List of major marine casualties, 1876–1900

The list of serious marine casualties from 1876–1900 records accidents in the sea, which resulted in deaths or high levels of property damage.

list

date	Surname	dead	Course of events
September 11, 1877	Avalanche	106	The 1,210 ton British three-masted sailor Avalanche was rammed by the sailing ship Forest off the Isle of Portland . Of the 97 people on board, three crew members managed to jump from the sinking Avalanche onto the Forest . The Forest was also badly damaged and sank shortly after the Avalanche . In the heavy seas, the Forest's lifeboats sank , so that only nine of its 21 crew members survived. A total of 106 people were killed on both ships, while twelve survived.
January 31, 1878	Metropolis	85	The former warship Stars and Stripes of the United States Navy , which since the end of the Civil War under the name of Metropolis was as a passenger ship on duty, came with 248 passengers and crew members in the Outer Banks on the coast of North Carolina in a heavy storm. The hull leaked and overflowed, causing the engines to fail and the fires to be extinguished. Unmaneuvered, the steamer rolled in the heavy seas and was badly damaged by breakers. He ended up stranded in the stormy surf at Currituck Beach. Some of the people on board made it ashore, but 85 people drowned or were slain in the waves by rubble or hurled against rocks.
March 24, 1878	Eurydice	about 350	The training ship Eurydice of the British Royal Navy got into a snow storm on the way from Bermuda to Portsmouth and sank for unknown reasons off the Isle of Wight , whereby two people were able to save themselves.
May 31, 1878	Great Elector	269	During a maneuver in the English Channel, the two German armored ships Großer Kurfürst and König Wilhelm collided with each other off Folkestone . Both ships had previously tried to avoid two fishing boats; the signal to turn off had been misunderstood. In the collision, the Großer Kurfürst was so badly damaged that it sank a little later. The sinking was accelerated by the fact that the ship was not locked. 269 crew members went down with the ship. 218 men were rescued from German and British ships.
December 18, 1878	Byzantine	about 150	The French passenger steamer Byzantin of the Compagnie de Navigation Fraissinet collided with the British steamship Rinaldo during a berthing maneuver at the entrance to the Dardanelles in stormy weather and capsized five minutes later. Of the approximately 260 passengers and crew members, 113 were rescued.
February 28, 1879	Vingorla	68	A leak in the hold caused water to penetrate 70 nautical miles northwest of Bombay on board the British passenger liner Vingorla . The ship sank a few hours later. 68 people were killed in the sinking.
May 24, 1879	Ava	70	About 70 nautical miles off the mouth of the river Hooghly on the coast of West Bengal (India) was the British three-masted steamer Ava the British India Steam Navigation Company in troubled waters of the sailing ship Brenhilda rammed amidships and divided almost in half. Two lifeboats were damaged and unusable; in the other three 53 people escaped and crossed over to Brenhilda . 70 passengers and crew members, including the captain, were killed.
December 2, 1879	Borussia	169	Four days after casting off in A Coruña (Spain), the British passenger ship Borussia of the Dominion Line got caught in a storm in the North Atlantic. So much water penetrated through a leak in the hull that the pumps could no longer do anything and the engine room was flooded. The ship sank before all of the lifeboats could be launched. Only 15 people in two boats survived.
October 16, 1880	Alpena	80	The paddle steamer Alpena , with passengers and cargo on its way to Chicago , disappeared on Lake Michigan in a severe storm known as "The Big Blow". Nobody on board survived; the exact circumstances of the accident remained unclear.
October 29, 1880	Lifeboat Eliza Adams	11	While trying to rescue the sailors from the stranded brig Ocean Queen , the rowing lifeboat stationed in Wells-next-the-Sea (England) capsized . Only two of the 13 crew members were able to save themselves, the rest were killed.
