Roumania
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The Roumania was a passenger ship of the British shipping company Anchor Line , which carried passengers , mail and cargo from Great Britain to British India from 1881 to 1892 . On October 27, 1892, the Romania hit the rocky shore in a storm off Peniche on the coast of Portugal and broke. Of the 122 people on board, 113 were killed.
The ship
The 3,387-ton steamer Roumania was in 1880 in the Glasgow district Partick at Meadowside dock at the shipyard D. & W. Henderson & Company built and expired on 22 December 1881 on the River Clyde from the stack. Godmother was a Mrs. WFG Anderson. The ship was built for the traditional shipping company Anchor Line, founded in 1856 and based in Glasgow. The steamer was also registered in Glasgow.
The Roumania was 110.9 meters long, 11.6 meters wide and had a maximum draft of 8.7 meters. The hull was made of iron . The 490 hp machines from D. & W. Henderson allowed a speed of up to 14 knots. The Roumania was a combined passenger and cargo ship . Your radio signal was VGSM.
She was one of three ships that were built in 1881 at the D. & W. Henderson shipyard. The other two were the freighter Galatia (3,095 GRT) for the Barrow Steamship Company and the passenger steamer Armenia (3,396 GRT), which was also built for the Anchor Line and went down in 1901 without loss of life in the Bay of Fundy . The Roumania was one of the British steamers that traveled regularly from Great Britain to various ports in British India, mainly Bombay and Calcutta .
Downfall
On Thursday, October 27, 1892, the Roumania was on another crossing from Liverpool to Bombay. The command was the 32-year-old Captain George Frederick Dashwood Hamilton of the British Indian Army . He was an officer in the Indian Staff Corps .
Most of the 67 crew members were Scots , but there were also 16 Indians among them, as was customary on ships on this route. Among the 55 passengers were a few high-ranking members of the British Army , but also British women who were on their way to India with their children and nannies to see their husbands; several British clergy, doctors and missionaries ; the daughter of the Vicar of Liverpool, Mabel Burbidge; Ella Dyson Johnson and Phyllis Ida Johnson, wife and daughter of Brigadier General Sir Henry Allen William Johnson, 4th Baron Johnson; and the captain's wife, Frances Bellingham-Smith Hamilton, with whom he had only been married for three months. A total of 122 people were on board, including eight children.
At around 11 p.m. on Thursday evening, the Roumania steamed along the Portuguese coast in darkness, thick fog and stormy weather. In the storm, the steamer had lost orientation and had come too close to the coast. In front of the small fishing village of Gronho, between Peniche and Foz do Arelho , she hit the rocks on the shore several times until she was stuck. The basic hits were not particularly strong and the passengers were not notified that anything had happened.
It was only around 1 a.m. that the ship began to break apart in the hurricane-like waves. The iron plates bursting from the holds could be heard as the hull was torn open. The lifeboats were flooded and swept away before they could be launched. The Roumania was towered over by high cliffs and the beach section was uninhabited, so that no help arrived at first. When the news of the accident reached the nearby city of Peniche, some sailors made their way to the scene of the accident.
When they arrived, there was still heavy rain and strong winds. The rescuers found the unconscious captain and some crew members lying on the beach. Everyone was exhausted, injured, and in bad shape; moreover, the waves had ripped off their clothes. After the survivors were hospitalized, Captain Hamilton reported that he had been washed overboard while attempting to help his wife through a skylight . It then took twelve hours to reach the bank. Hamilton, Officer Rooke, and seven Indian crew members were the only survivors of the disaster. 113 passengers and crew members, including all women and children on board, were killed.
A cavalry unit was sent to the scene of the accident to rescue the dead and to prevent the looting of the beach, which was strewn with wreckage, parts of the cargo and personal effects. Even so, a lot was stolen. Numerous onlookers from more distant cities flocked to the scene of the accident. According to press reports, the rubble spread from Óbidos to São Martinho do Porto . Many of the dead were found naked as the storm and waves ripped off their clothing. The lack of clothing and jewelry made it difficult to identify the dead. Some were buried in the town of Obidos.
The wreck of the Roumania broke in half and is less than 100 meters from the shore.
Web links
- Baudaten the Roumania in the Clydebuilt Ships Database (English)
- The Roumania in an online forum for divers ( Memento from January 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (Portuguese)
- THE WRECKED ROUMANIA Report in the New York Times of October 30, 1892 (English)
- THE WRECKED ROUMANIA Report in the New York Times of October 31, 1892 (English)
- THE ROUMANIA BREAKING UP Report in the New York Times of November 1, 1892 (English)
- Passenger list of the last trip
Coordinates: 39 ° 25 ′ 32.2 " N , 9 ° 14 ′ 32.3" W.