The Princess Alice Disaster

by Joan Lock

  As it was, Captain Harrison agreed that the pilot had been in charge. Nonetheless, in his evidence, he made statements such as ‘I ported hard’ and ‘I stopped my vessel when the collision was inevitable’, which suggested otherwise.1

  Both Mr Myburgh for the Bywell Castle and Mr Nelson for Dix the pilot agreed on the Bywell Castle’s liabilities, citing a similar case of the collision of the steamships Ostrich and Benbow only nine months earlier. The steamer, Ostrich, had been sailing downstream en route to Newcastle loaded with passengers and a light cargo. Coming upstream was a heavier ship, the Benbow, returning from Rotterdam carrying cattle and cargo. Both vessels were owned by the General Steamship Company. On collision, both suffered heavy damage, but the Ostrich was cut in two and sank immediately. Five people were drowned; three sleeping passengers and two crew.

  This accident had occurred a little further upstream, in Woolwich Reach rather than Gallions Reach. In that instance, the vessel coming downstream, the Ostrich, had been the one which had suffered most damage and lost lives. But there were disputes as to which vessel had made a sudden wrong move: the Ostrich starboarding – making for the north shore – with the Benbow following suit shortly afterwards. And there was the question of who was in charge, the captain or the pilot?

  The verdict reached then was that the fault lay with the Ostrich. The Benbow, coming upstream, had naturally, after rounding Hockness Point, headed for the north bank where the tide was less slack. Therefore the Ostrich should not have gone there. The evidence of the Ostrich’s captain and pilot was also judged unsatisfactory. The Ostrich’s pilot was found guilty of gross misconduct and the captain had his certificate suspended for six months. However, it was found that the Benbow was not without blame.

  The question of civil liability, which Captain Pim had raised with regard to the Bywell Castle, was a different matter, said Mr Nelson. (Pim claimed that a ship’s master, and therefore the owners, were liable for the actions of the pilot. But Mr Nelson held that in the case of an ‘exempt ship’ – that is, one not obliged to carry a pilot – the pilot was responsible.)

  The coroner disagreed:

  Supposing that I, being the owner of a carriage, gave the reins into the hands of a friend, and that I sat beside him. If, in such circumstances, he commits a criminal act I am not liable; but, nevertheless, I should be held civilly liable for the damage done.

  Mr Nelson agreed that that was precisely the state of the case here and added, ‘I may say at once that the pilot of the Bywell Castle takes full responsibility of what was done, and is prepared to abide by the consequences before the court’.2

  Captain Harrison described how he had seen the Princess Alice apparently heading for the north shore, then turning south, but suddenly starboarding her helm, which had led her under their bows. He was questioned by the Bywell Castle’s counsel, Mr Myburgh, as to why he was using ‘runners’ rather than the crew that had brought the ship into port.

  Harrison explained that most of his crew had signed on in Cardiff for a voyage to Sulina on the mouth of the Danube then back to London where they had been discharged, so he had taken on runners to make up the numbers for the voyage up the coast to Newcastle. But, he insisted, these men were in no way inferior. They were old sailors. ‘They are often the best we get. We should take them to sea if we could get them to go.’3

  Thus the possible accusation that the Bywell Castle was operating with a second-rate, inefficient crew was countered. Mr Hughes, for the Princess Alice, said he supposed that having runners saved money. Harrison agreed, but countered the suggestion that, being part owner, might have affected his judgement by pointing out that his share of the vessel was only a sixty-fourth. It was suggested that it had been unwise to be working with men he didn’t know, particularly Haines, who was at the wheel, and was asked how he selected them. To this he gave the rather strange reply that he did it by their looks, whether they looked like sailors.

  ‘Do you consider that a man’s looks are a sufficient guarantee to justify you in placing him at your wheel?’ asked Mr Moss, who was appearing on behalf of several bereaved relatives.

