Trinacria (ship)
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The Trinacria was a passenger ship of the British shipping company Anchor Line , which from 1871 to 1893 carried passengers and cargo from Glasgow alternately to New York City , the Mediterranean Sea and India . The Trinacria sank on the coast of northern Spain on February 7, 1893 after colliding with a rock in thick fog . 34 people died.
The ship
The Trinacria (old name for Sicily ) was built in Glasgow in 1871 at the shipbuilding yard Robert Duncan & Company on the Clyde for the Anchor Line, a British steamship company based in Glasgow, founded in 1856. The 2107 GRT steamship was launched on June 18, 1871 and was completed in August of the same year. The steamer could carry 75 passengers in the first, 100 in the second and 500 in the third class. The ship was named after an old term for the island of Sicily. The ship's hull , built of iron , was 93.27 meters long, 10.48 meters wide and had a side height of 8.93 meters. It also had six watertight bulkheads . The Trinacria had a single propeller , a single chimney, and three masts with the rigging of a barque .
The two composite steam engines of the Trinacria , which came from the Finnieston Steamship Works in Glasgow, developed 624 hp and allowed a maximum cruising speed of eleven knots (20.37 km / h). The Trinacria was built for transatlantic passenger traffic and initially operated on the Glasgow - Liverpool - Halifax - Saint John - New York route. On September 2, 1871, the steamer ran from Glasgow on its maiden voyage across the North Atlantic and reached New York on September 26.
By May 4, 1874, the Trinacria completed 18 crossings on this route. In December 1872 and July 1874, she undertook a longer Mediterranean excursion, calling at the ports of Trieste , Messina , Palermo and Valencia . By October 1879, the ship sailed 13 times from Liverpool to Bombay and back. In 1882 there were renovations, in the course of which the passenger capacities were changed. The Trinacria could now accommodate 69 first-class passengers and 910 third-class travelers. The volume increased from 2107 GRT to 2256 GRT. Until 1893 she steamed from Glasgow to various ports of call in the Mediterranean and then on to New York.
Downfall
On Wednesday, February 1, 1893, the Trinacria left Glasgow under the command of Captain Samuel Murray for another voyage to the Mediterranean. Murray had commanded several ships on the Anchor Line. However, this was his first voyage as captain of the Trinacria . On February 2nd, a stop was made in Greenock . On board were 37 crew members and only four passengers. The passengers were three women, Miss Stirling, Miss Sevell and Mrs. Bell, and a child, Kitty Smith. The next stop should be Gibraltar on February 9th. The end of the trip was Naples .
On the way through the Bay of Biscay , the weather worsened considerably. The sea was getting stormy and visibility was extremely poor. On Tuesday, February 7th, the Trinacria passed the coast of Galicia in a southerly direction. There was dense fog, so on board the steamer the lighthouse of Cape Vilan could not be identified. One had lost one's orientation on board. At 6 a.m. on February 7th, the Trinacria ran aground four nautical miles northeast of the Cabo Vilán lighthouse near Cape Finisterre . A large hole was torn in the hull, through which large amounts of seawater quickly poured in.
The stuck ship immediately began to break apart under the tremendous waves. The four passengers were placed in a lifeboat , but drowned when it capsized and sank. Then a breaker crashed into the trinacria , snapping the chimney and masts and throwing them overboard. The people still on board were washed into the sea. Seven crew members made it ashore alive. The force of the waves tore their clothes off, so that they reached the shore mostly naked. 34 people were killed, including all passengers, the captain, the chief officer and the ship's doctor . Several bodies and large parts of the cargo were washed up from the broken wreck onto the bank.
The accident occurred near the spot where on November 9, 1890 the torpedo cruiser Serpent of the Royal Navy sank after a rock collision. Only three of the 276 people on board had survived.
Web links
- The Anchor Line steamship Trinacria (with picture)
- Technical and historical data of the Trinacria
- Full details about the construction and use as well as the sinking of the Trinacria (below)
- The Anchor Line's new steamship Trinacria ( New York Times report of September 27, 1871)
- Only seven survivors ( New York Times report , February 10, 1893)