The Princess Alice Disaster

by Joan Lock

  6. The Times, 13 September 1878.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  So, Who Was to Blame?

  As well as criticism for allowing his log to be published, the captain of the Bywell Castle had been accused by various witnesses of not stopping and reversing after his collision with the Princess Alice.

  But the many other published statements had muddied the water, including the one in the Standard on Monday, 9 September, burial day. It was by Abraham Deness the owner of the barge Bonetta that had been moored near Beckton Gasworks at the time of the collision and who had taken part in the rescue efforts. The first part was his graphic account of this. How people were like a flock of sheep in the water, about their piteous shrieks and shouts, how from their frantic exertions to save themselves he hardly thought he should get out alive. But in the published version he also apportioned blame to the Bywell Castle:

  It is my firm opinion that if the Bywell Castle had not ported her helm she would have cleared the Princess Alice, and if the latter had not been there she must have gone ashore … It was just dark, but moonlight – the moon was just showing itself. The Princess Alice was keeping her course in a proper direction, and had no chance of avoiding a collision than by keeping the course she was going in. If the Bywell Castle had not ported her helm she must have gone clear. There was nothing else in her way to the northward for three-quarters of a mile.

  This question of who exactly was to blame for the accident was about to be considered at great length as, on 16 September 1878, the inquest was reopened, this time for the sole purpose of investigating the cause of the tragedy.

  However, before they began, Mr Carttar, the coroner, had something to say about two matters which had upset him. Firstly, one of the certified dead had sprung back to life due, of course, to an identification error. The following day The Times reported the gist of his speech:

  After all the pains they had taken to get the bodies identified beyond the risk of a mistake, he regretted to say – although, of course, the fact was satisfactory in one sense – that a person had been identified there and her body taken away, but it now turned out that she was alive. The case came under their notice on Thursday last, when Mrs Anne Dalton, now the wife of Leonard Dalton, stone and marble merchant, of 769, Old Kent Road, swore to the identity of her daughter, Mary Anne Cutler Drake, 20 years of age, a single woman, daughter of Stephen Drake, a woollen draper. Subsequently the clothes of the deceased person were identified as belonging to somebody else.

  Carttar had received a letter that morning from Leonard Dalton in answer to his note on the question, saying he had reason to believe Mrs Dalton had made a mistake. They had heard from her daughter and were sorry to have troubled him ‘but we are pleased to find her alive’. He returned the order for her clothes.

  The second thing that had annoyed Mr Carttar was the publication of affidavits purported to have been sworn on oath to the Receiver of Wrecks by Captain Harrison and crew members of both vessels, and the conclusions drawn from them. He had no objection to the stories of the survivors being published in the newspapers. They had doubtless purged their minds of some of the horror which they had undergone. However, nothing could be more indecent, improper and calculated to pollute the source of justice than the publication of these affidavits. Never, he told the jury, in all his long experience had he met this kind of behaviour. Therefore, they must make sure they based their findings solely on the evidence about to be put before them. Easier said than done. So much printers’ ink had been utilized over such a short time and so much of the material thus aired was of such intense interest to all concerned.1

  The Times reacted sniffily to Carttar’s comments. The depositions were perfectly legal and their publication had been for the public benefit. Some of their correspondents had founded useful observations in them (which, of course, was the problem). The newspaper went on to quote the pertinent Section 448 of the Merchant Shipping Act at great and tedious length, then continued with their justification: the great advantage of the depositions was that they were taken while the matter referred to was still fresh and they should not be withheld from those to whom they were of use. In any case, any member of the public could purchase a copy for a small fee from the Receiver of Wreck’s Office.

  One sees the coroner’s point of view. Leaky officialdom and unabashed trial by newspaper had become a prominent and worrying part of the British justice system and the more forceful coroners often felt the need to issue reminders of their powers and the primary importance of their inquests.

