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  • annmanley 16 Sep 2009 at 21:34
    Due to the heavy loss of Australian lives in this ship-wreck, I have added a tag of "Family Notices"
  • cndyh1 5 Oct 2009 at 17:21
    F.T. Hutton (saloon passenger) listed as drowned in the Royal Charter shipwreck, was actually Francis Frederick Hutton, colonial painter/artist. Francis arrived in Australia in January 1850 and was returning home to Britain when the shipwreck occurred. There is no other Hutton listed in the detailed list of passengers and he was known to be aboard.

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20 corrections, most recently by ooohgetyou - Show corrections

THE WRECK OF THE ROYAL

CHARTER.

[From the Home News.]

On the morning of the 27th October the Times   published a brief telegram announcing the "loss, on   her way from Queenstown to Liverpool, of the Royal Charter, with over 400 passengers on board, of which number only about 20 were saved." It was not till about noon on the same day that this startling an- nouncement was confirmed ; and even then hopes were still cherished that it contained some element of exaggeration. That so famous a ship, which had been telegraphed two days before as being off Queenstown after a most prosperous voyage from Melbourne, should have been utterly lost within two or three hours' sail from Liverpool, with an enormous freight of life and treasure, appeared a catastrophe so appal- ling in its magnitude and suddenness as to be all but incredible. People ventured to hope that at least a large number of the passengers might have been safely landed at some point of the coast which did not pos- sess the means of rapid communication ; and that in a few hours more we should receive tidings of their rescue. The hope was vain. A mournful accumu- lation of authentic intelligence from the scene of the wreck proved ere long beyond the possibility of a   doubt that the first announcement, instead of being an exaggeration, was actually an under statement of the disaster. In another day, by putting together the various particulars supplied by the survivors, the newspapers were enabled to publish the following compendious narrative of one of the most astounding tragedies on record :—

After a splendid passage from Melbourne, accom- plished in 58 days, and after having landed 13 pas- sengers at Queenstown, and telegraphed her safe arrival to the owners, the Royal Charter made for Liverpool on the 25th of October. She had sailed from Melbourne with 388 passengers on board, and a crew, including officers, of 112 persons. After leaving Queenstown she took on board from a steam-tug 11 riggers who had been assisting in working a ship to Cardiff. Thus she had now on board 498 persons. Her cargo was small, consisting mainly of wool and skins. A more important item of her freight was gold and specie, which at the lowest estimate is here put at £500,000. On the evening of October 25, there was blowing from the E.N.E. a violent gale, which fell with full force on the ill-fated ship. She arrived off Point Lynas at 6 o'clock that evening, and for several hours Captain Taylor continued throwing up signal rockets, in the hope of attracting the attention of a pilot. None made his appearance. The gale in- creased in violence ; the ship was making leeway, and drifting gradually towards the beach. It was pitch dark ; no help was at hand. The captain let go both anchors, but the gale had now increased to a hurri- cane, and had lashed the sea up to madness. The chains parted, and, notwithstanding that the engines were worked at their full power, the Royal Charter   continued to drift towards the shore. At 3 a.m. she   struck the rocks in four fathoms of water. The pas- sengers, a large portion of whom were women and children, had till this moment no idea of the imminence of their peril. The most perfect discipline and order prevailed. The masts and riggings were cut adrift, but caused no relief, as the ship began to thump on the sharp-pointed rocks with fearful rapidity. Shortly after she struck, the ship was thrown broadside on, perfectly upright upon the shelving stony beach, the head and stern lying due east and west, the former not being more than 20 yards from a projecting rock. At this juncture one of the crew, a Maltese, named Joseph Rogers, nobly volunteered to struggle through the heavy surf and convey a rope on shore. Though it was not believed by any one that danger was imminent, the captain gave the order, and Rogers ably fulfilled his duty. A strong hawser was then passed and secured on shore, and to this was rigged a boatswain's chair. While this was going on a fearful scene was being enacted in the saloon. An attempt had been made by a Mr. Hodge, a clergyman, to perform a service ; but the violent thumping of the vessel on the rocks, and the sea which poured into the cabin, rendered this impossible. The passengers were collected here,   and Captain Withers and Captain Taylor were en- deavouring to allay their fears by the assurance that there was at any rate no immediate danger, when a

