THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SAN AUGUSTIN. An Awful Story of a Fire at Sea.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 38, 23 February 1884, Page 3

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SAN AUGUSTIN. An Awful Story of a Fire at Sea.

Giiktstman is nearly always associated with some more than ordinarily awful story of marinedisaster. Last year during the festive season people were holding their breath with horror over the unspeakably tragic Atlantic Liner, and to-day conversation turns frequently on the terrible tale of the loss of the San Augustin by fire. The vessel was formerly the Balmoral Castle, belonging to Messrs Donald dime and Co.'s Cape line. She was built in 1877, and her description repi'esents her as a fine steamer of nearly three thousand tons gross, driven by engines of three hundred horse-power, and having a length of two hundred and fifty-eight feet. She was bound, at the time of her loss, to Liverpool, with a cargo of sugar and tobacco trom Manilla. There were two Englishmen on board, one of them Mr Armstrong, the chief engineer, and the other, Mr Vines, chief cleik in the Liverpool oflicc of the owner. All the rest were foreigners, many of them presumably Spanish, bince it appear." that the steamer had been purchased by a Spanish gentleman residing in Madrid, and run by him in the mail service between Singapore, Sue/, Barcelona, and other ports. She left Corunna on Saturday, December 15, early in the morning, and made good progress until the following — Sunday— afternoon, when, at about halfpast two, one of the engineers reported to Mi- Armstrong that there was smoke sifting through into tho engine room. On hastening below the chief engineer saw the smoke, and concluded that the coal in the bunkers had taken fire. All the pumps were got ready, by which time the chief officer had discovered a great fire raging in the clean linen store room. The pumps were set to work, but the dense smoke drove the people from the narrow passages, and then the fire gained fast upon all efforts to check it and in a short time had reached the port cabins. The sea at this hour is described as running high ; but the engines continued driving the flaming ship along until she was on fire from forward to aft ; and then, two hours and a half after the first alarm, a brig having been sighted and signalled, the engines wore stopped, and the captain, M. Juan, summoned his oHicers to the bridge for consultation. There was not, indeed, very much to consult about. The ship was on fire from end to end, and the only chance for her people lay in the boats and in such succour as the brig could give. In all there were eightythree bouls on board. When the vessel wats brought to a stand three boats were lowered, and "some of the crew," says Mr Armstrong in the narrative we recently published, "got into them." One boat started for the brig, but she had been damaged before she left the San Augustin, and alter struggling to get to windward against the heavy seas for an hour and a half, abandoned the hope of reaching the brig, and returned to the steamer. Then was begun the fir&t of a series of terrible fatalities. The boat's crew, as may be supposed, were utterly exhausted, and one of the poor fellows, when in the act of clambering on board, was crushed between the ship and the boat, and though he lingered until four o'clock next day he was in the utmost agony, when at last death put an end to his sufferings. The other boats had disappeared, and nothing more was seen of them. To what extent the brig was of service is not made clear in the published statements. The flames continued to rage, jxnd there were but two boats remaining, the third having been destroyed by fire. The approach of the night must have immeasurably added to the horrors of the scene of the burning steamer lighting up the heavy seas. At eleven o'clock two steamers were sighted, and attracted by the fire they approached the San Augustin. The two boats were then lowered, into which all the married men wero allowed to enter; but, whatever hope the steamers may have kindled in those who got away from the burning vessel, nothing more came of their presence of mind to the unhappy men who were left behind. The terrible hour passed ; the iron decks meanwhile growing so hot as to render the contact of the foot with them almost unendurable ; and then dawned the morning of Monday, the 17th. The unfortunate captain was in the act of goingjto the bridge when the mainmast fell ; the &par crushed him between the davits and the boat, severing his foot from the leg. The second mate was following the captain when this happened. The sight ol the bleeding and apparently dying man seems to have driven him crazy, for Mr Armstrong says that he instantly rushed into his cabin and shot himself through the head with a revolver. By passing buckets of water along, some of the people contrived to reach the captain, whom they earned to the smoke-room, where his wounds were dressed by the doctor's assistant. It was at this moment thatayetmore heartrending scene took place. Four seamen, in endeavouring to crawl forward where they might think the heat would be less intense, fell into the fiery hold. Their cries were lamentable, and such was the terror they excited, that a fireman plunged a knife into his heart, whilst two others flung themselves overboard. A vessel named the Governor now hove in sight, and bearing down to the ship, sent two boats, but they kept at too great a distance from the San Augustin to be of use. Then another steamer was described, and eventually succeeded in saving five or six men, Captain Juan, seeing the boat, grasped a lifebuoy, and, maimed and crushed as he was, threw himself overboard to swim to her. Finding the buoyant apparatus too cumbersome lie cast it off, but shortly afterwards he was se'en to fling up his arms and disappear. Terriblo as these sufferings had been so far, they were by no means completed. Seven sailors, following the captain's example, and were lost to a man. The third mate, undeterred by the fearful fate of these people, jumped into the sea, and was drowned. Both steamers then picked up their boats and went away, leaving the unhappy survivors to pass yet another night on the burning ship. "Our boots," says the narrator, "were nearly burnt off our feet, and some of us were nearly blind with the heat. We also suffered greatly from want of food and water." The foremast

and funnels had fallen, and the deck had dropped in. Nevertheless, the steamei kept afloat throughout the night, and the next morning, at nine o'clock, the Grantullyj bound for West Hartlepool, sighted the burning craft, sent her boat in charge oi the chief mate Mr Boyle, and after five hours of heroic struggling her crew succeeded in safely transhipping the whole oi the survivors. There can be no doubt that both the steamers which Mr Armstrong describes as leaving them were prevented from helping the unhappy sufferers by the state of the weather. "Captain Cottew, of the John Williamson, says that ho lay by the San Augustin until three o'clock in the afternoon, "but," he adds, "the hurricane increased, anr', being obliged to keep his ship's head to sea, he lost sight of the burning ship at midnight." For such explanations one is always thankful. There is no reading more humiliating than the account which states how an English captain encountered human beings in fearful distress, and deliberately left them to their fate. It is "not for any man calmly and in safety perusing snch a narrative as this to say what the master and crew of the vessel should have done, and to sit in judgment upon the conduct of the dead and therefore the defenceless. We hope — we believe, indeed — that had the San Augustin been manned by Englishmen the peril of the situation would have been diminished by devices in which the cool brave mind is always ready ; that the Joss of lite if loss there were, would have been small ; and that inexpressibly horrible and appalling as the situation was, it woull have been opposed by all that courage could supply, and then endured with the fortitude which may without boasting be claimed for the British seaman. It goes, perhaps, against the grain of the English reader to hear of men shooting themselves, stabbing themselves, drowning themselves in the paroxysms of their terror ; but to be just it is necessary to realise the position, to appreciate all that is meant by the glowing hold, the shrieks of the burned, the torture of the scorching deck, the blood-red light that reveals the mountainous forms, of the Biscnyan .sea.-, the crash of falling funnels and masts, and the rending and yielding of the dropping, dislocated deck. Above all, must the significance of the utterly hopeless heart amid such a scene, and its influence upon the brain, be considered in dwelling upon this deplorable calamity, and while judging the actors, alive and dead, in it. Shipwrecked men have gone mad with despair, on azure seas, under bright skies, and have destroyed themselves raving. Not excusable, therefore, should the man be held whose courage expires before and whose brain is turned by such a scene of horror, suffering, and death, as appals even the reader of a brief and passing account of the terrible tale.