‘Or vast fiery cross, on the banner of morn’: reading the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company's shipwrecks

AbstractDuring the nineteenth century shipwrecks served as flexible constructs through which survivors, authors, preachers, editors and proprietors could articulate shared cultural values. This article focuses on the loss of three major steamships, the Tweed, the Forth and the Amazon, all of which belonged to the prestigious Royal Mail Steam Packet Company operating mail, passenger and high-value freight services between Southampton and the Caribbean from 1841. The wreck of the Tweed on the Alacranes reef off the coast of Mexico with heavy loss of life inspired one influential survivor to shape a narrative of providential deliverance through civilising objects such as the mariner's compass and within the liturgical framework of the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer, a copy of which had actually been rescued from the wreckage. The loss of the Forth on the same reef two years later, however, produced a far more conventional account of masculine heroism in the face of seemingly impossible circumstances. But it was the sudden destruction of the Amazon by fire on her maiden voyage that inspired sermons not only of deliverance but of eschatological warnings of the end of time itself. These dramatic narratives transformed loss of life and property at sea into powerful cultural symbols of empire and religion that transcended the material disintegration. The once-proud steamers thus become the ideological sites of enduring contests between civilisation and chaos, light and darkness, and life and death. Concomitantly, a cultural history that reasserts human agency challenges historical patterns that impose predetermined direction on shipwrecks simply as instances of technological inadequacy, economic mismanagement or human error.Keywords: Amazon disasterChristianitycivilising objectsVictorian shipwrecks AcknowledgementsCrosbie Smith acknowledges the generous support of the AHRC for funding the 'Ocean steamship project' (2001–7) which laid the foundations for this research. He also thanks Anne Scott for her insights into religion and the sea as well as for her dedicated part in the project. For their assistance with primary materials, we are especially grateful to librarians and archivists in the Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum, UCL Archives, and Cambridge University Library's Rare Books Room. We are also indebted for their critical insights to Don Leggett and Ben Marsden as well as to History Special Subject students at the University of Kent, notably Edward Gillin, George Mitchell and David Woods. And we thank two JMR anonymous referees for their valuable advice.Notes1. Higginson, Wreck of the Amazon, 13–19.2. Lindsay, Merchant shipping, vol. 4, 302–10, at 305. For the problematic construction of the first fleet, see Smith, 'This great national undertaking'.3. Delap, 'Master of things'. See also Reid, 'Ocean funerals'; Rubery, Novelty of newspapers, 23–45.4. Lincoln, 'Shipwreck narratives'; Thompson, Romantic-era shipwreck, 1–34; Quilley, Empire to nation, 113–87.5. Fox, Ocean railway, 140.6. The Times, 9 April 1852 ('Wreck of the Birkenhead').7. Gribble, Burning of the Amazon, 11.8. Osborne, Guide to the Madeiras, 27.9. UCL, RMSP daily minutes, vol. 3, 18 Jan. 1847.10. The Times, 9 Apr. 1847 ('Wreck of the steamship Tweed').11. UCL, RMSP daily minutes, vol. 3, entry for 8 Apr. 1847. A 'norther' was the term seafarers gave to the seasonal, violent gales in the region that blew from a northerly direction. They were especially notorious on the west coast of South America.12. The Times, 6 Apr. 1847.13. Quoted in Nicol, Macqueen's legacy, vol. 2, 29–30.14. ibid., 30–1.15. The Times, 9 Apr. 1847; The Book of Common Prayer, 496–508, on 499 ('Forms of prayer to be used at sea'). See also Blake, Evangelicals in the Royal Navy.16. Compare the agenda-setting introduction in Hall, Civilising subjects, especially 21–2. Her term 'civilising subjects' refers to two sorts of human agent: those with a mission to 'civilise' themselves and others at home and overseas and those recipients of a (usually unsolicited) 'civilisation'.17. For the cultural meanings of the magnetic compass in the period, see Winter, 'Compasses all awry'.18. The Times, 9 Apr. 1847. On the Victorian controversies over such ornaments, see for example Cuming, Anglican liturgy, especially 197–8.19. Osborne, Guide to the Madeiras, 13.20. Lindsay, Merchant shipping, vol. 4, 302.21. Osborne, Guide to the Madeiras, 186.22. Cameron, Wreck of the Tweed by an eye witness. Largely unaltered in the main text, it did add related material, including correspondence and a complete list of passengers and crew. The list showed that 31 passengers (all male) were saved and 31 lost (including three women and two children). Of the officers and crew, 48 (all male, including one apprentice) survived and 41 were lost (including the stewardess, four apprentices and at least two ship's boys).23. NMM, RMS/1/2, 11 Jan. and 4 May 1843, 15 and 22 Apr. and 21 May 1847. In contrast, the Court of Directors laid the blame for the disaster on Captain Parsons and dismissed him. Equally revealing, the Court awarded £200 in total to the 25 widows and 50 children of crew members lost!24. The Times, 9 Mar. 1849 ('The wreck of the Forth').25. ibid. Bushell attributes a more heroic role to Captain Sturdee and makes no mention of Molesworth. See Bushell, Royal Mail, 50–2. See also Delap, 'Master of things'.26. On the ill-fated President see, for example, Tyler, Steam conquers the Atlantic, 107–10. On the RMSP's new