For the average Briton who grew up in the 20th century, the defining peacetime nautical tragedy was and still is undoubtedly that of the RMS Titanic. Although there have been many nautical disasters since 1911, few have captured the public’s attention and held it hostage over generations. The sinking of the RMS Empress of Ireland along the Saint Lawrence River in 1914, for example, which claimed even more passenger lives than the Titanic, is remembered by few today.[1] Even more recent disasters such as the MS Herald of Free Enterprise, a RO-RO ferry which capsized near Zeebrugge in 1987 killing 193 passengers, was soon lost to the collective memory. Quite why the Titanic disaster should cast such a long shadow is an interesting question in itself. However, for this author, the more interesting question is this: What nautical accident did the Titanic disaster overwrite in the nation’s collective memory? Which name was synonymous with mass drowning before 1911? There can be only one answer: The Princess Alice.
There’s a rippling wave and a sparkling spray
As the fair ship steams along.
It is seemly to close the festive day
With the measures of dance and song.
But, ah! those lips will be silent soon,
And the music hushed in that bright saloon. (Seymour, 1878)
The Princess Alice was one of many ‘saloon steamers’ that carried passengers up and down the Thames on pleasure trips in the Victorian era. The ship had originally been launched as the SS Bute in 1865 by Caird and Co. of Greenock, and was designed for inter-island ferrying in the Firth of Clyde. The Clyde was a centre for steamship building, having become Britain’s first waterway navigable by steamship when Henry Bell inaugurated his famous ‘Comet’ passenger service in 1812. The Bute and her sister, SS Kyle, were iron-plated, bi-funnelled paddle steamers of approximately 250 tons and 67 metres in length.
They were initially put into service with the Wemyss Railway Company, ferrying passengers to and from the Isle of Arran. However, after only a year, both ships were bought by Waterman’s Steam Packet Company of London. Waterman’s merged with several rival steamship operators to form the London Steamboat Company in 1876. The capital’s ‘silent highway’ was flourishing by this time, with thousands of commuters and tourists using the river each day. The Bute was renamed after Queen Victoria’s second daughter; her sister-ship after the Queen’s first son and heir, Albert Edward; royal and aristocratic names then being popular for Thames pleasure boats. Both ships were licenced to carry up to 936 passengers, a considerable number when one compares it with the capacity of much larger oceanic liners, although numbers were reduced on longer journeys.[2] In addition to deck seating, the Princess Alice had a large covered saloon amidships, which served refreshments and afforded protection from the elements. She plied the river without major incident for twelve years, until 3rd September 1878, when disaster struck.
The Princess Alice had departed that morning from Swan’s Pier, on the river’s north bank just west of London Bridge, under the experienced captaincy of 47-year old William Grinstead.[3] The ship had called in at a number of stations along the south bank of the Lower Thames including Woolwich, Gravesend and Sheerness. Gravesend was one of the most popular escapes for Londoners in the mid to late 19th century. One of the reasons for the town’s popularity as a tourist destination was its proximity to Rosherville Gardens.
The Gardens, which had opened in 1839 on the site of an old chalk quarry, were described by Charles Dickens Jr. in his 1881 ‘Dictionary of the Thames’ as offering visitors ‘a constant succession of amusements’. In addition to miles of walks through a ‘pretty and remarkably diversified garden’, there was a theatre, museum, and a ‘circular platform’ for dancing. Refreshments included ‘tea and shrimps so dear to the heart of the Gravesend excursionist’. Another visitor, writing in the weekly magazine Pick Me Up, paints a more evocative picture of the Gardens in high season; when the air resounded with the coarse cries of vendors, the disturbed shrieks of parrots and macaws in the aviary, and the sharp “ping” of a shooting gallery. Besides dancing and dining, other popular activities in the Gardens, according to this report were getting lost in the maze and courting, a point on which the writer warns ‘you may stumble against or trip over or sit down upon, a pair of lovers, billing, cooing and mating’ (1892). Entrance to the Gardens at this time cost sixpence and advertisements assured visitors to the Gardens of a ‘Happy Day’.