  That all done, the jurors settled down to more long days at the town hall. Meanwhile, many of their businesses remained undermanned. Included among the nineteen men around that large table were two silversmiths, an upholsterer, an auctioneer, a carriage builder, two leather sellers, a milliner, a publican, a draper, a boot-maker, a grocer, a china dealer and another leather seller, most from Woolwich’s main thoroughfare, Powis Street, and the surrounding area.

  The jury was equipped with a survey of the river and models of the Princess Alice and the Bywell Castle. Mr Carttar began the work proper by announcing that he intended to centre the whole case on William Beechey, the first person to be identified after his wife grew worried when he didn’t return from his work in the City. The verdict returned on his body would serve for all.

  The first of the witnesses at the renewed inquest was Mr Herbert Oliver Thomas, surveyor to the Woolwich Local Board of Health. He produced an ordnance survey map on which he had marked the position of the wreck, but he was taken apart by the various lawyers when he admitted to not having taken any actual measurements, instead working out the position by drawing intersecting lines. Then Mr Carttar had him admit to having no previous experience of nautical surveys and (after claiming he had drawn the map of his own volition) that it had been the idea of the owners of the Princess Alice. Not a good start.

  Clearly the coroner would have to take into account that the loyalties of the Woolwich witnesses would tend towards the Princess Alice and its owners. Blame had been laid at the door of the Princess Alice as well as the Bywell Castle: that she had been overloaded; that she had actually been stationary before impact and that saloon steamers made a habit of tacking recklessly to and fro across the river to ‘cheat the tide’. And so on.

  Next came the much-bereaved Mr William Wrench Towse, Manager of the London Steamship Company. He produced the Princess Alice’s passenger number certificates and her technical description: she had been built at Greenock in 1865, was 219 ft long and 20 ft wide. When loaded she drew 4–4½ ft of water, carried twelve lifebuoys in prominent places and two boats, one fitted as a lifeboat. It took her two and a half hours to get from London to Gravesend which was a distance of 23½ miles.

  Then came the most eagerly awaited witnesses. Those who had actually been there on the night and thus who might reveal exactly what happened and who was to blame.

  Six out of the Princess Alice’s fourteen crew members had survived: George Thomas Long, the first mate; John Eyres, the substitute steersman; John Richard Rand, the apprentice and lookout; Ralph Wilkinson, the second mate; Henry Young, the foremast hand; and Thomas Longhurst, the engineer.

  The first of the crew to appear before the resumed inquest was one of the two men most likely (aside from the late Captain Grinstead) to be able to put them in the picture, First Mate George Thomas Long. Long had sailed the Thames for twenty-five years and had a mate’s certificate of competency for a home-trade passenger ship. He had given a statement to the Receiver of Wrecks which he now went over and elaborated.

  He explained that, on leaving Rosherville, Rand and Eyres had taken over the wheel, which was situated between the two funnels on the saloon deck. The captain was on the bridge which stood just over the wheel ‘but rather before it’. He (Long) was on the fore-saloon acting as lookout. Wilkinson, the second mate, was on deck.

  At 7.42 p.m., as they came up towards Tripcock Point, Long noticed the green light and masthead light
of a steamer heading towards them midstream down Gallions Reach. It would take, he estimated, about fifteen minutes to reach them. He was sure Captain Grinstead would have seen this oncoming vessel.

  The navigation rule of the river was that vessels should pass green light to green light or red light to red light, the green light being on the left hand, or port side, and the red on the right, or starboard side. He could still see the green light of the Bywell Castle and expected they would pass starboard to starboard, green to green. The Princess Alice starboarded her helm to pass around the point and avoid the Talbot powder boat and line of ships moored beyond that on the left in Gallions Reach. At no time, Long insisted, were they nearer to the centre of the river than a hundred yards.

  Suddenly, to his horror, he had seen all three lights of the approaching ship – which meant she was heading straight towards them. He heard Captain Grinstead shout, ‘Ease her!’ ‘Stop her!’ and then ‘Stop!’