  ‘Yes,’ said Harrison.4

  The captain had already known Dix, the pilot, having served on a sailing ship with him fourteen years earlier, though he could remember little about him, but was sure he understood the vessel thoroughly. Not that he had had any choice about the appointment of Dix; he had been hired beforehand by the majority shareholders.

  A few survivors had accused the Bywell Castle crew of not doing anything to assist them while they were struggling in the water. This had already been refuted by a number of other survivors and was now denied by Harrison who described his actions directly after the collision:

  I knew immediately from the crash that there was going to be a very serious loss of life. I cut away the two lifebuoys on the upper bridge and threw them overboard. I went down along the main deck onto the forecastle. I saw some of my men there, and shouted out them to throw all the ropes overboard into the other vessel. I stopped on the forecastle until I saw the first men from the Princess Alice hauled up onboard. Then I shouted out, ‘Lay aft and get the boats out as quickly as you can.’

  He went up on the upper deck again where he told the chief engineer, the cook and the donkey-man to ‘lay on as quick as you can and get the boats out’. Then he ran aft, where he found that the two stewards had cut the lashings of the starboard after-boat.

  He sent one boat off with the chief engineer, the cook and the second mate and the other with the chief mate, the boatswain and the fireman. Then he threw over the between-deck ladder and went to assist getting the big boat out. By then they had the assistance of the men and the passengers from the Princess Alice. ‘I am sure that every rope in the ship was thrown overboard.’ (There were about thirty-six.)

  How long had all this taken?

  ‘Ten minutes. I should think all the people in the water were dead then.’

  How many did they save?

  ‘About twenty-eight, perhaps, in the boats and thirty-nine in the ship.’

  But, of course, the most pertinent questions were about his and the pilot’s actions just prior to the accident and whether the decisions they had made then were the right ones. Captain Harrison was sure they were. They had done all they could. However, asked under tough cross-examination whether a particular decision had been another of his mistakes the harassed captain answered, ‘The great mistake was to come out of dock at all.’

  They had seen the Princess Alice over land just before she rounded Tripcock Point and then she headed for the north shore.

  Therefore he thought it right to try and run between her and the south shore?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Had you known that the Princess Alice was going to port and keep in shore, could collision have been avoided?’ asked the coroner.

  ‘No, there would not have been time. I lost sight for a moment of both the red and green lights under her bow.’

  The coroner addressed Mr Nelson saying, ‘You will now see that the tendency of this evidence of Captain Harrison is to throw the blame on the dead man, the captain of the Princess Alice, Captain Grinstead, and therefore I think that Mr Hughes, who I suppose represents him as well at the Princess Alice, ought to have the privilege of cross-examining last.’

  Mr Nelson bowed to the coroner’s decision.

  ‘You see you cannot tell on whom the jury may ultimately consider the blame to rest,’ explained Carttar.

  There was much questioning as to whether they could have stopped their ship sooner and not ported just beforehand, but Harrison was of the opinion that it would not have made much difference.

  Harrison had read in the paper that Eyres had shouted at them, ‘Stop the ship, you will cut the people up’, and that he, Harrison, had replied, ‘What am I to do. My ship will go ashore if I do not.’ Harrison refuted this. ‘That is as baseless as the charge of inhumanity brought against me in the first instance, just as great a l
ie.’

  Then came the most lethal accusation against them, made by Purcell, that they had all been drunk. Harrison stated that he, Dix and the whole crew had been sober. ‘I was perfectly sober, as I always am. We cannot live without a little drop – most of us take a little drop. I take a little drop but I do not take too much. I do not get drunk. I have been a sober man all my life.’

  It transpired that there had been some variation in the statements he had given to the Receiver of Wrecks and the Board of Trade. The first had said that they stopped and reversed, the second, which was correct, just said that they stopped. The reason for the discrepancy was that the first had been made when he was in a state of great agitation.

  On seeing that the collision was inevitable, orders had been given to stop the engines. The order to go into reverse was also given but apparently, in the hubbub, never acted upon. That, Harrison thought, was probably a good thing as it would have taken them further away from the drowning people. They would not have been able to save so many and the passengers might have been injured by the fan of the screw.