The same author paints an equally vivid picture of the boat journey itself, which passed through some of the less salubrious areas of Victorian London. Although the breeze from the widening river afforded passengers a measure of fresh air, or what Londoners termed a ‘blow’, there were on the other hand the ‘hundred distinct smells of Cologne’ that came ‘from the slums of Cherry Gardens, the wastes of Wapping… from Rotherhithe and Woolwich, and the outlets of the main sewer’ (Pick Me Up, 1892). The ‘Great Stink’ of 1858 was still within living memory of many Londoners, when the stench of river sewerage was enough to disrupt the sitting of Parliament. In the 1860s, civil engineer Joseph Bazelgette had constructed London’s first coordinated sewer network, which improved public health and upstream water quality. However, initially, the ‘great stink’ was not eliminated but merely moved further downstream. In 1878, the Gravesend steamer route passed by both the Northern and Southern Outfall Sewers at Becton and Crossness, from which, at the time, the whole of London’s waste passed untreated into the Thames.
Nevertheless, the return trip to London Bridge on 3rd September was by all accounts a pleasant one, the late summer weather holding fair as the Princess Alice made its way against the river’s ebb tide and towards a setting sun, to the sound of music from the ship’s band. The atmosphere aboard is nicely captured by a contemporary poem, as is the impending disaster:
As they’re wafted to shore on the evening breeze
How happy those voices sound!
There is nothing the listening ear can please
Like a pleasure-boat homeward bound.
There is laughter on deck – there is love below –
Ah! Little their danger, the doomed ones know!
The timing of the Princess Alice’s homeward journey was to prove critical to its tragic end. Also along the steamer route, lay the major docks of the city. Although the Royal Docks were still under construction at the time, further east on the Isle of Dogs, lay the bustling West India and Millwall Docks. It was practice for outgoing cargo ships to weigh anchor at the start of the ebb tide, when the river was at its highest, so that they could take advantage of the strong current. One such ship embarking on its journey that evening was the 900ton collier Bywell Castle. The ship left the Millwall basin without cargo at 6.30pm heading for Newcastle. Although commanded by Captain Thomas Harrison, the collier was under the supervision of Thames pilot, Christopher Dicks (or Dix).
The Princess Alice had left the Rosherville steam pier at a slightly earlier time and their paths were to converge at approximately 7.40 at a section of the river known as Gallion’s Reach. A ‘reach’ refers to a more or less straight section of river. Gallion’s Reach is the stretch of the Thames just downstream from Woolwich. Along this section the entrance to the Royal Docks would later be constructed. Travelling from Woolwich, the course of the river turns north-east for about one and a half miles. At Gallion’s northern tip, called Tripcock Point, or Ness, it turns east again. The Northern Outflow Sewer is located on the opposite shore to this point.
In order to maximize the benefit of the tide, the Bywell Castle was travelling in the centre of the river at ‘half-speed’; about 5 knots. Upon seeing the Princess Alice passing Tripcock Point and evidently making for the northern shoreline, the collier turned to starboard, closing in on the southern shore. However, without warning the pleasure steamer made a strong turn to port, which swiftly brought her diagonally across the collier’s path. Harrison immediately ordered his engines put in reverse, but it was to no avail. The collier’s bow struck the Princess Alice amidships just in front of her starboard paddlewheel, penetrating 17 feet into the hull and causing the boilers to burst. Within four minutes, the pleasure boat was lying at the bottom of Gallion’s Reach, and more than 700 passengers and crew were in the water.
They are midway now, on the Thames’ broad stream,
And above them a clear, calm sky:
Hark! Heard you not then a dismal scream,
And the shouts – as of agony?
The river runs – but the music’s gone –
Two ships have met – and there floats just one!
Bow Creek to Anatahan 