  As he rushed aft to lower the starboard lifeboat he realized that the engines had stopped. Aware that they would have no time to lower the lifeboat in the normal fashion he took out his knife to cut the lashings and heard the captain shout, ‘Hoy, hoy! Where are you coming to?’ Then he felt the blow of the collision. Within two minutes the pleasure steamer had sunk.

  The Princess Alice had never stopped from starboarding her helm, he insisted. Had the Bywell Castle been held to starboard or kept straight, Long claimed, there would have been no collision.

  The jury foreman and the lawyers cross-questioned him on his knowledge of rules for navigation of the River Thames, such as 29d of the Thames Conservancy By-Laws which stated:

  If two vessels under steam are meeting end on, or nearly end on, so as to involve risk of collision, the helms of both shall be put to port, so that each may pass on the port side of the other.

  It was clear he had not heard of such a rule, but also that there seemed to be general confusion about this, and neither did there appear to be any clear rule regarding whether a ship was going up or downstream.

  ‘Was the captain sober?’ the coroner asked suddenly.

  ‘Yes, I never saw him the worse for liquor in all my life.’

  ‘Were the two men at the wheel sober?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were they accustomed to steer?’

  The questioning was becoming pointed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were the watermen licensed watermen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The most pertinent question was about to be asked.

  ‘Is there any truth in the statement that a perfect stranger to the vessel was steering; and had the wheel with the sanction of the captain?’

  ‘That is right,’ Long replied.

  ‘Why did you not state that?’

  ‘You never asked me that question.’

  ‘Who was steering?’

  ‘Eyres and Creed. Eyres was the stranger.’

  Then you gave me a wrong answer when you said that he was one of the crew, and that his duty was to steer.

  Creed had drowned, so it was 28-year-old John Eyres, the substitute steersman, on whom the spotlight now fell.

  When it was established how Eyres came to be at the wheel, having taken over from a crew member at Gravesend, the coroner continued his interrogation.

  ‘Of the two men at the wheel, whom do you consider was the head man?

  ‘Creed.’

  ‘Why Creed?’

  ‘He was the man that belonged to the ship.’

  ‘Yes, but inasmuch as the other man had the order of the captain to steer, did not the steering rest with the stranger?’

  ‘No more than with Creed.’

  At this juncture someone pointed out that Eyres was in court. ‘Then he had better go out of court,’ said the coroner, ‘along with the rest of the witnesses.’ Then he got back to his probing for the truth.

  ‘When two men are at the wheel, there is but one who takes the run and the other who helps him?’

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘Do you mean to say Eyres was not the man really at the wheel making the movements?’

  ‘He was at the wheel.’

  ‘Why did you tell me Creed was the principal one?’

  ‘Eyres was the steersman and Creed was assisting him.’

  Poor Long was becoming confused. When the inquest resumed after lunch the foreman asked him which man was in charge of the wheel and he replied it was the man on the port side. When asked who was on the port side he replied ‘Creed’.

  ‘But,’ said the coroner, ‘you have just told us that Eyres was in charge of the wheel.’

  ‘Yes, or rather they were both at the wheel.’

  But the coroner had another potentially damaging question. Long had explained that his duty was to assist the captain.

  ‘How was it,’ inquired the coroner, ‘that the moment the necessity for assisting the captain arose, you ran aft?’

  ‘To save lives by lowering the lifeboat,’ Long replied.

  Captain Bedford Capperton Trevelyan Pim, MP, RN, whose colourful naval career had included long sled journeys searching for Sir John Franklin in the Arctic and suffering wounds while commanding a gunboat in the Baltic, was the barrister appearing on behalf of the relatives of the victim, Mr Bridgeman. Pim returned to this subject by asking what induced him to run aft to lower the lifeboat instead of running to the skipper to ask him whether he could be of any use.

  ‘To save life.’

  ‘Whose life?’

