A disastrous journey

The wreck of the SS London

A shipwreck in 1866 claimed the lives of 220 people, including an esteemed cleric and scholar from the University of Sydney, writes

Dr Kim Kemmis .

IN DECEMBER 1864, the Reverend Dr John Woolley went home to England. The cleric had been in Australia since 1852, as Principal and Professor of Classics at the newly founded University of Sydney. He was respected for his advocacy of education for all classes and his abilities as a scholar. But he had made enemies, too, by defending the secular nature of the university against strong church interests. He felt his time in Sydney was over, and hoped to find a new position through his ecclesiastical and Oxford connections.

Landing in England three months later, Woolley renewed his friendship with Sir Charles Nicholson, former Provost and Chancellor of the University of Sydney, who had returned to England in 1862. Woolley made contact with fellow scholars and followed up every opportunity, but no appointments were available, and he decided to return to Sydney.

When Woolley embarked on the steamer London in December 1866, he had been entrusted with a mission. Nicholson had left many possessions at the university –paintings, objets d’art and four huge oak bookcases – and was troubled by the imposition. He intended to ship all of these objects back to Britain, but Woolley informed him the university needed the bookcases.

So Nicholson made a proposition: in return for the bookcases and a set of Chancellor’s robes, the university would set aside £200 to fund a medal for the best composition in Latin verse at the university.

The disaster

With the robes in his luggage, Woolley boarded the SS London. Under Captain John Martin, the ship left Plymouth at midnight on Saturday 6 January 1866, with 239 people on board, heading south-southwest at about eight knots, in a light northerly wind and a quiet sea.1

The next day the wind began to rise. By Monday night it had become a gale, and water began to come over the side and spill below deck. After dawn on Tuesday the ship began to pitch violently, taking water over its bows. The sea carried away the port lifeboat; two more boats would be lost the next day. At 9 am the ship pitched forward into a trough in the waves. The water tore off the jibboom so that it hung under the bow, held by its wire stays, and the foretop, foretopgallant, foreroyal and mainroyal masts collapsed and swung by their rigging until the sailors could secure them.

The ship steamed ahead through the next day and night, the decks covered in water and loose lumps of coal.

At 3 am on Wednesday, Martin ordered the ship be turned about, north-northeast, to head back to Plymouth. The storm eased, then returned in the afternoon, and it became impossible to stand on deck.

About 2 pm another ship suddenly appeared, the brig Courier, and nearly ran into the London. But it swung around past London ’s stern, and within a few hours lay to about ten miles north of the steamer, unable to help.

At 10.30 pm a huge sea broke over the port side of the deck, smashing the engine room hatch. Water poured down into the engine room and extinguished the fires. The crew battled to cover the hatchway with tarpaulins, sails, blankets and timber, all the while being washed across the deck. The water in the engine room was at waist height. The engines turned over for another ten minutes, then puttered out. When the chief engineer reported to Martin that the engines were no longer working, Martin remarked quietly that he was not surprised; on the contrary, he had expected it.

A donkey engine on the deck, used for winching goods on board, now started to power the pumps, but it too was swamped. At Woolley’s urging, the passengers formed a line to pass buckets to the side of the ship. Woolley himself worked the pumps, and during breaks went below deck to comfort the passengers and to lead prayers with a fellow cleric, the Reverend Mr Draper.

At 4 am on Thursday 11 January the sea smashed in the ports of the poop cabin, and water poured into the lower saloon. The engine room was under 14 feet of water, and the ship was noticeably sinking. The captain went into the cuddy where the passengers had gathered,

The crew battled to cover the hatchway with tarpaulins, sails, blankets and timber, all the while being washed across the deck and announced calmly, ‘Ladies, I fear there is no hope for us now; nothing short of a miracle can save us.’ His announcement was met by a silent resignation, broken only by the prayers and exhortations of Rev Draper.

John Munro, a passenger, worked at the pumps and buckets through the night, and at daylight went into the forecastle to get more crew to help. But 21 of them had reported hurt or sick, and refused to move. To Munro’s eyes, they were drunk and useless. Another passenger, David Main, was totally exhausted and went to his berth to rest, thinking he would rather go down asleep than awake.

