Tragedy during a fun night aboard (From Echo)

Tragedy during a fun night aboard

9:00pm Thursday 24th September 2009 in

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TRAGEDY and terror seem a long way from the jolly world of paddle-steamers. Their working lives were spent hugging the land, seemingly exempt from the dangers of the open sea.

Yet the greatest shipwreck disaster in the history of the Thames Estuary involved a seaside pleasure vessel.

An estimated 640 people died when paddle steamer Princess Alice sunk.

Built in 1865 and operated by the London Company, Princess Alice plied a regular route between Southend pier, the Medway ports, and London.

On September 3 1878, she was returning home to London after what was advertised as a “moonlight trip”.

Her decks and covered areas were packed with around 750 revellers. As on the Titanic, the ship’s band had set up on deck, playing popular music hall numbers. Passengers danced and sang to the choruses.

Dusk was settling on a beautiful late summer evening. It was what paddle-steamer excursions were all about.

As Princess Alice approached the site of what is now the Thames Barrier, she encountered the 1,370 ton Bywell Castle, steaming downstream and bound for Newcastle.

The two vessels should have passed each other with ease. Instead, the paddle-steamer positioned herself directly across the Bywell’s bows.

An inexperienced helmsman, an exceptionally strong ebb tide, a lack of communication between the two ships, and the total absence of any navigational rules or guidelines on the Thames, all combined that evening to create tragedy.

The Bywell Castle sliced through the Princess Alice, cutting her in half. She sank in four minutes.

Hundreds of passengers below decks went down with her. Hundreds more were thrown into the water.

Noxious chemicals and waste from the Woolwich ironworks combined with raw sewage from the Beckton outlet to turn the Thames into a toxic soup. The subsequent mass inquest found in many cases it was impossible to determine whether victims had been drowned or poisoned.

Survivors numbered just 69. Among them, according to her own account, was Elizabeth Stride. Devastated by the loss of her family aboard the Princess Alice, the once respectable housewife turned to prostitution and became the second victim of Jack the Ripper.

Hundreds of Southend residents contributed to a memorial to the victims, which can still be seen in North Woolwich cemetery.