Reliance (ship, 1827)
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The Reliance was a 19th century merchant ship. The frigate ran aground off France on its way back from China to England in 1842 . Numerous people died in the shipwreck.
history
The Reliance and the Abercromby-Robinson were to replace two Indian drivers who were burned in the Canton river. They were built in the Deptford shipyards for the British East India Company from 1825 . The Reliance was launched in 1827. The ship was to begin its first voyage to Bengal and China on February 8, 1828.
It passed from the property of the East India Company to that of the House of Wigram and Green without changing its name.
Downfall
Two-fifths in Europe and three-fifths in Calcutta and Bombay at £ 250,000 Reliance was commanded by Captain Green. 122 people were on board. The crew consisted of 85 Europeans, 22 Chinese and a few Lascars, as Indian sailors were called in the service of the company, and five passengers also traveled with the freighter. The Irish ship lieutenant named Walsh was a friend of the poet Thomas Moore .
The ship had been on its way home from Canton to Europe since the spring of 1842 and had struggled with adverse winds and bad weather over and over again throughout the voyage. On the evening of November 13, 1842, the crew noticed a beacon which the captain thought was the lighthouse of Dungeness . In fact, however, it was the Cap Gris-Nez fire . Subsequent studies have found that the ship probably was further south than expected because an iron water tank for a deviation of the compass had provided.
A very detailed report on the further events was published in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung . According to this publication, the accident happened as follows: Shortly after midnight, the ship ran aground and was unable to maneuver within a very short time. Captain Green had a mast and the foresail cut. He also ordered shots to be fired as distress signals. The sailors who were commissioned to do this, however, discovered a crate of liquor on their search for powder and rifles and, according to the report in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, drank themselves intoxicated instead of doing their duties. During the night, the wrecked ship was damaged more and more by the waves. A sloop and two boats, which they wanted to get afloat in the morning, turned out to be no longer operational. The construction of a raft failed due to the resistance of the sailors. The ship broke up around nine in the morning. About half of the people on board were washed into the sea, the rest, including Green and Walsh, still clung to the aft deck and the remains of the mast. When the rear deck also dissolved around 9:30, the last survivors tried to drift along a plank to the coast. Since this was not sustainable enough for everyone, desperate fighting broke out. In the end, only two people ended up alive, though passed out, this way. According to the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung , only seven people survived the accident, other sources give slightly different figures and speak of eight, ten or twelve survivors. Twelve bodies, including the captain's, were herded ashore. Among the items that were recovered was a letter that one of the men on board had written the day before to inform his mother that he would be home soon. In a letter from Captain Green, which he had given to an encountering ship shortly before it ran aground, there was a description of the arduous journey since the spring.
Two months later, the Conqueror ship , which also belonged to Wigram and Green, failed in almost the same place.
Auction of the tea load and the consequences
When the Reliance failed off the French coast, it was loaded with 1,883,700 pounds of tea in 27,000 boxes. That was about a seventeenth or a sixteenth of the amount of tea that England exported from China every year. Of these, around 1500 more or less damaged boxes were washed ashore, which is why an auction of the tea was scheduled in Boulogne . Around 500 buyers turned up. According to the report in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung , after the auction there was no longer a hut far along the coast that “did not have a strong portion of tea”, especially since the best was available for around one and a half francs per kilogram.
This tea sale was not without consequences: a Parisian trading house bought around 10,000 kilograms of black tea from the cargo of the stranded ship and had it colored with chrome yellow and lead ore in order to sell it as green tea . Two workers who were entrusted with this task were admitted to the hospital with severe colic , whereupon the attempted fraud was punished.
Individual evidence
- ↑ State and learned newspaper des hamburgischen impartial correspondents 1827, p. 1410.
- ↑ a b c d e Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung 1842, pp. 2755 f ..
- ↑ Lascaren in: Nieuw woordenboek der Nederlandsche taal on www.dbnl.org
- ↑ JC Tuxen: The deviation of the compass needle as well as rules for setting up a. Examination of the compass on board: By JC Tuxen. Translated into German by H. Graff . Th. Von der Nahmer, 1856, pp. 55 f ..
- ^ The Pfennig magazine for instruction and entertainment . F. Brockhaus, 1843, p. 16. Here it is mentioned, however, that two of those who were rescued died a little later of their injuries from the wreckage of the ship.
- ^ Volume 10 (The new episode, volume 7) . Haase, 1843, p. 63.
- ^ Anton Johann Groß-Hoffinger: “The” eagle: General world and national chronicle, entertainment newspaper, literary and art newspaper for the Austrian states . Available at the Komptoir, Weihburggasse No. 906. in the Bureau des Adlers, 1842, p. 1168.
- ↑ Alexander Theodor Nahl: Meteorological and natural history chronicle of the year 1843 . Leske, 1843, p. 29 f ..
- ↑ FH Walchner: The food of the people, their adulterations and impurities: Rach represented the best duels . Springer-Verlag, August 31, 2013, ISBN 978-3-642-50915-5 , p. 146.