- Frederick C. Smythe, General Manager of Newfoundland Woolen Mills in St. John's (died)
- Thomas McMurdo McNeil, representative of the pharmaceutical company McMurdo & Co. in St. John's (died)
- Major Michael S. Sullivan, chief of the Newfoundland Forestry Battalion (survived)
- Patrick Laracy, operator of the Crescent Theater in St. John's (died)
John Shannon Munn, one of the executive directors of the Bowring Brothers and stepson of Sir Edgar Bowring, one of the group's co-founders, was also on board on this voyage. He traveled with his three and a half year old daughter Elizabeth Shannon Munn ("Betty") and her nanny, the 29-year-old Constance Evelyn Trenchard.
Stranded at Broad Cove
About an hour after casting off, the ship got caught in a snow storm , which was fanned by strong winds . The view was very limited and the waves were high. After the ship had steamed in a south-westerly direction for nine hours, Captain Martin assumed that he had already circled the Cape Race at the south-eastern tip of the Avalon Peninsula and changed course westward. The Florizel was about 45 miles behind her estimated position and was still before the cape .
The ship was headed for the cliffs of Horn Head Point on the Newfoundland coast, which were bathed in white spray because of the stormy seas . Captain Martin therefore thought it was ice . Since the bow of the Florizel was designed to break the ice, it did not change the course of the ship. At around 5 a.m. on February 24, the Florizel crashed into the rocks at Broad Cove off Horn Head Point and ran aground .
The ship was tossed back and forth by the squalls, which made it impossible to lower the lifeboats . Parts of the superstructure and everything that was not attached to the deck were torn away by the waves. Many passengers drowned below deck due to the falling water, dozens of others were washed overboard by the strong waves. About 30 people who sought protection on the bridge deck were hit by a wave and dragged into the open sea. The same thing happened to 20 other people who had climbed onto the roof of the smoking parlor. Others fled to the foredeck as the bow of the Florizel jutted high out of the water. The stern was after a short time deep in the water. Survivors later reported that 32 passengers had crowded into the narrow radio room on the boat deck, as it was high above the water and protected by the chimney. About ten minutes after the collision with the reef, the lights on board went out, which caused even more chaos and panic. Fishermen from the nearby town of Cappahayden, 83 km south of St. John's, had to watch from the nearby bank but could not help.
Rescue attempts
Immediately after the collision, Captain Martin called for help by radio. The distress signals were received from the Admiralty House radio station in Mount Pearl . The Bowring Brothers headquarters in St. John's, headed by Eric Bowring, were also informed immediately. Around 6 a.m. the news reached the Bowring Brothers office in New York, where it was received by the Society's president, Charles W. Bowring, who had survived the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 .
During the course of February 24, several rescue ships arrived at the scene of the accident, but could not find the Florizel in the storm. Only after a few hours the storm subsided a little, lights were seen and the wreck of the passenger ship was discovered on the cliffs. The ship was half in the water and since no people were initially seen on board, it was initially assumed that there were no survivors. However, the sea had not yet completely calmed down. It was not possible to send boats over and no connection could be made with ropes.
Another rescue team arrived around 4:00 p.m. and had brought doctors and nurses with them and had been dispatched to Broad Cove by train as soon as news of the disaster was received. At first they couldn't do anything either. It was not until the morning of February 25 that the weather cleared up enough for the rescue to begin. The ships Gordon C and Terra Nova could only save 44 people, 17 passengers and 27 crew members. Captain William Martin also survived. Only two of the ten women and none of the five children on board survived the accident. A total of 100 people were killed. Six crew members of the ships that came to rescue the passengers on the Florizel were awarded the Medal for Bravery at Sea of the Royal Humane Society . Together with six other men, they were also awarded the Sea Gallantry Medal by the Board of Trade .
examination
The accident was followed by an investigation by the Marine Court of Inquiry, which began on March 2, 1918 and a total of 55 witnesses were heard. Captain Martin was given full responsibility for the sinking of his ship. He was charged with not having paid enough attention to keeping the course and navigating the ship during the voyage . He was suspended from duty for 21 months .
Only after Martin's death became known that the chief engineer of the Florizel , John V. Reader, a significant share of the blame for the tragedy had. He had reduced the speed of the steamer as soon as it left St. John's, acting against the captain's order to pick up maximum speed. This had ensured that the Florizel had covered far less distance than had been believed on the bridge. Reader wanted to extend the voyage to Halifax this way so that the ship would have to anchor there overnight and he would have time to visit his family. He could not be held responsible for what he did as he died in the sinking.
On August 29, 1925, Betty Munn's family erected a statue of Peter Pan in Bowring Park, St. John's , because they loved this children's story by James M. Barrie . The monument, which still stands today, bears the inscription In memory of a little girl that loved the park (“ In memory of a little girl who loved the park ”).
literature
- Cassie Brown. A Winter's Tale: The Wreck of the Florizel . Flanker Press, 1976
- Paul O'Neill. The Oldest City: The Story of St. John's, Newfoundland . Boulder Publications, 2003
Web links
- Brief summary of the history of Florizel
- A few key points about Florizel's service time
- Description of the last voyage of the Florizel
- The Florizel in a collection of passenger steamers on the Canadian east coast
- Information about Betty Munn's family and their memorial
- Summary of Cassie Brown's book on the sinking of the Florizel (with book cover)
- The passenger list of the last trip