THE WRECK OF THE ST. MAGNUS.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 274, 28 April 1875, Page 3

THE WRECK OF THE ST. MAGNUS.

(From the Queenslander,') The events of the week include one of the most lamentable disasters that have occurred upon our coasts—disastrous in a treble sense, for in addition to serious loss of life, there is an appearance of carelessness on the part of the authorities, and what is still worse, apathy on the part of the officers of a British vessel of war. Early on Saturday morning it was made known in our office, through Captain Nightingall, of the Boomerang, that a capsized vessel had been seen floating off Cape Moreton on Friday afternoon. The fact was notified in the Courier of Saturday morning, with such details of the wreck as left little room for doubt that the St Magnus, a barque, trading between Adelaide and Brisbane, had capsized during one of the fierce storms that raged along the coasts all last week. The vessel, it appears, managed to get to the anchorage at Gape Moreton on Tuesday night, and Pilot Howe boarded her there ; but in consequence of the continued violence of the weather, she was again taken to sea about noon on Wednesday. These facts, in connexion with the floating hulk, were pointed out by our contemporary on Saturday morning, and the authorities were urged to send the Kate, or the Laura, or both, to look into the matter. The case was urgent. There may have been men floating upon spars from the wreck, and the hulk itself was, and may be still, a source of danger to vessels travelling the coast route. But instead of starting to look after the wreck, the Kate took a party of pleasureseekers to the Blanche, a vessel of war lying in the hay, and the Laura could not be sent

down until the afternoon. She could not be coaled it would seem, although there was no scarcity ot coal on the Government wharf. When the news became known in Brisbane the impression was that although the Government steamers might fail in the emergency, the Blanche, a well-found sea-going vessel, would be off at once—her crew of British seamen eager to rescue life if at all practicable, and her officers to put a few shots into and sink the dangerous floating hulk. But nothing of the kind occurred. The Blanche lay snug in Moreton Bay. The little Laura was the only vessel sent down, and she is not fit for stormy service. No other notice appears to have been taken of the missing vessel or the floating hulk, and the poor fellows belonging to the St. Magnus may even now be drifting about the coast or starving upon some of the islands. There is an unaccountable apathy in connexion with the whole affair that is anything but creditable to this community or the representatives of her Majesty’s navy last seen in our waters.”