February 7, 1881	Bohemian	35	On a trip from Boston to Liverpool, the British cargo steamer Bohemian operated by SS Bohemian Co. Ltd. at Caher Island on the Mizen Peninsula in the fog on rocks; 35 of the 57 crew members were killed.
April 29, 1881	Tararua	131	The New Zealand passenger ship rammed a reef near Waipapa Point on the coastal region of The Catlins ( New Zealand's South Island ) and sank 20 hours later. Only 30 passengers and crew members survived. It was the second worst ship accident in New Zealand to date.
June 13, 1881	Jeannette	33	The expedition ship Jeannette under George W. DeLong was trapped by the pack ice off Siberia in 1879. After 21 months it was crushed by the ice and sank. While trying to reach Siberia, 33 out of 60 crew members died.
August 30, 1881	Teuton	236	The British passenger liner Teuton rammed a reef four miles off Quoin Point on the coast of the South African Cape Colony and sank while attempting to reach the port city of Simon's Town . Of the 272 passengers and crew members, only 36 survived.
October 5, 1881	Koning der Nederlanden	90	On board the Dutch passenger liner Koning der Nederlanden the wave broke in the middle of the Indian Ocean and the engine room was flooded. All 216 passengers and crew were able to leave the ship before it sank. Since the Koning der Nederlanden sank 400 nautical miles from the nearest land, the lifeboats got lost in the ocean. Only three were found; 90 people disappeared without a trace.
October 14, 1881	Eyemouth disaster	189	Nineteen boats, around half of Eyemouth's fishing fleet , sank during a sudden hurricane or were wrecked on their return to the stony coast off the town due to the tidal low water level.
January 7, 1883	City of Brussels	10	The passenger steamer City of Brussels of the Inman Line was rammed into the mouth of the River Mersey in thick fog by the cargo ship Kirby Hall and almost cut in half. It sank 20 minutes after the collision; two passengers and eight crew members died.
January 19, 1883	Cimbria	437	On January 19, 1883, the HAPAG passenger steamer Cimbria collided with the British steamer Sultan in thick fog near Borkum on its voyage from Hamburg to New York City and sank.
January 18, 1884	City of Columbus	103	In stormy weather , the American liner City of Columbus hit an underwater rock and sank off Martha's Vineyard . The heavy seas washed most of the passengers off board and the lifeboats smashed against the hull while trying to lower them into the water. 29 people who clung to the rigging were rescued, while 103 drowned or died of hypothermia in the freezing water, including all the women and children on board.
April 3, 1884	Daniel Steinmann	121	At Sambro Island Light at the port entrance of Halifax , stormy seas and thick fog prevented the Belgian passenger ship Daniel Steinmann from entering . The steamer was hurled three times against the rocks of the Mad Rock Shoal reef and sank after the third impact. Of the 130 people on board, only nine were rescued, including the captain.
April 18, 1884	State of Florida	130	The British passenger steamer State of Florida , on its way from New York to Glasgow, collided with the Canadian barque Ponema in the middle of the North Atlantic . Both ships sank. 118 of the 162 people on board the steamer and 12 of the 15 crew members of the barque were killed. The survivors were rescued by a Norwegian sailing ship two days later.
July 22, 1885	zephyr	8th	While trying to rescue the crew of a barque stranded on Barber Sands in the English county of Norfolk, the mast of the barque, in which the castaways had rescued themselves, fell on the lifeboat. Eight of the 13 crew members of the lifeboat were killed in the accident.
May 30, 1886	Ly-ee-moon	71	The Australian liner Ly-ee-Moon ran aground on the rocks of the Cape Green headland on the New South Wales coast . The ship broke apart after a few minutes. Only 15 people were able to save themselves on land using the kinked front mast and a rope connection. 71 passengers and crew members were killed.