At 10 am Martin ordered the boats to be got ready. The starboard pinnace was lowered, but went into the water bow first, and was swamped. Five men fell into the sea with it, but all were rescued. That appeared to be the end of all efforts. An apathy seemed to descend on most of the people on board.

By 1 pm the ship had lowered almost to its chains. The second engineer, John Greenhill, sounded the engine room again; the depth was now 19 feet. Everybody seemed to be waiting; one survivor thought ‘the praying paralysed them’. At 2 o’clock Martin ordered Greenhill to prepare the port cutter. Most of the passengers seemed unwilling to board the boat. Walter Edwards, a midshipman on his first voyage, heard Captain Martin dissuade Mrs Owen, a woman with a young child, from getting in, because the sailors might be drunk, adding in tears, ‘it was better to have a speedy death than a lingering one’. When Edwards got into the boat, he saw there were bottles of champagne and brandy, and hid them under his coat to forestall trouble.

Woolley was respected for his advocacy of education for all classes and his abilities as a scholar

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The London at sea. Image State Library of Queensland, 99183506333502061

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Demise of the steam ship London in the Bay of Biscay, 1866. Contemporary engraving. Interphoto/Alamy Stock Photo

For days newspapers ran reports with the terrible details supplied by the survivors, fleshed out with fancies and sensation

Munro woke Main, and they went on deck. The water level was just below the deck, and most of the people below were already dead. Main hesitated to board the cutter, thinking there was no chance, but the vessel shifted suddenly beneath him, and he reflexively jumped into the boat. John King, an Able Seaman, asked the captain, ‘Are you going away in the boat?’. Martin replied, ‘No.’ Martin gave them the course and position, east-northeast, about 90 miles from Brest, then shook hands with Greenhill and bade him godspeed. The boat pushed off through the waters that had already begin to swirl around the ship. At that moment a young woman called, ‘A thousand guineas if you’ll take me in!’ But it was too late. After a few minutes the London ’s stern suddenly slipped under the water. The bow hung high for a minute, then slid into the ocean and vanished.

For the three passengers and 16 crew in the boat, there was a bag of ship’s biscuits, some raw vegetables and some water that quickly became tainted. When night fell, they steered by the stars. The next day they were rescued by an Italian barque, the Madrianople, and landed at Falmouth on 16 January.

Aftermath

The news was immediately telegraphed across the country. For days newspapers ran reports with the terrible details supplied by the survivors, fleshed out with fancies and sensation. Regional newspapers carried stories of smaller, local griefs, tributes to respected and beloved citizens who had lost their lives. Grieving relatives placed death notices for their loved ones. The fascinated public purchased pamphlets with dramatic accounts of the sinking and the horrors suffered by the doomed voyagers. They read poems such as ‘The Wreck of the Steamer London ’ by the infamous William McGonagall – widely considered the worst British poet ever – and sang broadsheet ballads to popular tunes.

The most sober accounts of the disaster came out in the Board of Trade inquiry, and even these had their share of sentiment and horror. The inquiry heard from survivors, officials, engineers and shipbuilders, and published its report on 27 February 1866. It found that the ship was doomed from when the skylight was washed away, allowing the sea to get into the engine room and extinguish the fires. 2

Mail ships usually took 49 days from Southampton to South Australia. The news of the disaster arrived in Australia on 14 March and caused public grief and horror, as it had in England. Woolley’s loss was felt across Australia. Obituaries and public meetings eulogised his character and contributions to the colonies. The university immediately cancelled its annual commemoration ceremonies and voted to pay Woolley’s salary and allowances to his widow and six children for several months.

By coincidence, a letter from Nicholson detailing his proposal arrived on the same ship as the news of the disaster. The university’s senate accepted the plan, and allocated money for a Latin prize in return for the bookcases. The Nicholson Medal still exists, and the bookcases remain in the quadrangle of the university, their history unremarked, tacit memorials to 220 lives.

1 This account is compiled mainly from the reports of the Daily Telegraph (London) from 30 January to 15 February 1866, and survivor accounts published at the time.

2 ‘The loss of the steamer London ’, Empire (Sydney), 21 May 1866, page 6.

Dr Kim Kemmis is a Research Affiliate in History at the University of Sydney.