WRECK OF THE P. & O. STEAMER TASMANIA. A SCENE of DISORGANISATION AND CONFUSION. (FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.) London, April 29.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 207, 18 June 1887, Page 5

WRECK OF THE P. & O. STEAMER TASMANIA. A SCENE of DISORGANISATION AND CONFUSION. (FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT .) London, April 29.

Tuc facts that have conic to light in connection with the "wreck of Uic Tasmania will seriously shake public confidence in the much-vaunted efficiency of the P. and 0. seivice. If the graphic and thrilling narrative of the cata&tiophe contiibuted by a well-known Anglo-Indian to 'Cue-day's " Standard " be accurate, there can be no doubt whatever the most deplorable confusion and disoigani&ation prevailed. Passengeis who have travelled by the goigeous steamers of this line and watched with admiration the smart brass- bound officers superintending boat-drillo, iire-cliillr-, and other elaborate preparations for accidents will learn with surprise and disgust the practical utility ot such dre*s rehearsal:?. In the case of the Ta<nnai.ia, clearly the boat-drill wasn't even remembered, let alone regarded. The ship's organisation, in tact, proved a fairweather "one. At the supreme moment of danger 10 broke down. But 1 had better, perhaps, allow Mr Allen to speak for himself. He viys : — The Tasmania, a nearly new sciew steamer ot over li\e thousand ions, lett Port Said for Marseilles on the evening of Tuesday, the 12th of Apiil, with about three hundred souls on board. She was well found and ventilated, the faie excellent, the arrangements -of eveiy kind displaying a studious desire on the pait ot the giear company which owned her to secure the comtort and contentment of her passengers. The dinner hour of the following Saturday saw a jovial company gathered in the brilliantly-lighted saloon, for wo -were within twenty-four hours of our voyage's end, our piogranimcs for the journey across the Continent were in our pockets, and eveiy heart beat high with glad expectancy. Captain Pen-in, having •-een the ship safe tluouu'li the Straits of Bonifacio, had letired to his cabin about an hour, leaving the second officer (Mr Cuitis) in charge. The chief officer (Mr Watkins) was called for his watch at four a.m., and due on the biidge seven or eight minute? later. At four minutes after tour the sleeping ship was mdely awakened by a sudden crash, which made her Miner from stnm to stern, and roused every soul of u^ to temble consciou-r.ess. Ihe steady pul«e of the screw stopped instantly, making the dead silence of the next few second-, broken only by the tramp of hurrying feet on the deck above, more appalling. Another deafening ciash, and soon tlnee or four cra-xhe-j in quick succession, the staggeiing with each concussion. Then, from every cabin, men, women, and childien rushed in their night-clothes out of the daikne^s into the dim saloon and towards the companion stau=?, filling the air with their piteous ciies and agom-ed inquiries; whilst the ru^h of water and the roar of voices above increased the horror. There was— there could be— no doubt of what had happened ; and if there we/c, the ominous command for all the pa^engeis to drcsp a^ quickly a- possible and come upon deck <=oon dispelled it. Once there, the nature of the disaster wa? but too clear to e\ eryone. Day had just broken. From the after biidge, close to the captain's cabin, where a gioup of ladies and children, and some two or three husbands, were huddled together, halfchested, exposed to the bitter north wind, the whole ghastly picture was beiore us. The ship lan straight upon a reef ; her bows were settling down upon the bottom, «ome thiity feet, her keel chuining up the .sand from below and discolouring the sea all around us, whilst her stern was impaled high upon a rock. She was lying over to leewaid, fo that her windward side opposed a banier to the waves, but for which none could ha\ c been •?aved. la our rear, less than a stone's throw distant, was a substantial beacon of masomy, on the wrong side of which our course had been taken, over which the waters pcipetually bioke, .sweeping all the fore pait of the half-submerged vessel ; beyond, the open sea. In front and to our left an eager group of men, with the chief officer in command, were struggling to lower the two stai board boats, two out of the three which, so early, alone remained of the eight there were originally. They had been removed within the davits from w Inch they were suspended the day previously, which greatly increased the difficulty of releasing them, and from the ship li-ting over had become jammed. There was a crowd ot passengers at the gangway ladder, eager to be taken off; some aft, standing by their life-buoys, others already i/itherigging, in preparation for the worst. Lying oti the wreck, a hundred yards away, was the gig, with the doctor (Powell) and caipcntor both of whom had swum off to it, in charge. The long line of coast, with a lighthouse at the point, lay before us, with here and there a village nestling in the hills, a tower, or a patch of cultivation, the mid-distance broken by a line of jagged reef. At last the doctor's boat got away with some six or eight ladies and children, and at last— tor it seemed an eternity, though only an hour or two - the two other boats were launched. The .second boat, in charge of the boatswain, was " rushed "' by the second-class passengers, some thirty people, all of whom, with two honourable exceptions— men, women, and children — got away, the men who had jumped into the boat in the course of lowering it refusing the captain's peremptory order to them to leave it. The third— the lifeboat— was in charge of MiAndrews, an officer in the Company s service on leave, the second, third, and fourth officers of the ship accompanying him. .She bore away some fifty or sixty ladies and children- all save two of the former— Mrs Walker and Mis Pigott— who elected to remain with their husbands. 