succession of tremendous waves struck the vessel and absolutely broke her in half amidships. Shortly after wards the foremost portion was again torn in half, and the ship began to break up rapidly. Several of the crew saved themselves by means of the hawser, while the remainder were hurled upon the rocks by the waves ; all the officers perished. Captain Taylor was the last man seen alive on board. He had lashed his body to a spar and was drowned. The whole number saved out of the 498 persons on board was 39.

A number of stirring leading articles on the wreck of the Royal Charter soon appeared in all the journals. Of these the most remarkable was one which appeared in the Daily News. We extract it here in full, as it gives the most vivid picture we have yet seen of all the salient features of the terrible

catastrophe :—

Last Tuesday night, when town and country were well abed, and let us hope not without thankfulness of heart, nor without having taken thought of "all   those who travel by land or sea ;"—when even the rancid haunts of vice in London were emptying, and the homeless were slinking off to snatch forgetfulness somewhere out of reach of wind and rain :—in the dead hour of a desolate night, desolate enough among streeet lamps flickering in a clammy fog, more deso- late still when a sickly moon peeved dimly through a drift of ragged cloud, and the wind howled and moaned with a roar of rage and anguish—in that desolate night and that dead hour one of those terrible calamities which are remembered for centuries was hurrying near five hundred of our fellow creatures to sudden death at sea, after a safe and prosperous voyage of twelve thousand miles, within six hours of port and within stonethrow of the long-wished-for

land. Heartrending and disastrous is the shipping intelligence of this week all round our coasts, but the wreck of the Royal Charter will be a melancholy fire- side tale among our children's children. If, indeed, what is called "progress" be truly defined as an in-   creasing dominion over time and space, then England, marching at the van, atones for her pre-eminence by many a hostage. We talk of bridging seas by the size and speed of our ships, but every now and then we offer up costly sacrifices to avenge our triumphs,

and correct our pride.

It would be easy for some glib interpreters of Provi- dence to pronounce homilies on the fate of a ship laden with the root of all evil, and of men hasting to be rich ; for it is certain that the Royal Charter had at least £500,000 on board, and that many of her passengers were returning from Australia with fortunes in their hands. But this catastrophe may point, we think, a safer and more serviceable moral. To mortal sight human destinies are at best a chaos, and it is not for mortal wisdom to presume to fabricate out of inex- plicable chances a providential order of its own. Here, for instance, was a ship touching at Queens- town, and landing 13 passengers, one of whom left his wife on board to pursue her voyage to Liverpool, and, as it turned out, to meet death on the way ; here were ten poor riggers, just returned from working a vessel to Cardiff, taken on board from a steam-tug in the Channel and five of them condemned to perish

with a ship that had come all the way from Australia in safety. Who will presume to judge ? "The one was   taken and the other left." Let us be content to moralise more humbly and humanely on the fate of our fellow-creatures. It were a miserable task, while the bodies of the poor castaway people are still awaiting Christian burial, to look about for whom to blame, when all but a score are beyond the reach of blame or praise. It is easy for us to wonder and regret that the Royal Charter should ever have   passed on from Queenstown and sailed up the Irish   Channel without a pilot in wild and threatening   weather—that without a pilot, and with a northerly gale coming on, she should have passed by Holyhead,   and kept hugging a dead lee shore at night along the   most dangerous line of all our coast. Any one who  

knows that coast, or who has even glanced at a chart,   cannot fail to be struck with consternation at the bare   thought of such a ship as the Royal Charter keeping  

that Welsh land close on board in the worst of weather, night coming on, without a pilot, in the hope of finding one, and for the sake of saving a few hours at the close of an astonishingly rapid and suc- cessful passage.