  ‘The passengers’.’2

  Apart from attempting to establish just who was steering the doomed vessel, the most persistent question and accusation was that the Princess Alice had ported her helm as she came round the point. Even, in fact, that she had been making for the north shore, as many saloon steamers did when criss-crossing the river to take advantage of tides and currents. Long denied this vehemently.

  John Eyres was in no doubt who had been steering from Erith onwards. ‘I was in charge and Creed, who is my half-brother, came to assist me.’ That relationship was news.

  Eyres said that he was a mercantile seaman who had sailed onboard fishing smacks and Mediterranean and Baltic steamers as boatswain, but he had not steered them. He was, he admitted, quite unacquainted with the river and had never steered a vessel as long as the pleasure steamer (220 ft). The only vessel he had steered on the Thames was a tugboat. He was steering purely by the orders of the captain. On rounding Tripcock Point the captain said, ‘Mind your helm on account of the downtide’.

  ‘By that understood that I was to hold the helm tight to prevent the vessel being swung off.’

  A number of witnesses testified that Tripcock Point deflected an ebb tide so that an offset current ran north across the river towards Beckton Gasworks pier. A ship coming upstream, round the point, encountered two forces successively: first the cross current acting on her port bow and opposing a starboard helm, then the ebb tide assisting the helm by pressing on the starboard bow. In fact, a vessel might first be taken towards midstream, giving the impression she was making for the north shore, and then, suddenly like a top she might spin towards the south.

  Eyres also blamed the Bywell Castle for porting its helm on approaching the Princess Alice. He had escaped by swimming to the Bywell Castle, grabbing a hawser and pulling himself onboard. He had begged the master to follow him but he declined saying he would stay at his post and telling Eyres to look after himself.

  Mr Hughes, solicitor for the Princess Alice and her owners, asked what the captain of the Bywell Castle was doing when Eyres got onboard.

  ‘Reversing his engines, and I told him the screw would cut people to pieces. He said, “What am I to do: I cannot let her drift ashore.” I said, “Better let her drift ashore than cut people to pieces.”’

  ‘That would explain the injuries which many of the dead received,’ said a juryman.

  The inquest was then adjourned until the following morning. When it resumed, Captain Bedford Pim cr
oss-examined Eyres. Whether the Princess Alice starboarded or not before impact, was the continuing bone of contention.

  ‘The helm was kept a-starboard,’ Eyres insisted. ‘I am quite certain I did not give the wheel a port stroke – not half a one.’

  ‘I may tell you,’ replied Captain Bedford Pim, ‘that when the wreck was examined the helm was to port.’

  Eyres was not fazed. ‘The tide would do that. Before we saw the screw we were on a starboard helm. We got close to the powder magazine 10–15 yd, or perhaps 20 yd.’

  ‘When did you see all the three lights of the Bywell Castle and then the red light by itself?’

  ‘About two minutes before the collision. Nothing then could be done by either party to avoid it.’

  Later Pim changed tack: ‘There has been a report circulating that the captain was not perfectly sober. Tell the jury the true state of the case.’

  ‘The man was quite sober as far as I know. I do not believe he had a glass of anything to drink that day.’3

  Next up was 21-year-old apprentice, John Richard Rand, the Princess Alice’s foremast hand who had been at the wheel with Creed until Eyres took over. He did not diverge from the previous witness’s version of events. He had climbed onboard the Bywell Castle just before Eyres and heard Captain Harrison order his ship to go astern and Eyres tell him not to or he would ‘grind people up’.4

  Then came 46-year-old Ralph Wilkinson, the Princess Alice’s second mate, who had been onboard for four summers and three winters. As a witness he turned out to be a bit of a disaster for the Princess Alice side. His duties included taking the wheel between Woolwich and London, to be about the deck looking out and coiling ropes to throw ropes at the piers when they docked.

  ‘I have no fixed post, but I walk about, and sometimes go below to smoke a pipe or get something to eat.’ He had no idea how near they had been to the screw steamer which had passed them before Tripcock Point (there had been an effort to show this had been a close shave), nor had he heard the whistle warnings to the Bywell Castle.