December 10, 1886	Lifeboat disaster off Blackpool	44	During a storm, Hamburg's Bark Mexico ran aground off Blackpool on its journey from Liverpool to Ecuador . Of three English lifeboats that set out to rescue the 12-person crew, only one managed to reach the Mexico and rescue the crew completely. The lifeboats Laura Janet (St. Annes station) and Eliza Fernley ( Southport station ) capsized while trying to reach the damaged vessel. Only three of the 27 crew members on both boats survived the accident.
Mid-December 1886 (?)	Unebi	174	The Japanese protected cruiser Unebi , built in France and on a transfer voyage from France to Japan, sank in a storm in the northern South China Sea . None of the transfer team (174 men) survived. The place of sinking and the exact date of the sinking (assumed mid-December 1886) are not known. In 1897, debris from the ship was found on the Pescadores Islands .
January 20, 1887	Kapunda	297	Before Maceió on the Brazilian coast, the British iron clipper Kapunda , which was on its way from London to Australia, collided with the barque Ada Melmore . The kapunda was almost cut in half and sank within five minutes. Of the 313 people on board, only eight crew members and eight passengers, all men, were rescued. 297 people were killed, including all women and children.
April 17, 1887	Tasmania	35	The P&O liner Tasmania ran aground on the south coast of Corsica on the cliffs Les Moines (Corsican I Munacci, English Monachi Rocks). All passengers were rescued, but 35 members of the crew, including the captain, died.
November 19, 1887	WA Scholten	132	The steamship of the Dutch Holland America Line , which operated between Rotterdam and New York, collided in the English Channel in thick fog with the British coal freighter Rosa Mary anchored near Dover . The steamer immediately got a heavy list and sank after 20 minutes. 132 passengers and crew members died.
August 14, 1888	geyser	118	Thirty miles south of Sable Island ( Newfoundland ) in rain and fog the passenger ships Geiser and Thingvalla of the Danish shipping company Thingvalla-Linie collided when the Thingvalla sailed into the starboard side of the Geiser at full speed , which then went down within five minutes. The damaged Thingvalla saved 31 people and was towed to Halifax.
August 22, 1888	City of Chester	16	Shortly before Fort Point on the California coast, a collision occurred in thick fog between the American coastal liner City of Chester (1,106 GRT) and the British ocean liner Oceanic (3,707 GRT). The Oceanic remained afloat, but the City of Chester sank six minutes after the collision, with the loss of three crew members and 13 passengers.
September 13, 1888	South America	79	During the berthing maneuver in the bay of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria , there was a collision between the Italian passenger ship Sud America (1,258 t) and the French passenger ship La France (4,575 t). The La France was only slightly damaged, but the Sud America sank within 25 minutes. 79 passengers and crew members were killed.
February 8, March 1889	Adventure H1500	11	When the Trawler Adventure H1500 from Kingston upon Hull in the North Sea sank , 11 crew members were killed.
15./16. March 1889	Apia cyclone	145	While several warships from the USA, Germany and Great Britain were lying in front of the port of Apia on Samoa due to geopolitical tensions , a strong, two-day cyclone swept across the island and sank the German gunboats Eber and Adler as well as the frigate Trenton and the corvette Vandalia . The gunboat Nipsic and the German corvette Olga were badly damaged, but could later be repaired. A total of 52 American and 93 German seamen were killed in the disaster. However, the disaster in the cyclone also prevented an impending military conflict; the dispute over Samoa between the USA and Germany was settled by negotiation.
December 31, 1889	Erin	72	After casting off in New York, the steamer Erin of the British National Line disappeared without a trace in the North Atlantic . He was never seen again.
February 28, 1890	Quetta	134	The British passenger liner Quetta ran in the Torres Strait off the coast of Queensland (Australia) on an unrecorded underwater rock and sank within three minutes. 134 of the 292 people on board died.
after August 30, 1890	Amphitrite	25th	The full German cargo ship Amphitrite and its entire crew were lost on the voyage from Cardiff to Hong Kong during a typhoon in the China Sea.
