Shipwrecks are so rare these days that if they do happen they shock us. For example, when the cruise ship Costa Concordia ran onto rocks in 2012 and started sinking, it made international headlines. However, in Victorian times, shipwrecks were much more frequent events. Thirty-two people died on the Costa Concordia, but in the 1860s a similar number died at sea every week on the coast of Britain alone.

When asked to name a shipwreck most people think of the Titanic, or perhaps the Lusitania. These two infamous early 20th century sinkings are well-known because of the enormous loss of life and a certain amount of controversy that surrounds each of them. They have eclipsed memory of the many once-famous wrecks of the 19th century such as the Kent, Birkenhead, Northfleet, Tayleur and Anglo Saxon, even though they brought about the deaths of hundreds of people.

An illustration of how common wrecks once were is provided by the fact that for seaman John King, the

SS London was to prove his third shipwreck in five years. This was not unusual at the time, and he was lucky enough to survive all three.

Why did wrecks happen?
Ships were lost in the 19th century for all sorts of reasons. Bad weather was the commonest reason: it could not be predicted as well as it can today. A furious storm in 1805 led to the troopship Aeneas being dashed against the rocks off Newfoundland in 1805 and only seven of 340 people on board survived. Many ships simply ‘disappeared’ such as the SS City of Glasgow that left Liverpool in 1854 bound for the USA with 480 people on board, and was never seen again. Closer to shore, the waterways were often so crowded with shipping that collisions were common – the SS Northfleet sank in 1873 with loss of nearly 300 lives when another ship rammed it at night. Fire was another major hazard: the East India Company ship Kent caught fire and blew up in 1825.

Even when a ship got into difficulty, safety measures were so primitive that there was usually little hope of survival. Ships were not obliged to carry enough lifeboats for everyone on board, for example, and crews didn’t practise evacuation procedures.

SS London
Few Victorian shipwrecks provoked such widescale incredulity as the loss of the SS London in 1866. It was virtually a brand-new liner sailing for Melbourne on only its third voyage and was owned by a highly prestigious ship-owner called Money Wigram and Sons. The London was fitted out for luxury and was aimed at the higher end of the market. It was a sailing ship, similar in design to a clipper such as the Cutty Sark, but it also had a steam engine and a smoke-belching funnel amidships. These ‘hybrid’ ships enabled owners to exploit the benefits of both steam and sail, but they had their critics – people said that they were neither good sailing ships nor good steamships.

Being an upmarket ship, the SS London was carrying many well-known people. The popular actor Gustavus Vaughan Brooke was on board, as well as John Debenham, the son of the founder of Debenhams department stores. Henry Dennis was an explorer, John Woolley was a professor at Sydney University, Juliana King a celebrated singer, and James Bevan a well-known Melbourne businessman. Many of the passengers were British emigrants to Australia and travelled as families. All in all there were approximately 170 passengers aboard, including half a dozen stowaways, and a crew of about 90 people. Precise figures are hard to come by because ship-owners were very lax with their records.

The fateful voyage
The SS London departed on its final voyage from Gravesend at the mouth of Thames on 30 December 1865 and made its way through stormy waters to Plymouth. The bad weather delayed its arrival and one passenger – a Mr Snook – was so frightened by the ship’s poor performance that he left the ship there and refused to continue. It was a very fortunate decision. The lady who took his place at the last moment, Fanny Batchelor, would live to regret it.

Many people on the Thames and at Plymouth remarked that the SS London sat very low in the water, and that she “looked like a barge”.

The owners were later to be much criticised for overloading the ship to the extent that cabins were knocked out to make room for more cargo, and that a lot of the coal used as fuel had to be stacked on the deck.

The ship left Plymouth just after midnight on 6 January 1866 and all went reasonably well initially, but as the days went by the weather grew progressively worse and worse. The ship began to be damaged – the tops of two masts and the bowsprit were snapped off by the fury of the wind and seas, and three of the ship’s seven lifeboats were destroyed. The ship’s captain, John Martin, had boasted that the London would be the fastest ship making the run to Melbourne and was reluctant to give in to the elements. He drove the ship onwards, but the passengers were becoming very worried and, in the end, even Captain Martin decided that enough was enough. Part way across the Bay of Biscay he put the ship about and decided to return to the safety of Plymouth harbour.

However, on the night of 10 January disaster struck. A mountainous wave towered over the London and came crashing down amidships. The weight of water, possibly assisted by wreckage that had been left on deck, pounded against a glass hatchway that covered the engine room. It was too much – the hatchway was torn off by the sea and water flooded into the engine room below. Within a few minutes the engineers were up to their waists in it.

The last hours
There was now a big hole over the engine room and every time a wave crashed over the ship, sea water cascaded down into it. Within a very short time the water rose high enough

to extinguish the ship’s furnaces. No fires meant no engine, and the masts were already damaged so there was little ability to manage the London. The crew laboured to cover over the hole with sails and tarpaulin but that didn’t work. The captain ordered a sail to be set to try and bring the ship under control: it was simply ripped away.

The loss of the ship’s engines also meant that the London’s steam pumps were also rendered inactive. These could have pumped 4000 gallons of sea water per minute out of the bowels of the ship, but without them the crew and passengers had to resort to bailing out with buckets and using some smaller pumps on the main deck of the ship. It was exhausting work and no matter how hard they worked the water gained on them all the time.

The passengers, especially the women, were inspired by a minister, the Rev Daniel Draper, and they prayed fervently. But Captain Martin went to where they were assembled in the main saloon, and broke the news to them that they were doomed. There was no hope, he said. The passengers reacted with amazing calmness – there were no screams or hysteria.

Survivors
Not everyone believed the gloomy prediction of the captain. On 11 January, a group of the crew decided to try launching one of the SS London’s boats. They had tried this earlier in the day and the boat had simply filled with water and sunk, but now they tried again. They managed to lower another boat successfully, but could find few of the passengers willing to join them. The women, particularly, were frightened to jump down into the boat and most people decided to stay with the ship. The situation on board was worse now because the waves had smashed the portholes at the ship’s stern and it was filling with water even more rapidly.

The boat pushed off with only three passengers aboard and 16 crew, and only just in time. A few yards from the SS London and the survivors watched the mighty ship’s bows suddenly rise in the air, as the great weight of water at the vessel’s stern dragged it downwards. Within a few seconds it was gone, swallowed up by the stormy seas that still raged all around them.

It was winter, the survivors were exposed in a small open boat carrying far more people than it was built for, and they were all wet. For 20 hours they drifted, baling out the boat repeatedly, expecting to die, yet hoping to be sighted by a ship. To their great good fortune a barque called the Marianople sighted them and hauled them aboard. The Italian captain gave them hot food, dry clothes, and let them sleep. They were saved, and lived to tell the tale. Nineteen survived, but over 240 others were not so fortunate.