'The work of getting the forlorn fugitives lowered was one of "great difficulty and danger, for the boats rose and fell on the heavy ground swell a height of from twelve to fifteen feet, and whilst the children were thrown on board their mothers had to bo lifted in at the critical moment when the boat was poised on the rising wave. To write of the mute agony of what seemed tho.se last farewells would be profanity. Suffice it that the women behaved with the calmness and courage of martyrs. We saw them safely oft' with a sense of infinite re ief, and for the time our spirits rose almost to cheerfulness as we counted the chances that the wreck would hold together and rescue come. Yet our plight was pitiable enough. It was now about ten a.m. A small sup of whiskey and a few fragments of biscuit, more or less soddened with <alt water, recoveicd from the passengers' cabins by the .stewards, was our fare As the day wore on the wind strengthened, and tho

waves, breaking over the wreck with increasing violence, not only deluged our scanty clothing and half paralysed us with cold, but obliged us to cling to tho bulwarks for dear life. By degrees the captain's cabin and the companion went, and one after another our frail shields from the forco of the enemy were carried away. The captain himself was among the earliest victims. A part of tho skylight of tho engineroom, -which had been unshipped, knocked him off his feet and pinned him, at a moment when relief was almost impossible, and tho back-wash of tho sea carried him away. Most of us then sought refuge at the stem end of tho poop, in tho lee of the smoking saloon, and joined the group which was still in comparative safety thore. Meantime, the chief officer,o f ficcr, almost deserted by his crew, but aided loyally by soino of tho passengers, the Earl of Buckinghamshire, Major Croker, of Lord Duillrin's Staff, among them, had contrived to rig up a couple of rafts, each of which might have carried fifteen or twenty at once. One of these was washed overboard with a solitary Lascar, who sprang upon it when just ready for launching, and with it the Bail, who. however, managod to save himself by almost a miracle ; the other, when already iloated, was taken possession of by eight of the Seedee Boys, who calmly cut the rope before our eyes ; but they paid dearly for their treachery, as, being unablo to steer their craft, they were borne away into tho broken waters near the reef, and only one man reached the shore. At about four p.m., the look-out announced that a craft of some sort was approaching, and, after a long and weary wait, -\\e made out that it was tho new lifeboat. Once again our sphits rose, the precautions necessary to c-top the native crew from rushing it, the need of giving prior deliverance to the injured and invalid of our company— for one, Sir Bradford Leslie, had been crippled by a fall-weic eagerly discussed. But, alas? the boat, evidently undermanned, was making little or no -way, and by dusk she went about and made once more for land. Ro much we could conjecture, that her living freight was safe ; but what of the remaining boats '.' What could wo conclude from their also making no sign ? As we learned e\entually, however, their passengers had all 1 cached the shore safely, at distances varying from live to thirteen milerf, and it may suffice to add here that whatever the simple peasants of the rude coast could do to lighten the sufferings of the shipw locked people was done with such sclf-den\ ing thoroughness and generous sympathy jxs entitles them to the gratitude of every Englishman. The oiHcials at tho little town of Sartene and Propriana, through uhosc agency and that of the British Consul at Ajaccio, the sufferers were able to rejoin their husbands and friends, -\iedv>ith their humbler neighbours in tho performances of these ennobling offices. As dusk began to &et in the wind still increased, and we were evidently in for a bad night. By night, beyond two or three of our number who remained outside from first to last, and some of the crew who still either clung to tho rigging, or perfoice sought precaiious shelter on the deck, we had all squeezed nto the smoking saloon— a low room, strongly built of steel, about sixteen feet by fourteen, and nine feet high, uith a pent-roof of thick glass, and baircd windows with Venetian shutters all round. No words of mine could quite picture to another the horrors of that terrible night. Theie were seventy or eighty human beings — passengers and stewards, and sailors black and m hite— huddled into that cage, the sea breaking with stupendous force upon it, dashing through and over the roof and windows, drenching its occupants, swamping