November 10, 1890	Serpent	172	The Serpent , a torpedo cruiser of the Royal Navy , ran aground on the rocky coast of Cabo Vilán on a journey from Plymouth to Sierra Leone . Of the 175 men on board, only three survived.
March 17, 1891	Utopia	535	The British passenger steamer was thrown against the bow of the warship Anson in the port of Gibraltar by a gust of wind . The passenger ship was ripped open and sank in just five minutes. 514 passengers, 19 crew members and two Royal Navy forces were killed.
after August 22, 1892	Pluto	17th	On the voyage from Blyth (Northumberland) to Iquique , the German freighter Pluto (full ship / 1,133 RT) has been missing in the South Atlantic with the entire crew since the last sighting on August 22, 1892. The ship probably sank in the Cape Horn sea area.
October 10, 1892	Bokhara	125	Off the Pescadoren Islands west of Taiwan , the British passenger ship Bokhara , which was on its way to Hong Kong with 148 people on board , was caught by a typhoon . Water burst into the engine room, the lifeboats were torn overboard by the waves and after the steamer was thrown twice against a reef, it went under within two minutes. Only 23 people survived. It was the most devastating accident in the history of the P&O shipping company to date .
October 27, 1892	Roumania	113	The British passenger steamer Roumania of the Anchor Line came too close to the land off Peniche on the Portuguese coast in a storm and fog and hit the rocky shore. The ship broke and sank. Of the 122 passengers and crew members, only nine survived.
February 7, 1893	Trinacria	34	Before Cabo Vilán on the northwest coast of Spain, the British passenger steamer Trinacria got off course due to thick fog. The fog was so opaque that the Cabo Vilán lighthouse could not be made out. The ship hit rocks and broke apart in the heavy seas. Only seven people were able to save themselves.
February 19, 1893	Naronic	74	The steamship Naronic of the British White Star Line disappeared with 74 people on board en route from Liverpool to New York in the North Atlantic. Four messages in a bottle that surfaced in the US and UK after the ship's disappearance suggested that the ship collided with an iceberg in a severe storm. The authenticity of the news is questioned, however.
June 22, 1893	Victoria	322	The ironclad Victoria and the ironclad Camperdown collided during a maneuver by the British Mediterranean fleet off the coast of Lebanon . The Victoria was so badly damaged that she capsized and sank within eleven minutes. 322 sailors went down with the ship, including the commander of the British Mediterranean Fleet, Vice Admiral Sir George Tyron . 357 crew members of the ironclad were rescued. The disaster was caused, a committee of inquiry later found, by misunderstandings in the chain of command and the ill-considered giving of orders by Vice Admiral Tyron; he was later awarded the main culprit for the accident.
July 13, 1893	Duchess of Albany	2	On July 13, 1893, on the voyage from Rio de Janeiro to Valparaíso, the full ship Duchess of Albany , registered with Robert Hamilton & Co. in Liverpool - named after Helene zu Waldeck and Pyrmont - ran aground in thick fog on the Atlantic coast of the Miter peninsula ( Tierra del Fuego ) near Caleta Policarpo while trying to find a safe bay. The captain managed to reach Thetis Bay by boat with 10 other sailors further east. He later returned to England with them on the steamer Britannica . Seventeen sailors and passengers refused to ride the lifeboat and made their way along the coast on foot. 14 were later picked up by a Chilean tugboat. At least one stayed with the Indians of the region. The crumbling wreck has been lying on the beach ever since. The figurehead was recovered in 1979 and is now restored in the "Museo del Fin del Mundo" in Ushuaia .
August 3, 1893	Helmuth Mentz	9	The freight-carrying German barque Helmuth Mentz (1,332 RT) had to be abandoned after a cargo fire off southern Chile. The 17-man crew managed to save themselves; however, a nine-man lifeboat has been missing since the accident.