How the Royal Charter ever had the right to get into that atrocious Dulas Bay, where the rocks stick up, like jagged teeth, is a question quite as easy to ask as it is difficult to understand how the Royal Charter should have ventured to pass Holyhead in a gale without a pilot. From Holyhead to the point where the ship struck is all danger ; and though with the wind off the land and a pilot on board, the course for a ship bound to the Mersey may be in shore, was it the safe course, it may be asked, under opposite cir- cumstances ? Yet it is not to be presumed for a moment that the common signs of weather, or the rules for approaching land, were deliberately set at nought,

or that the weather-glasses were not consulted, or that the tidal currents and the notorious indraught on the Welsh coast were forgotten or neglected by the lamented commander of the Royal Charter and his officers, none of whom, alas ! remain to tell the story. From the moment when it was found that the ship could not make head against the hurricane and the in- draught, and that it was impossible to make the Mersey, the fate of the ship needs no explanation. Blue lights and rockets were burnt for a pilot ; but, as no one who knows Welsh pilots will be surprised to hear, no pilot appeared ; and, pilot or no pilot, it was now too late. The ship was hove to, and drifting helplessly into Dulas Bay. Here she let go her anchors, "keeping her screw working to ease the cables." One after the other the cables parted with the strain ; at half-past 2 she struck, the tide ebbing, and with the flood she went broadside on to the shelving beach, literally split in two amidships, and was smashed to pieces on the rocks. We are guilty of no presumption in drawing one conclusion, and that is, the worse than uselessness, the absolutely fatal mischief of the so-called "auxiliary" screw. The Royal Charter was, it should be remembered, an iron ship of 2,749 tons, "originally intended for a sailing vessel," but transformed into a screw steamer, "with   engines of 300-horse power." The value of these screw engines to a ship of this size and quality seems to us at least problematical ; at best it could only serve her in making away across the "calm belts ;" and as a   set off to this exceptional service, there was the dead weight of the engines and the space they occupied, often to no purpose. Whatever may have been the use of the auxiliary screw in calms, it is too certain that in working off a lee shore it was not only not serviceable, but disastrous ; it not only failed to claw the ship off, but it failed to ease the cables, and when the spars were cut away, the screw got fouled, and ceased to work. Is it absurd or un- just to suppose that had there been no auxiliary steam power in the Royal Charter she would never have been permitted to hug a lee shore at night in search of a pilot, with a hurricane dead on her weather bow, and strong indraught to the shore ? Had she trusted to her sailing powers only, would she not have con- sulted her weather-glasses more anxiously, and kept well out to sea ? We do not attempt to answer these questions, but we ask them deferentially, sorrowfully, and under a due sense of responsibility.

By the arrival of a vessel from Australia about a fortnight after the wreck, Messrs. Gibbs, Bright, and Co. obtained the following full list of the passengers who sailed by the Royal Charter. It will be ob- served that the survivors are specially noted in the

list :—

SALOON.—Hugh Bethune, Mr. and Mrs. Bruce, infant, and servant, W. Beamer, jun., Mr. and Mrs. Davis, two daugh- ters and two sons, Mr., Mrs., and two Miss Fowlers and servant. Mrs. Fenwick and four children, Mrs. Foster, Mr. J. and Mrs. Grove, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner (Mr. Gardiner landed at Cork), Mr. Gundry (saved), F. T. Hutton, Rev.

Charles Hodge, Dr. Hatch, J. S. Henry, Mr. and Mrs.   Jenkins and five sons, Walter Lafargue, Mr. J. B., Mrs.,   Miss, and Master Murray, Joseph McEvoy (landed at Cork),   Mr. Mellor, Mr. Molineaux, W. H. Morse (saved), R. F. Macgeorge, Mrs. Nahmer and child (landed at Cork), Mr. W. H. and Mrs Pitcher, two children, and servant, Mr. Rufford,

Mrs. Tweedale, Mr. Henry E. Taylor, child, and servant (Mr. Taylor saved), Mr. Welsh, Captain Withers, Mrs. Woodruff and child, Mr. G Watson.

