Shipwrecks and Steam Packet Ships

Within its first decade of operation, the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company lost half of its original fleet, with a huge loss of life. 

The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company

After the British government awarded the contract to operate the Caribbean mail service to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, the company commenced a unique ship building project. The first fleet consisted of 14 ships and three smaller vessels.

The ships were some of the biggest steamers on the seas, with some historians noting that they were ‘unnecessarily [big] for some Caribbean routes on which they operated.’ Modern historians have also acknowledged that the development of the first fleet was ‘so flawed that it is a wonder that some of its ships ever went to sea.’ 

As the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company started operating after the British government passed the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, their ships were not used to traffic enslaved people. Their ships did however transport formally enslaved people who had been intercepted and freed by the Royal Navy. As former Royal Mail Steam Packet Company captain Robert Woolward described in his memoir: 

‘H.M. schooner ‘Pickle’ had captured a vessel with over three hundred [enslaved] men and women on board a fortnight before we arrived, and these people were to be sent to Jamaica. They were put on board our ship for the purpose when we were ready to start… We were six days going to Jamaica, and several births took place on the passage..’  

 

Woolward’s report includes racist descriptions which have been edited from this quote.  

The launch of each new Royal Mail Ship, or RMS, was a public spectacle. It was reported that 60,000 people turned out to watch the launch of the first ship, RMS Forth, on 22 May 1842. Three more ships sailed the following day. 

Once at sea, there were reports of unworkable timetables, drunkenness, mismanagement, misplaced mailbags, ships running out of coal, and crews struggling to adapt to new technology. In 1842, while sailing in the Caribbean, a newspaper reported that 10 crewmen from RMS Medway were sent to St. Thomas’s prison. The reason for their detention was not stated, but the article reported that the incident caused a delay of three hours, while replacement crew were found. Poor maps, inaccurate compasses, hazardous ship design, and steaming at night increased the dangers.  

Hurricanes at Sea

Perhaps one of the biggest factors causing so many disasters was the varying level of training undertaken by different captains, and the limited understanding many crew members had of hurricanes: both how to recognise an impending storm and how to safely steer out of one.  

Captain Woolward wrote in his memoir about his first experience of a hurricane, which he encountered when sailing between Nassau and Bermuda. He was very fortunate to have William Reid on board at the time, who was studying hurricanes and how to navigate through them. Guided by Reid, the ship safely navigated, the ship was safely navigated through the hurricane. However, many other ships were not so lucky. 

In 1867, three Royal Mail Steam Packet Company ships were caught in a category three hurricane, just off the Virgin Islands. One of the captains, Captain Gillies appears to have realised that the hurricane was coming and set a course to keep the ship a safe distance from an island, ‘far enough away that she wouldn’t be blown ashore and close enough to take advantage of the sheltering hills.’ In doing so, Captain Gillies ignored an order from the more experienced Captain Woolley of the RMS Rhone, who mistakenly steamed straight into the eye of the hurricane.  

Survivors accounts

Within a decade, half of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company’s first fleet was lost. Crews and passengers faced terrifying situations, without adequate life preserving equipment or procedures. Though it could be argued that sailing in this period was universally dangerous, some contemporary observers noted that the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company experienced an unusual number of disasters. The London Evening Standard reported in 1852 that ‘shortly after the establishment of the company, there appeared to be a strange fatality attending its success.’ Survivors shared their harrowing stories, which were published in newspapers and books. Here are some of their accounts.  

On 17 December 1846, RMS Tweed left Southampton with 62 passengers and 89 crew. After calling at Havana, the ship continued on to two more ports in Mexico. On 11 February 1847, the captain set a course, which he believed would take the ship 30 miles south of the Alecranes reef, off the coast of Mexico. Confident that he was giving the potentially dangerous reef a wide berth, the ship proceeded at a speed of seven knots. However, they were not where they thought, and the ship slammed straight into the reef.  

An unnamed survivor shared the moment he realised that he was stranded on a small stretch of reef, just above sea level, fearing the sea may rise and sweep him and the other survivors away: 

‘We heard voices on what we supposed to be the shore, and, having scrambled through the wreck, found ourselves on a reef, together with about twenty-five others… At length [dawn] came, but only to show us that we were surrounded by the wide ocean, without the slightest appearance of land… we were only six inches above water… and though we were assured by the captain and officers that the rise of the tide could not exceed three feet, we could not but be afraid they might be mistaken…’ 

 

The captain ordered the chief officer and seven of the crew to launch the damaged mail-boat, which was found inside the reef, to try and get help: 

The mail-boat’s stern was torn out of her… but, the captain determined to try… to send her to the Campeachy coast for assistance… though she was far from sea-worthy… (a distance of nearly 160 miles), there to report our situation, and, if possible, to bring us assistance, we gave them three cheers… and watched them out of sight, not without a foreboding that we have taken leave of them for ever. 