February 16, 1894	Brandenburg	44	On board the German liner Brandenburg (10,060 t) a main steam pipe burst during a test drive in the engine room of the starboard engine, presumably as a result of a material defect. 25 crew members, 18 shipyard workers and an engineer entrusted with checking the machinery were killed. Seven people were injured. The ship then had to be in the shipyard for almost half a year.
October 29, 1894	Wairarapa	121	The New Zealand passenger ship was en route from Sydney to Auckland when fog and navigational errors threw it off course. The ship passed the Great Barrier Island much closer than planned and finally hit the rocks of Miners Head shortly after midnight. Very few passengers could swim and only a lifeboat made it to the nearby land. 121 people died. It was one of the worst shipping accidents in New Zealand history .
December 22, 1894	December hurricane 1894	169	Numerous fishing vessels got caught in a severe hurricane in the North Sea. Nine Smacks and six trawlers from Hull never returned to their home port. In total, at least 108 crew members from Hull went down with their ships or were washed overboard in the hurricane. In the same storm sank at Horns Rev Bremerhaven trawler Neck , Nereid , Lilly , Eide and Hermann . All 61 crew members were killed. The causes of the catastrophe were presumably sea hammer and the lack of closed wheelhouses at the time. The tragedy resulted in stricter safety regulations in deep-sea fishing.
January 30, 1895	Elbe	332	On January 30, 1895, the steamer Elbe from Norddeutscher Lloyd was rammed by the English freighter Crathie , north of the Strait of Dover. The Elbe was with 352 emigrants on their way from Nordenham to New York . It sank within 20 minutes. Only 20 people survived. At the time of the collision, neither officer on watch nor lookout were on the bridge of the Crathie, which had to avoid . The helmsman only noticed the German ship when it was directly in front of the bow. The Elbe had noticed the British in good time, but had to maintain course and speed precisely as authorized to pass. This rule was adhered to until the end and, fatally, the Typhon failed to issue a warning. The German bridge watch found it too improbable that such a large, brightly lit ship could simply be overlooked.
March 11, 1895	Reina Regente	402	On the way to Cádiz , the Spanish protected cruiser Reina Regente disappeared in the Strait of Gibraltar in a severe storm. It took days to find the remains of the ship washed ashore. There were no survivors.
December 24, 1895	Civil Service Number Seven	15th	While trying to rescue the crew of the Russian sailing ship Palme (1,114 GRT), which was stranded on the Eastern Irish coast , the lifeboat Civil Service Number Seven, stationed in Dún Laoghaire , capsized in heavy seas. All 15 crew members were killed in the accident. The 20-man crew of the Palme was completely rescued on December 26, 1885 in a dramatic rescue operation by a steamer of the then Irish lighthouse authority ( Commissioners of Irish Lights (CIL)) under Captain McCrombie.
June 16, 1896	Drummond Castle	243	The British passenger steamer got into a bank of fog in bad weather off the French island of Ouessant and hit a reef. The ship sank within four minutes. Only three of the 246 passengers and crew members survived.
September 26, 1896	Alexander Yeats	0	The Canadian full ship Alexander Yeats stranded in a storm off Gurnard's Head and had to be abandoned. The crew was saved.
December 8, 1896	Salier	279	On the way from Bremen to La Plata , the Salier , a passenger steamer operated by Norddeutscher Lloyd , hit a reef in a storm in the Bay of Arosa, four miles north of the town of Vilagarcía de Arousa (northern Spain) and sank. There were no survivors.
January 13, 1897	Carla Bauer	0	The freight-carrying German barque Carla Bauer (954 RT) leaked during a storm in the Atlantic and had to be abandoned. The crew was rescued by the British freighter Loch Vennachar .
June 9, 1897	Aden	78	In stormy seas, the British passenger steamer Aden (P&O) crashed into the cliffs on the coast of the island of Socotra off the Horn of Africa . 78 people died; the 42 survivors were stuck on the ship and were only rescued after 18 days.