  After a long and intensive cross-examination, Harrison became confused while demonstrating the position of ships on the chart, then burst out:

  On looking at the vessel approaching over the Point and not knowing what her usual course was, I thought she was on a port helm all the time. But now, after looking into it, I am convinced that the tide must have swept her over and not her port helm. I believe it now to be a mistake on my part that she was on a port helm, the tide must have swept her over.

  But he did not accept that it was his mistake that had caused the accident.

  Before standing down as a witness he said, ‘I wish to express my extreme regret at this terrible occurrence. Whatever the result of this inquiry may be, the fact that I commanded the Bywell Castle at the time of the collision will be to me a deep and lasting sorrow’.5

  Next into the fray was Christopher Dix who had been piloting exempted ships on the Thames for thirty-four years. He had been perfectly sober at the time of the collision having had nothing to drink all day except his usual glass or two of ale, he said. Haynes, the runner who had taken the wheel, was well known to him, had worked for him for years and was perfectly competent.

  He had seen the Princess Alice coming out of Barking Reach at Tripcock Point when she seemed to make for the north shore to get into the slack tide. ‘That is what river steamers do in nineteen cases out of twenty. It is very seldom they shave the point and come to the southwards.’

  His evidence, unsurprisingly, mostly echoed Harrison’s.

  Next morning, after the jury foreman had again had his say regarding the necessity of being given longitudinal sections of the Princess Alice, Dix was recalled for cross-examination. Since the pilot had admitted to being a little deaf, this was carried out in loud voices, which meant that the forthcoming revelation reverberated around the room.

  Had his licence ever been suspended, inquired Mr John Proctor, who was that day standing in for Captain Pim.

  It had, Dix admitted, in April of the previous year, when a ship he was piloting in a snowstorm had ‘unfortunately got ashore’ on Goodwin Sands.6 In this instance, the point was not the fearful reputation of the Goodwin Sands so much as the fact that Dix should never have been there in the first place. The Sands were about 70 miles beyond Gravesend and Gravesend was the limit of his pilot’s license – the ‘smooth water’ section of the Thames.

  As previously noted, the Princess Alice passenger numbers were also limited past Gravesend but, given the vagueness of passenger estimates following the accident, one wonders how strictly this restriction had been adhered to.

  The Times was of the opinion that the ‘most novel’ of the evidence given at that day’s inquest was that of the second mate, 36-year-old William Brankston, who described his actions following the collision.

  I immediately grasped a rope and slid down upon the forepart of the paddle box of the Princess Alice. I helped the people who had caught the ropes to climb up them, and cried to the others; but they only clambered to the highest part of the vessel. The Princess Alice, which was not much cut into by the Bywell Castle, broke in two while I was standing on her, and went down in the middle. I was just endeavouring to fasten a rope around woman’s waist when this happened … I heard the fires being drowned out by the water. I went down with the mass of people, but saved myself by climbing up a rope. The first man to help me on deck of the Bywell Castle was the first mate, who, very much surprised, said, ‘Wherever have you come from?’7

  Then the captain had sent Brankston on one of the boats by which they rescued fourteen people.

  He was asked whether he saved any by going down on the paddle box of the Princess Alice.

  ‘I helped people to climb the ropes, but I did not succeed in saving the woman round whose waist I tried to tie a rope.’

  The Times noted that several of the jury expressed their admiration of the witness’s conduct.

  More watermen and Bywell Castle crew gave evidence that more or less tallied with the opinion that the accident had been the fault of the Princess Alice suddenly starboarding her helm after making south. Dix had been recalled and in cross-examination refused to admit to error. This all became a little too much for Mr Hughes, of the Princess Alice, who remarked rather petulantly, ‘When you sank the barge off Greenwich, the fault was all the barge’s I suppose?’