 

The chief officer was successful in finding help, and the survivors were rescued: 

As we were resting… a cry was raised ‘A sail! a sail!’ … We were saved!’’ 

 

The Tweed disaster resulted in the deaths of 31 passengers and 41 crew, while 79 people were rescued. 

Sometimes, accidents occurred during the course of regular procedures, in normal conditions. In 1858, five Royal Mail Steam Packet Company crewmen drowned when their small boat capsized while returning to RMS Thames, following a day on shore. Newspaper reports observed that it was ‘strange to say, none were saved.’ 

The Fire on RMS Amazon

In 1852, RMS Amazon’s first voyage was struck by ‘a most appalling accident’, as the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company’s directors would later describe it.

The Amazon left Southampton one Friday afternoon in January, bound for the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. The Amazon carried crew, passengers, mail, coal and high value goods. Like other ships in the fleet, the Amazon also carried livestock and hay to feed the animals. After midnight, when the ship was around 100 miles off the coast of Scilly, south of Cornwall, a fire suddenly broke out on deck. The crew started to throw the hay overboard, but it ignited, and the fire spread. The fire blocked off access to the engine room, preventing crew from slowing or stopping the ship as it sped through the water, flames blazing. Survivors’ accounts describe the chaos as the crew tried to launch the lifeboats, the majority of which burnt before they could be lowered to the water. Within around five hours, the ship sank, with a huge loss of life. Newspapers reported that ‘of the 153 persons who were on board her when she left, it is feared only 21 have been saved.’ 

Newspapers also published accounts from some of the survivors, including passenger Miss Smith. She described how one man tried to keep her in her cabin:  

‘she was aroused by a sudden noise and a cry of “Fire!” She rushed out of her berth in her night dress, but was met by some gentleman, who conducted her or carried her back to her cabin, enjoining her not to be alarmed, as the flames would soon be subdued. From the increasing confusion she, however, thought it best to provide for her own safety, and accordingly obtained possession of a blanket and a petticoat (snatching up the first articles at hand) and rushed upon the deck.’ 

On making it outside, she described the disorder around her: 

‘The appearance of matters there… impressed her with the conviction that Captain Symons had lost all control over his crew, who were rapidly launching the boats and getting away from the ship as fast as they could.’ 

 

Miss Smith took action to try and save her life: 

 ‘She put on her petticoat, enveloped herself in the blanket, and then, making fast one end of a rope to… the ship, and securing the other end to one of her arms, she threw herself overboard with the intention of getting into one of the boats… observing a favourable opportunity, [she] threw herself into one of the boats that happened to pass near her, and which was getting away from the blazing wreck… Such an entire absence was there of anything with which to make a signal, that she was obliged to take off her petticoat in order that it might be attached to an oar and hoisted as an emblem of distress to invite the attention of passing vessels. 

 

The Amazon was one of five new ships to join the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company fleet in 1852. Its disastrous maiden voyage came shortly after another of these new ships, the RMS Demerara, was stranded and badly damaged on the River Avon, on the way to have its engines fitted. 

These are just a few examples of the many disasters the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company faced. At the 1857 general meeting, eight months after the RMS Tay was wrecked, the company directors wrote about their ‘great annoyance… to be compelled so soon… to advert to another serious disaster,’ when yet another ship, RMS Tyne ran aground towards the end of its voyage. The directors’ report did not mention the serious injury suffered by the ship’s quartermaster, who broke his back, but they shared that the ship would be back in service soon, that shareholders would be receiving dividends and that the company was enjoying strong profits. 

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Primary Sources  

Royal Cornwall Gazette, 5 August 1842  

London Evening Standard, 8 January 1852 

London Times, 20 January 1852  

Sherborne Mercury, 20 January 1852  

Sun (London), 17 January 1857 

Morning Chronicle, 13 April 1857  

Edinburgh News and Literary Chronicle, 13 February 1858 

Robert Woolward, Nigh on Sixty Years at Sea.  

Secondary Sources 

Dr Anyaa Anim-Addo, Steam Packets and the Caribbean. 

Phil Kenton & Harry G. Parsons, Early Routings of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company 1842-1879. 

Joan Martelli, The Law of Storms. 

Stuart Nicol, MacQueen’s Legacy: Ships of the Royal Mail Line.