Frank Fowler

“ It would be useless to delay this Narrative for any further particulars from Molfra. One knows so well what the nature of those particulars will be—fresh bodies, more tattered rags, more copper bolts and bars twisted like wire, more iron plates and beams gnawed by the sea as dogs gnaw bones, more recognitions by disconsolate friends of those whom, long ere this, they had hoped to welcome at an English fireside! ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a small opening in the coast, the beach being chiefly sand and stones. It is to the west of Point Lynas, and known as Molfra, a village in the immediate locality, being of that name. The coast is thinly inhabited, and the land flat and uncultivated. Very soon after the fatal catastrophe, which resulted in such an awful sacrifice of human life, the vessel broke up, and nothing remains but pieces of the wreck, which were moved to and fro by the action of the tide. As one of the seamen described it, she broke up like a bandbox. ”

“ In these intervals of dead quiet, no woodwork, joint, or junction of iron and timber, emitted an audible sound—no creaking was heard,—and at night there was sometimes a quiet most striking in its stillness. Of cases of this perfect quiet in time of heavy sea, squalls, and storm, I frequently noted intervals of seven and eight seconds, of ten to twelve, sometimes twenty up to twenty-four seconds, where there was not motion sufficient to break a silence of repose like that of dock or harbour. ”

“ 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 two 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. ”

“ Here was a large stout ship, one of the kind and size which assumed to enjoy an immunity from the power of the tempest—left to work its will on small craft and old crazy tubs—well manned, well commanded, nothing neglected that art or experience could suggest, offering as useless a resistance to the storm as the worn-out hulls in which greedy owners were wont to convey poor Irish emigrants. A blunder on the part of some one would have allowed us to cherish the idea that security is possible, and may be guaranteed, to stout material and good seamanship ”

“ The officers of the ship either hoped against hope, or endeavoured to alleviate the agony of the passengers by assuring them there was no immediate danger. A Portuguese sailor, Joseph Rogers—his name deserves to be recorded—volunteered to convey a rope on shore through the heavy surf, and succeeded in his attempt. Had time been given no doubt every person on board could now have been safely conveyed on shore; but it was fated that the end should be otherwise. One tremendous wave came after another, playing with the “Royal Charter” like a toy, and swinging her about on the rocks. ”

“ The dweller in cities, on the other hand, with all his habitual scepticism and indifference, who peeps at the moon as at a raree show, and takes a return ticket to go and gape at an eclipse from some distant hill in the country—your acute, hard-headed, practical man on Change, in the Law-court, in the Club, stares and marvels like a mere baby when he is brought face to face with the terror and mystery of Nature in any of her sublimer moods. ”

“ A heavy sea broke across the starboard bow and swept every one from the forecastle—about sixty or seventy. During the whole time we were trying to wear and stay the ship, the captain was on board. I saw him frequently, and he was sober. I have been four or five voyages at sea. Considering the gale of that night, I do not think the captain could have done more than he did to save the vessel. I do not think I observed any change in the wind after we passed Point Lynas. I never mind the wind or the course of the vessel. The wind freshened and blew stronger and stronger. ”

“ All the officers, save, as we mentioned yesterday, the carpenter and a boatswain’s mate, perished. Captain Taylor was the last man seen alive on board. A few of the crew saved themselves; the remainder were hurled upon the rocks, and suffered a speedy but agonizing death. It is some miserable consolation, however, to record that between thirty and forty of the passengers and seamen were enabled to save their lives by means of the hawser, rigged at the peril of his life by the man described as a Negro. ”

“ How the vessel came upon the coast is a question running parallel with the foregoing, and the character of the captain, as set forth in that newspaper communication of mine, comes in here with answer. That answer, we all desire, should carry due amount of weight with other commanders of ships with precious freight of human souls on board. There are a few iron plates, rolled up like shrivelled parchment, on the rocks of Molfre Bay. ”

“ Full service in a cathedral is nothing to it. Jack in his clean shirt, and with that same Bible in his hand which his mother gave him years ago, when his face, now hardened with brine and scarred with sleet, was the pride of the old woman’s heart, is as impressive a figure to me as the finest-clad young neophyte who ever swung a censer. ”

“ His whole time during my sojourn on the ship was spent in looking after the engines, and entering into amusing discussions with the purser on the right pronunciation of words. Poor fellow!
The purser (Mr. Lewis) was one of the best men that ever walked the earth. He did justice to passengers and owners, and at the time when we ran short of food, I knew him, with all the ship’s stores at his command, to abstain from dinner, that the children of the intermediate and steerage passengers might in turn receive his share of the slender stock of dainties left to us on board. ”

