A HERO'S END.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 52, 4 March 1915, Page 5

A HERO'S END.

DIED IN A WORKHOUSE.

(Received 8 a.m.) London, March 3

Corporal Smith, the last survivor of the ill-fated ship Birkenhead, died at St. Ives' Workhouse. Corporal Smith saved Captain Lucas.

It may he stated that the Birkenhead,one of the largest of her Majesty's steamers, freighted with 632 souls (including 14 officers and 458 soldiers, draughts from various regiments), reached Simon's Bay in safety, and sailed thence for Algoa Bay on the evening of February 25, 1/852. Desirous of shortening the voyage, the captain of the steamer hugged the shore too closely off Cape Danger. The vessel was steaming at the rate of eight knots an hour. Suddenly she struck upon a sunken rock with such a tremendous shock that in a moment she was a wreck, although the night was clear and the sea calm. A plank was stove in at the bows. Half an hour after the stately Birkenhead went to the bottom. But that half hour presented to men and angels a spectacle of the most simple and sublime heroism. There were' only boats enough' to" carry the women and children on shore.

The New York" Express, describing the tragedy, wrote :

The roll of the ilium called the soldiers to anus on the upper deck. That call was promptly obeyed, though every gallant heart then knew that it was his death summons. There they stood as if in battlearray—a motionless mass of brave men —men who were men indeed. The ship every moment'was going down and down—but there were no traitors, no deserters, no cravens there! The women and children were got into the boats, and were all, or nearly all, saved. There were no boats for the troops; but there was no panic, no blanched, pale quivering lips among them. Men like these never perish, their bodies may be given to the fishes of the sea, but their memories are, as they ought to be, immortal. Thus "The Spectator" :—"Tinvery men whom we shrank

rom when we met them wearing tiyiiig

ribbons in their battered hats, reeling through the streets, were the same who went down in the Birkenhead—as which of us can feel sure that he would have had nerve to do ?—in their ranks, shoulder to shoulder standing at ease, watching the sharks that were waiting for them in the waves; at the simple suggestion of their officers'that the women and children filled the boats and must be saved first. Xo saint ever died more simply; no martyr ever died more voluntarily; no hero ever died more firmly; no victim ever met bis fate in a more generous spirit of selfimmolation." The commander of this band of heroes was Lieutenant-Colonel Seton of the 74th.

In the corridor of Chelsea Hospital may be found a tablet with the following inscription :—"This monument is erected by command of her Majesty Queen Victoria, to record the heroic constancy and unbroken discipline shown by Lieutenant-Colonel Seton, 71th Highlanders, and the troops embarked under his command on board the Birkenhead, when the vessel wai* wrecked off the Cape of Good Hope, on the 26th February, 1852, and to preserve the memory of the officers, lioncommissioned officers and men who perished on that occasion."