LOSS AND RECOVERY OF CLEOPATRA’S NEEDLE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 1074, 6 December 1877, Page 3

LOSS AND RECOVERY OF CLEOPATRA’S NEEDLE.

The Loudon “Times ” of the latest date by San Francisco mail, October 20th, has the following regarding the abandonment of the Cleopatra:— We have received the following telegram from Lloyd’s : —“ Falmouth, October 17th — The Olga, steamer, arrived at 9 p.m. The Cleopatra was abandoned on Sunday night in hit. 44.53 N., long. 7.52 W., in a gale from S.W. (force 7to 8). The second mate and five hands were lost endeavouring to secure the Cleopatra.” Captain Carter, of the Cleopatra, telegraphs to us from Falmouth the same sad news : —“ The Cleopatra was thrown upon her beam-ends during a heavy gale in the Bay of Biscay, on Sunday night. The ballast broke adrift and the vessel was abandoned on Monday morning, in a hopeless condition, I fear. A boat’s crew of six poor men, who came to our assistance from the Olga, have perished. The crew of the Cleopatra are all saved.” Another telegram sent to us from Falmouth says : —“ On Sunday night, during the terrific gale from the south-west, the Cleopatra was thrown on her beam-ends. The ballast broke adrift, aud all efforts to secure her were fruitless. The second mate of the Olga and five men attempted to get alongside the Cleopatra to rescue her crew, but their boat was swamped, ami they were all lost.” We also have an earlier telegram from Mr John Dixon, C.E., dated from the signal station at the Lizard Point. The Olga was then (at 6.30 p.m.) steaming slowly past the Lizard, but nothing was to be seen astern, and it was thought that the Cleopatra might be lashed alongside. Wo now know that this surmise was unhappily incorrect. Mr Dixon had such faitli hi the buoyancy of the Cleopatra that, even in the event of her breaking adrift, or of the Olga being obliged to cast her off, he thought she “ would but drift slowly and safely to seaward, to he picked up again by the Olga when the weather cleared.”

A San Francisco paper of a subsequent date has the following : “ i T c?terdaj the telegraph gave notice of the disaster which had happened to the Egyptian obelisk which, in its iron caisson rigged as a ship and manned as a vessel by some sixteen men, was in tow of a British steamer on its way to London, The thing had to be cut adrift in a terrific storm, and in the attempt to save its unhappy crew five or six men were lost. But this report was scarcely published before came others—of the calculations of the engineer who suggested that the iron float would drift seaward and Avould be fallen in with ; and of the captain of the steamer that the caisson and Needle Avere about in a hopeless condition when cut loose from —when lo! the telegraph informs us that the steamer Fitzmaurice has fallen in with the abandoned caisson and its contents about ninety miles north of Ferrol, Spain, and has it in toAv. The prospect then is that the Londoners will soon have a visit from ancient Egypt, and its millions ere long be permitted to look upon this specimen of ancient Egyptian art, after it had been allowed to lie in the sands for centuries, and finally moved and towed through sea and ocean to a new home.”