TERRIBLE COLLISION AT SEA.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2153, 19 January 1881, Page 3

TERRIBLE COLLISION AT SEA.

Before daylight on the morning of November 24th the French steamer Oncle Joseph canae into collision with the Italian steamer Ortigia, near Spezzia, off Leghorn. Of throe hundred persons on board the Oncle Joseph two hundred are known to have been drowned and fifty saved. The fate of the remaining fifty has not yet been ascertained. The most heartrending scenes occurred after the collision, there being no sufficient means of rescuing those on board the French steamer, and most of them were drowned without any efforts being made to save them. Eye witnesses of the catastrophe state that they cannot understand how the collision occurred. The Ortigia belongs to the Florio Company, The following particulars of this terrible disaster are telegraphed from Rome : —“ The collision of the Oncle Joseph and the Ortigia will be long remembered as one of the most tragic episodes in the sad annals of Italian emigration. The former vessel, an emigrant ship of 500 tons burden, of the Valery Company, hailing from Naples, had on board some 300 passengers of the humbler class, bound for Genoa, whence they intended to sail for South America, the treacherous El Dorado of the Italian peasant. The Ortigia, belonging to the Florio Company, is a steamer of about 1000 tons burden, and was carrying, besides her crew of forty-four mer, thirty-six passengers. According to the statement of her captain, Stefano Paratore, she was holding a straight course for Leghorn, when off Spezzia she met the Oncle Joseph, which, following the bend of the coast, was running across her bow. The collision up to this moment is not accounted for further than by this circumstance, and the fact of the night being pitch dark. The Oncle Joseph when struck sank rapidly, and though the crow of the Ortigia did their best to rescue the drowning, only forty-three or forty-four —the number, owing to the confusion that prevailed on board, not having been exactly ascertained—were saved. Among these are the first mate, the engineer, the boatswain, and some of the sailors. The captain himself perished. The Italian Government has ordered the captain of the Port of Leghorn, where the Ortigia is now anchored, to appoint a commission of inquiry, and all on board are strictly guarded, to prevent them holding communication with the shore. Curiously enough, the Ortigia experienced two years ago a disaster similar to that she has just inflicted. During a violent storm then raging in the Bay of Naples, a ship broke loose from her moorings in the harbor of Frocida, and ran her bow into the Ortigia’s side with with such violence as to sink her immediately.” The following further details are furnished by the first mate of the Ortigia, who was on the look-out at the time of the collision. Seeing a single light about a kilometre ahead, he thought it was the light of a merchant vessel, and gave the order to torn the ship’s head to the right, expecting the supposed merchantman to do the same. The Oncle Joseph, on the contrary, veered round to the left, till, seeing the Ortigia bearing down upon her, she ported about, describing a semicircle, and exposing her flank. The first mate of the Ortigia then gave the order to back, but it was too late. Her prow drove in the side of the Oncle Joseph as if it had been a nutshell. The shock brought on deck the crew and passengers of the Ortigia, which now became the scene of the wildest confusion; for, imagining they were sinking, the passengers tried to leap into the boats as these were lowered to rescue the drowning emigrants. Very different was the scene on board the Oncle Joseph. Few, indeed, of the sleepers in the bold and cabins had time to rush up the hatchway before the vessel sank. Such as came to the surface were picked up by the crew of the Ortigia, and restoratives were applied. Two were wounded, one having his arm broken, and his head severely battered. Those who witnessed the catastrophe describe it as terribly impressive from its suddenness.