vessels, see Bushell, Royal Mail, 63–5; Nicol, Macqueen's legacy, vol. 2, 52 (cost of ships); UCL, RMSP daily minutes, vol. 5, 21–22 May and 25 July 1850. Agreed for a period of eleven years, the new mail contract included a long-delayed service to Brazil and Argentina as well as a new 'main-line' service between Southampton and Chagres where a projected railroad would link to Pacific Steam Navigation Company (PSNC) services southwards from Panama and a projected mail line to Australia. A call at St Thomas in the Virgin Islands would allow passengers to transfer to and from 'branch' steamers in the West Indies, thus avoiding the risks to large ocean vessels acting as inter-island steamers. Indeed, four out of the five total losses, and many near-losses, in the original fleet could be attributed to grounding among the Caribbean islands and reefs. The company had originally invited tenders from ten shipbuilders for wooden steamers, from six shipbuilders for iron-hulled vessels, and from eleven marine engine builders for machinery. Just prior to the Amazon's commissioning, however, the Admiralty overturned its policy of insisting on wooden hulls for mail steamers and approved the use of iron hulls. Almost immediately, the RMSP contracted with Cairds of Greenock for a large iron-hulled mail steamer (Atrato). See NMM, RMS/1/3, 18 Dec. 1851.27. Banbury, Shipbuilders of the Thames and Medway, 181–6 (Green's history); UCL, RMSP daily minutes, vol. 5, 29 Aug., 9 Sep., 1, 14–15 and 30 Oct. 1850 (quality of workmanship). See also Bushell, Royal Mail, 66.28. UCL, RMSP daily minutes, vol. 5, 10 Dec. 1851; The Times, 11 Dec. 1851; Emmerson, John Scott Russell, 65 (Brunel).29. UCL, RMSP daily minutes, vol. 5, 17 Dec. 1851 and 2 Jan. 1852.30. The Times, 7 Jan. 1852. With the rescue of other boats, these initial casualty figures were reduced to around 100 passengers and crew lost (below).31. ibid.32. The Times, 9 Jan. 1852.33. NMM, RMS/1/3, 8 Jan. 1852. Vincent's father was appointed marine superintendent in 1853; see ibid., 21 Apr. 1853.34. Morning Chronicle, 19 and 20 Jan. 1852. We thank George Mitchell for this reference.35. ibid., 19 Jan. 1852; NMM, RMS/1/3, 22 Apr. 1852. For the very different eighteenth-century case of Captain Inglefield abandoning HMS Centaur, leaving most of his crew to their fate and yet attaining heroic status at home, see Quilley, Empire to nation, 113–43.36. [Anon.], Narrative of the loss of the Amazon, 16–18.37. Adkins, Claims of seaman, 25–6; Hollis, Sudden destruction, 15.38. See Lincoln, 'Shipwreck narratives', 169–72; Thompson, Romantic-era shipwreck, 26–7 (earlier passive roles of women). Cf. Steel, 'Southern octopus' (a late nineteenth-century case study).39. [Blood], The Amazon, 5; Description of the destruction [30] (end paper, including extract from the Hants Independent).40. ibid.41. [Blood], Gospel the power of God, 3 (title page).42. The Morning Chronicle, 20 Jan. 1852.43. [Blood], The Amazon, 15–16.44. ibid., 14; [Blood], Gospel the power of God, 21–4. Blood represented the Dutch captain as a staunch Calvinist.45. ibid., 7, 28–9, 40–2, 47–8.46. On the evangelical perspectives of partners in the Cunard Line of Steamers, compare Smith and Scott, 'Trust in Providence', and Gillin, 'Diligent in business'. For a broad, scholarly investigation of evangelicals in the period, see Hilton, Age of atonement. Blood's reference to divine vengeance places him in the category of Hilton's 'extreme evangelicals'.47. NMM, RMS/1/3, 22 and 29 Jan. 1852; Report of the officers.48. Hollis, Sudden destruction, 5–6.49. ibid., 16–18.50. ibid., 18–19.51. ibid., 13, 19.52. Hollis proposed that the congregation present Vincent 'with a handsome copy of the Pictorial Bible' with an inscription expressing 'our ardent hope and prayer for the prosperity of his future career in this world, and above all, that when death shall call him away – it may be suddenly, to the same watery and undistinguished tomb as his last companions, – he may have a "sure refuge", … and "eternal life" '; ibid., 20–3.53. ibid., 24–5. Cf. Gillin, 'Diligent in business', where the evangelical John Burns's decision to order fast transatlantic liners for the Cunard Steamship Company fleet from the 1880s is investigated in the moral context of 'time'. Burns's confidence that fast steamers do not necessarily compromise safety rested in part on the new navigational instruments, especially his friend Sir William Thomson's sounding machines and compasses. See Smith and Wise, Energy and empire, 748–51.54. Hollis, Sudden destruction, 25–31. Hollis's italics.55. For a discussion of contemporary debates on the internal heat of the globe and on whether or not the Earth's interior was molten, solid or cellular, see Smith and Wise, Energy and empire, 552–78. The geologist Charles Lyell preferred a molten interior under a thin crust while Cambridge mathematician William Hopkins and Glasgow natural philosopher William Thomson preferred a solid earth with cavities of molten matter (ibid., esp. 554). In religion, Lyell was a practising Unitarian in London's Portland Street Chapel. His rejection of sudden cataclysmic geological events and explanations (uniformitarianism) coheres well with that theological position. Hollis implicitly re-read Lyell for evangelical purposes.56. Hollis, Sudden destruction, 34–5. Other tracts include Wyld, Man's purposes and [Anon.], Sorrow on the sea.57. NMM, RMS/1/3, esp. 5 and 19 Feb., 3 June, 2 and 23 Sep. 1852.58. [Anon.], 'Editor's easy chair'. The editorial piece reflected on the loss of the Collins liner Arctic after collision in fog off the coast of Newfoundland.

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