“ No life-boat could live in the raging sea, and the boats of the vessel herself were perfectly unavailable.’
From the foregoing, a picture only too vivid of the catastrophe may be realized. The Boatswain’s Mate describes the storm; Mr. Russell paints the ship with all its intense and death-foreboding excitement; and Mr. Bradbury conveys, with dread distinctness, the manner in which the handful of saved fought their way from the jaws of death. ”

“ One would have thought the best accommodation the best hotel in Liverpool could afford would have been prepared by the owners of the wrecked vessel in anticipation of the arrival of the poor creatures whose all, save life, had been buried beneath the waves.
In penning my narrative up to this point, it is impossible but that the reader should have felt a large amount of interest [Pg 41] in the captain and officers of the vessel. Whatever mistake of those in command may have brought the ship so near the coast, the heart of every one must swell as he reads how heroically the storm was coped with. ”

“ We can well imagine the buoyant spirits of the young, and the calmer joy of the old, at the near prospect of the happy close of their long sojourn on the wide waters. But He, in whose hands are the issues of life and death, willed otherwise. The ship left the shores of Ireland on Monday last, all well; on Tuesday a gale arose, which towards night became a tempest of surpassing violence. The doomed vessel was driven towards the Welsh coast, and there her fate was sealed. There is at present no reason to suppose that in this sad disaster any want of precaution ”

“ 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 inexplicable chances a providential order of its own. Here, for instance, was a ship touching at Queenstown, and landing thirteen 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 ”

“ Iron built, supplied with all the improvements of modern shipbuilding, aided with the auxiliary power of steam, and manned with a sufficient crew, well officered and commanded, it would have seemed almost out of the range of probability that such a ship should have been drifted upon a lee shore in a familiar locality by a gradually increasing storm, and there shattered to fragments, and engulfed, with well nigh all her human freight, within a few hours’ sail of her own port. ”

“ It is said, with great indignation, that when Captain Martin (the representative of Messrs. Gibb and Brights) arrived here, with the rescued passengers, in the steam-tug which had been despatched to the scene of the wreck, he left them standing upon the landing-stage; and had they not been received at the Sailors’ Home, they would have had to wander all night about the streets.’
This, of a verity, is caring more for gold than human bodies. ”

“ At nine o’clock the hot water is served, when each brews his glass of toddy—baling out a wine-glass of the smoking liquor for his lady neighbour—and jollity holds sway for the remainder of the evening. Those who don’t understand Hoyle—who are dummies at whist, dull at dominoes, and regularly thrown on their backs with regard to all-fours—who think draughts dry, and see no point in backgammon—generally retire to the poop after tea, to get up their little music and dancing parties, and warble and waltz gaily enough ’neath the light of the glistening stars. ”

“ The view from the poop and forecastle which my wife and some others of our ladies witnessed for considerable periods together, even in the height of the gale, was one, especially during the favourable [Pg 62] occasions of bright sunshine, of sublime magnificence; whilst the general view of the tumultuous waters as we looked astern, as the ship was scudding before the storm, and as we marked the waves rolling perpetually onward, and overtaking in succession the swift-sailing ship, presented a picture of striking grandeur. ”

“ Whilst it is most gratifying to think that no prudence could have averted the disaster, and that no blame attaches to the memory of a man who perished as Captain Taylor did, at his post, it is lamentable to reflect that no application of human ingenuity is able to withstand the elemental rage. ”

“ After the first thump against the rocks, the ship rebounded, only to thump again with fearful force in a few moments by the stern; for it was in the attempt to steam away from the coast, nearly head to wind, that the first crash took place. Then she was completely at the mercy of wind and wave; and as soon as the screw ceased working her position changed, and she went broadside against the rocks. Still she did not lurch. At this juncture a negro sailor volunteers to swim through the surf with a hawser, and thus to gain a communication with the shore. Lucky fellow! ”

“ Women must wring their hands, and strong men must weep, as they read that after a haven had been actually reached—after some of the passengers had even landed in Ireland, and set the telegraph in motion to tell their friends in distant places that they were safe on British soil—the ship should have been dashed to pieces by the merciless sea-spume, and that of the five hundred souls on board, four hundred and seventy should have perished!
‘I could write more. I knew so many of the brave officers [Pg 14] and crew who have perished. I knew the bluff, honest, daring captain. ”

“ Two experienced divers, who came from Liverpool in the steam-tug “Fury,” the property of Gibb, Brights, and Co., made a descent yesterday, and remained a considerable time under the water, but they saw no corpses beneath; neither did they find any gold; but they saw some copper. This morning they resumed their descents under very favourable circumstances as regards weather and the state of the sea. They have discovered no bodies; but up to one o’clock this afternoon they had succeeded, with the assistance given them by men on board the steam-tug, in raising about three tons of copper bars. ”