  ‘I have every reason to believe so,’ said Dix and pointed out that he had since been employed by the steamer that had run her down.

  Then Hughes suggested that Dix was being well paid for his evidence and that ‘their side’ had been ‘most lavish’ in their payments to witnesses. The coroner advised him ‘not to go into that, unless you wish to throw a taint on everybody. It might provoke a retort’.8 The topic, however, was not to rest there.

  Like Harrison, when Dix stood down he said he could not leave without expressing his deep regret at the unfortunate accident and likewise his deep sympathy with the friends and relatives of the drowned.

  The frustration felt by the Princess Alice lawyers must have been mitigated a little by the knowledge that the most serious allegation against the captain, pilot and crew of the Bywell Castle – that they had all been drunk at the time of the accident – was about to be brought into sharp focus.

  Notes

  1. The Times, 27 September 1878.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Pall Mall Gazette, 26 September 1878.

  5. (Captain Harrison’s evidence and examination): The Times, 7 and 9 October 1878; Pall Mall Gazette, 26 September 1878 and Coroners’ Records COR/PA/10 & 22.

  6. (Dix’s evidence and examination): The Times, 27 and 28 September 1878.

  The Goodwin Sands were a ten-mile long sandbank in the English Channel, notorious as a danger to ships and thus the site of many a wreck. Its perils were mentioned by William Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice as being ‘very dangerous, flat and fatal, where the carcases of many a tall ship lie buried’ and it has since featured in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and many other works of fiction, even the James Bond novel, Moonraker.

  7. (Brankston’s evidence and examination): The Times, 28 September 1878 and Coroners’ Records COR/PA/11 & 22.

  8. (Dix’s recall and examination): Ibid.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Acute Memory Loss

  For a person whose accusations had caused such a stir, witness George Purcell, cut an unprepossessing figure. He was weedy, pale, shaky and unkempt.

  Led by the coroner, he told the jury that he had joined the Bywell Castle as a stoker on the day she left Millwall Docks and, unbidden, he added, ‘As far as I could see all hands were sober.’

  He then described his movements following the collision, including his trip down to Erith in one of the rescue craft.

  ‘Did any one of you say to anybody at Erith that the collision was only what was to have been expected as the pilot had been knocki
ng about drinking with the captain all the afternoon, and was drunk at the time?’ asked Carttar.

  ‘I cannot recollect,’ said the stoker.

  Carttar was having none of this and exclaimed, ‘Oh yes, you can recollect. It is a statement you would not forget. Did you make it?’

  ‘I cannot say I did.’

  ‘Now don’t fence with me,’ cried the coroner, ‘Did you make that statement to anybody?’

  ‘I have no recollection of it.’

  ‘Do you swear you did not make it?’

  ‘No, I cannot swear it.’

  Carttar did not give up but adopted a less confrontational tone. ‘Now you must know, as a sensible man, what was said by your company or what you yourself said to persons at Erith?’

  At this Purcell launched into a litany of excuses for his strange lack of recall. He had been in such a state of excitement, was half naked and shivering with cold at the time. If he did say it, it was an untruth. He would admit it if he could remember it, but could not swear that he had never said it. Neither would he swear that there was no such conversation between the crew and the people at Erith. But he had no recollection of any taking place.

  He went further, ‘There is no foundation whatever, to my knowledge, for saying that the captain and pilot were knocking about drinking on the afternoon of the day of sailing. It is my deliberate judgement that they were perfectly sober.’ Everyone at Erith had wanted to treat them, Purcell went on, and, as well as two brandies and a beer, he may have had a glass of rum. He was also given a coat – which he was still wearing.

  However, he did claim that some of the crew, who should have been in the engine room at the time of the collision, were not. Also that the Bywell Castle, contrary to their claims, did not stop the engines until after the collision. And also that, about twenty-five minutes after the collision, they had gone astern. When he returned from Erith he had seen the pilot Dix was in a ‘very excited state’, not saying anything to anybody but just walking about the deck trembling.