February 15, 1898	Maine	266	Presumably due to a fire in the Maine coal bunker , which was anchored in the port of Havana in Cuba ( then a Spanish colony ), the ship's ammunition depot exploded and sank. Since the US government of President William McKinley assumed a torpedo attack by Spanish units, the event subsequently triggered the start of the Spanish-American War in April of the same year.
4th July 1898	La Bourgogne	565	The French passenger steamer was en route from New York to Le Havre when it was rammed by the British sailing ship Cromartyshire on the coast of Nova Scotia and sank. Of the 730 people on board, only 165 survived, including just one woman. It was one of the greatest accidents in the history of French civil steam shipping.
October 13, 1898	Mohegan	106	The still new passenger and cargo ship Mohegan was with 161 passengers and crew on the way from Tilbury to New York when it ran aground on the reef The Manacles off the coast of Cornwall due to an incorrect course change and sank within 12 minutes. The lights went out almost instantly and only a single lifeboat could be lowered safely. It was the greatest accident in the history of the Atlantic Transport Line .
November 26, 1898	Portland	192	The American passenger liner of the Portland Steam Packet Company was one of the largest and most luxurious paddle steamers that brought passengers from Portland in the US state of Maine to Boston . In November 1898, off Cape Ann on the Massachusetts coast , the ship was caught in a storm that struck the New England coast and claimed more than 450 lives. All 192 people aboard the Portland were killed. The storm is still today called "The Portland Gale" (in German roughly "The Portland Storm").
January 27, 1899	Port Melbourne	52	The passenger ship Port Melbourne of the British National Line disappeared without a trace on the Atlantic Ocean on its way from New York to London.
March 30, 1899	Stella	105	The British steamer Stella of the London and South Western Railway rammed 15 miles off the island of Guernsey (English Channel) in thick fog and at full speed a reef belonging to the Casquets rock group and sank within eight minutes. 105 passengers and crew were killed.
after August 23, 1899	Henny Clement	?	The freight-carrying German barque Henny Clement (1,657 RT) has been missing with the entire crew since a last sighting on 23 August 1899 in the Atlantic.
after December 7, 1899	Aldeburgh	7th	During a hurricane, the lifeboat of the same name stationed in Aldeburgh capsized in the surf during a hurricane. Seven of the 18 crew members were killed.
June 30, 1900	Saale	99	In a major fire in the port of Hoboken (US state New Jersey ), four ocean liners at the dock of North German Lloyd were affected. One ship escaped undamaged, and the fire on two others could be controlled after a short time. The hall but was completely gutted and stranded on a sandbank . 99 of their passengers and crew members died because they were trapped in the ship and could not pull themselves through the portholes that were too small.
October 28, 1900	H. Bischoff	12	The four-masted full ship H. Bischoff , sailing under the flag of the Hamburg shipping company H. Bischoff & Co. , ran aground in front of the Elbe estuary on the Großer Vogelsand . Eight crew members and four lightship people from lightship Elbe 2 , who wanted to rescue the four-master's crew from distress with rowing rescue boats, lost their lives. The lightship Elbe 3 and other ships helped to rescue the last seamen and the captain from the wreck after a 32-hour mission.
November 15, 1900	Yosemite	5	On November 13, 1900 , the US auxiliary cruiser Yosemite, lying in the port of Apra , was pressed onto rocks during a hurricane on Guam (Pacific) , badly damaged and then driven out to sea. Due to irreparable damage, the order was given two days later to abandon the ship, whereupon the Yosemite sank in the evening hours of November 15. Five men of the crew were torn overboard in the storm and drowned, the rest of the crew was removed from a coal ship.
December 16, 1900	Gneisenau	41	Off Málaga (Spain) the anchor chain of the German cadet training ship Gneisenau (2,856 t) broke in a heavy storm. The ship was driven onto the mole in Malaga and later sank. Of the 460 man crew, 41 were killed and numerous crew members were injured.

List of major marine casualties, 1876–1900

list

See also