MISSING STEAMSHIPS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 430, 15 July 1870, Page 3

MISSING STEAMSHIPS.

Total disappearance, with the loss of all on board, has been among the rarest of disasters recorded of ocean steamships.The President, which left New York on March 11, 1841, having among her passengers Tyrone Power, the comedian, a son of the Duke of Richmond, and other noted persons, is in this dismal catalogue, and so is the City of Glasgow, lest in 1853, and the Pacific, in 1856; but it might be difficult to name any other vessels of a similar character that have so vanished and “left not a rack behind.” Consequently, the chances would CCeill to be that, as in the cases o the troopship Birkenhead and the packets St. George, Central America, Sarah Sands, Austria, Anglo-Saxon-, and London, a greater or less number of the passengers of the now missing craft may have been saved Snob, it will be r&mCnibered, was also the fact as regards the Lady Elgin, sunk by collision on Lake Michigan, September 8, 1860. Of her three hundred and eighty-five passengers, two hundred and eivhty-seven perished, among whom were Mr. Herbert Ingram, M.P - , the founder of the “Illustrated London News,” and his son. Of the passengers and crew of the Hungarian, on the other hand, which wns wrecked on the coast of Nova Scotia, February 19 of the same year, all Cu board were lost. The Birkenhead, wrecked off Simon’s Bay, South Africa, February 26,1852, lost four hundred and fifty-four and saved one hundred and eighty-four. The St. George, which was bound from Liverpool to New York, was destroyed by fire at sea, December 24, 1852, lost fifty-one, while seventy were rescued and taken to Havre by the American ship Orlando. The Central America, which foundered on her way from Havannah to New York, September 12, 1857, carried five hundred and seventy-nine persons, of whom only one hundred and fifty-two were saved. Of the five hundred aud thirty-eight on board the Austria, burnt in the middle of the Atlantic, September 13,1858, but sixtyseven survived. The Sarah Sands, which sailed from Portsmouth for Calcutta in August, 1857, took fire in November, and afterwards experienced a tremendous gale, carried all on boArd safely into port. The Anglo-Saxon, wrecked on a reef off Cape Race during a dense fog, April 27, 1863, lost two hundred and thirty-seven out of four hundred and forty-six individuals. ThLondon, which foundered in the Bay of Biscay, January 11, 1886, on the passage from England to Alelbourne, lost two hundred and twenty lives, among Whom were Dr. Woolley, Principal of the University of Sydney, and Mr. G. V. Brooke, the tragedian. Two instances have occurred during the past few years, when the immantic incident, so much used by novelists and dramatists, of a single life being saved from among all on board a lost ship, has really been exemplified. These were in the cases of the Dalhonrie, wrecked off Beachy-head on the rtth of October, 1853, and the Dunbar, wrecked off Sydney on the 20th August, 1857. In the latter instance the survivor was thrown by a gigantic wave into a tiny aperture high up in the face of a precipice—the chance hi such a thing occurring being about the same as that of throwing a pea into a nail-hole in the side ofa wall—where he lay insensible for many hours, but was finally discovered and rescued by a daring fellow who caused himself to be let down from the top of the acclivity by ropes.—“ New York Tribune.”