SECOND CLASS.—Mr. Allen and two children (landed at Cork), Captain Adams, Mr. Barratt and Child (son), Charles Callis, Mr. and Mrs. Dodd and two children, Miss F. Davis, Mr. Eddowes, — Bird, Edward Gates, T. E. Gapper (saved), Mrs. Glover, John Griffiths, Mr. Henderson, William Hariden or Horden, John Loone (saved), — Lethlaine, L. E. Mention (saved), John Maule, Mr. McNab, T. Macready, — Nicholas, Mrs. Norman and two children, Mr. Portnay, Mr. Perry, Edmund Pearce, Mrs. R. Rose, Mr. and Mrs. Russell and two children (Mr. Russell saved), Mr. and Mrs. Smith and three children, Solomon Samuel, Mr. Lausan, or Sanson, Julius Stirko, or Stirks (landed at Cork), Miss Elizabeth Ward, Miss Mary Ellen Wrigley, Edwd. Watson, John Wilks, Mr. Watson, John Bradbury (saved), Mr. Lyons and family (wife and three children) two sons aged 10 and 12, J. Trusteman and family (two children), Henry Burns and child (landed at Cork), Nathaniel Nathan, Alice Newton, Jos. Churton, John and Catherine Drygan or Yaggan (landed at Cork), John Judge (saved), Maurice Boyle, James Dean (saved), Wright Lock- wood, Jos. Moss, Mr. Faulkner and child, Robert Jeffery, P. De la Landa, David Thompson, Mrs. Kennedy and family (two children), Thomas Willis, J. Wickett and party, C. Jakeman, Messrs. Jones and Rice, C. Kisterman, Messrs. Culina, Sturt, and Lyon ; Charles Conway, Mr. Kirkbride and two sons, Mr. Kennedy and family (wife and three chil- dren). William Banks, David Thomas, C. R. Ross, W. S. Fenis (saved), J. McCappin (saved), T. Taylor, Robert Hagarth or Hogarth, Henry Eughans, William and John Row, Messrs. Tripit and Lowe, William Makepeace, Thomas Fawcett, William Boden (saved), James King, Denis Collins, William and T. Murray, John Buchanan, Coll. McPhall (saved), Jos. Robinson, Alex. Pottinger, R. Oliver and party, P. Hogarth and family (one child), Wm. Ford, C. Shanahan, David Bell, William Wilson, George Smith, Michael Frawley, Messrs. Derose and Kenny, John Fainby, R. Laystaff, Frank Webber, Geo. Watson. Mr. Hol- land and family (three children), Isaac Stephenson, Mrs.

Athey and child, T. Newton, Agett Richards, James Stanard   (saved), Edmister and Ellis, Mr. Terril, Jessie Thomden, Baptiste Phillipine, Bates and Rosely, James Johnston, James Pardy, Jos. Spyaglio, George Chesney, Thomas Byrne, John Grice, Matthew Scott, Houghton and Thomson, T. Wood, Thomson and Milliken, Noah Lyons, William Green, Robert Tuck, Joseph Gibson, John Wotherspoon, John Lynch, Charles Anderson, P. Thomson, E. Fowler, H. Ivey, L. Porut, Michael Kavanagh, Antonio Albergath, Driffin and Rolla, Morelli and Cavagna, John and P. Martin, George Leitu, Henry Lawton, George Taylor, Samuel Gren- fell (saved), E. Allen, John Anderson, S. Dalton, William Storey, W. Crowley, Mrs. Ross and family (two children, one an infant), D. Travers, T. Wyatt, James Sullivan, James Turner, Mr. Cartney and family (three children), B. Bladier, Mr. Paderitte, William Bishop, Mrs. Willis and family (two children), John Gillespie, Thomas Kelly, Mr. Mitchell and wife. William Flemming, John Scott, John Muhlmann, Charles Parkinson, John Parkinson (or Ranston), James Pamplin, Miss Davidson, Henry Sims, John Manion, Samuel Mosely Wade, Nicolia Le Page, Mr. McLeod and family (two children), William Tany, John Inglis, Richard Davis, Joseph Potts, Frank Hoyland,