tho floor. As each succeeding wave struck it the wreck shuddered and shook, the metal keel grated on the bottom with a scrooping sound ; the receding v> aye left us with a swiil and a roar, and we held our breath in suspense whilst for an instant it seemed as though the ■weiahtof the blow had dislodged us from the^iock on which we were mercifully pinned. Then there was the pitiful cry of the Lascar or Seedee Boy, who would force him-elf desperately into* the doorway, only to add to the number of helpless and paralysed of his kind already cumbering the ground, and who was, in mercy to the rest, ejected, only to die of exposure in the open ; the frequent warning to be caieful of our one poor lamp ; the weary inquiry as to the hour of a man who had a watch ; the false alarms from without and within of people -whose fevered fancies conjured up a rocket or a light. Wurst of all, perhaps, our own reflections, for we were face to face with death. All this till about 11 p m., when the wind changed and slackened, the sea gradually fell, and wo felt relieved of the certainty that but for this, in a few hours at the most, the end mu-t have come. With the first glimpse of daylight the look-out reported a sail on the horizon, and in the right quarter, but, already the prey of several false alarms, we refused for an instant to be beguiled. A quarter of an hour later and all doubt was removed. It was not only a sail but a steamer, and making for us in a bee-line. What our feelings were only wrecked men can realise. We were saved. In less than an hour a trim little yacht, the Norseman, belonging to Mr Platt, of Oldham, was at anchor a few boats' lengths from what remained of tho Tasmania, and within another hour or so she had sailed with us for Ajaccio, from which port she had started for our rescue at one a.m., and we bid adieu to our gallant saviours with a feeling of gratitude that can never be effaced. There are legally - appointed tribunals which will lose no time in making a competent inquiry into the cause of the above terrible calamity, and I will not presume even to hint at the duo apportionment of blame. But that a ship should be lost in fair weather, on a moonlight night, on a well-lighted coast — that this is a matter requiring searching investigation is evident. It may be trusted, also, that the Court will pronounce some opinion on the question both of age and the test of fitness for command in the persons of the captains of these large passenger ships, upon whom such an enormous responsibility in respect of human life devolves. We all liked and respected Captain Pen-in, a kind and courteous gentleman, full of solicitude for the comfort of his passengers ; but he had been more than twenty years in many trying latitudes, was obviously in bad health, and when the blow fell was utterly dazed and almost helpless, and quite incapable of taking his proper place. The Company must pay men more and retire them in their prime. But if poor Captain Perrin was physically unfit to face a great disaster, what shall 1 say of the crew? It was almost a Lascar crew. About such crews in general I offer no opinion ; but about the utter and lamentable collapse of this particular one there is absolutely no doubt. When the ship struck a number of these men rushed to tho two port boats on the poop, and let them down in a panic, with the ports open, only to capsize. From that moment the native crew became impervious alike to order, remonstrance, or threat. They were so many logs andworse. Again, several of the stewards began looting those cabins which were accessible at an early date, and it will be necessary to inquire why, if No. 2 boat could bo trusted in charge of one petty tficer, it required

that a special officer should take command of the lifeboat, with the second, third, and fourth officer to help him. Had these- no possible duties still on board ? I say with regret, but with the utmost deliberation., that there was something seriously at fault in the discipline of the ship's company. It was a fair-weather organisation, but the moment a strain was put on it, it, broke up. May I crave a few lines more of your space to publish the names of thoae of the si'ip's officers who by general consent did well. Mr Watkins, the chief officer, behaved nobly, the passengers presenting him with a purse and a handsomo written testimonial before they parted ; Mr Leslie, the chief engineer ; Mr Baigont, the chief steward ; Mr Salter, one of the cabin stewards ; the storekeeper ; and Mrs Arnold, one of the stewardesses, deserve our warm thanks. Among the second-clasbs passengers, Messrs Stormont and CuiHin, who refused to save their skins at the puce of their manliness, earn honourable mention. Of the passengers, Major Cooper, brave, cheerful, full of resource under difficulties, did admirably. Indeed, I may say, on the authority of the chief officer, who had every opportunity of judging, that the coolness and discipline shown by. tho large body of passengers was extraordinary ; in only one instance did I free the white feather, and that not in the case of an Englishman. The total lo^s of life was thirty-four, including the captain, fifth officer (drowned whiUt'lowering the boats), and Quartermaster Hall, washed from the rigging. The deaths were almost wholly among tho Seodee Boys and Lascars, from cold and expooiire.