E. Willray, Miss Susannah Morton, John Mason, T. Bakewell, James Black, Beratti Vingenga.

THOSE OF THE CREW WHO WERE SAVED.—Wm. Foster, carpenter, George Swaicar, boatswain's mate, Edward Wil- liams, ditto, Thomas Cormick, steward, John Staniard, ditto, Thomas Ellis, storekeeper, Owen Williams, quarter- master, Walter Hughes, apprentice, David Strongman, second quartermaster, Tom Tims, seaman, Patrick Devine, rigger, James White, ditto, John H. Richards, ditto, Thomas Cunningham, ditto, William Barton, ditto, W. Dreaper, seaman, John O'Brien, ditto, Joseph Rogers, ditto, Henry Evans, ditto, Thomas Griffiths, ditto, William McCarther, Edward Wilson, ditto, G. Girvin, ditto—23.

The scene of the wreck is Moelfra, about nine miles from Beaumaris, and three or four miles from where the Rothsay Castle was lost many years ago. Red Wharf Bay is situated about three miles to the west- ward of Puffin Island, Menai Straits, and six or seven miles to the north-west of Beaumaris. With the ex-

ception of the bay, which is very sandy and shallow,

the coast is rocky and bold.

Just on the eve of the dreadful disaster the pas- sengers, believing their voyage at an end, had pre- sented Captain Taylor with a piece of plate in testi- mony of their appreciation of his ability and kind- ness. On the day of the wreck the captain's wife and his two daughters were awaiting him on the North Landing Stage at Liverpool.  

It will be readily imagined that the wreck of the Royal Charter was a topic impressively dwelt upon from many a pulpit on the following Sunday. Not the least impressive discourse which referred to it was that of the Rev. Mr. Binney, who, had his wife not desired to make the journey overland, might possibly have sailed for England in the ill-fated ship. A statement was lately published to the effect that Mr. Binney had at one time, positively determined to take his passage in the Royal Charter, and had been prevented by the merest accident from doing so. At a meeting, however, of his friends and congregation, held some evenings ago at the London Tavern for the purpose of giving him a "welcome home," Mr. Binney said :—"The fact was, that he had a desire   to return by Cape Horn ; but Mrs. Binney had decided three months previous to their return, to come overland. If, however, they had not decided to come overland, they would most probably have come by the Royal Charter, as she lay in Melbourne at the

time."

THEBARTON RACES.—In consequence of the   demand upon our space occasioned by the arrival of the English mail, we are unable to publish our report of the last day's races. We shall, however, do so to-morrow, and meanwhile give the names of the horses entered for each race, and the winners :—No. 1 race, the Beaten Stakes. There were seven entries for this race—Mr. Lowe's b. g., Rambler, aged ; Mr. G. Bennett's b. m. Miss Fanny, 3 yrs. old ; Mr.Hughes's blk. m. Zella, aged ; Mr. J. Harvey's b. h. Blood Royal, 3 years old ; Mr. W. Crane's blk. m. Adelaide, 4 yrs. old; Mr. Dodd's b. m. Creeping Jane, 5 yrs. old ; Mr. W. M. Formby's b. g. John Bull, 2 yrs. old. The first heat was won by Adelaide ; the second heat by Blood Royal ; and the third and last heats by Miss Fanny. For the first Hurry Skurry race there were entered—Mr. Jones's Reindeer, Mr. Powell's Hammer, Mr. Tunstall's Cossack, Mr. Wood's Tiger, Mr. Fisher's Bee, and Mr. Wood's Rosebud. Mr. Wood's Tiger was the winner. A second Hurry Skurry, and a number of hack races followed, particulars of which we shall give in our full report.

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