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White Wings Vol I. Fifty Years Of Sail In The New Zealand Trade, 1850 TO 1900

Scene of Horror

Scene of Horror.

A terrible scene followed, and out of 105 people aboard only 35 were saved. Unfortunately the steamer backed away from the sinking ship, or more would have been saved. As it was, a few of the ship's people managed to clamber on to the steamer. When the collision occurred, Captain Canney was below, marking off the course, and most of the passengers were below, suffering from seasickness. It was soon seen that there was no possible hope for the ship, and Captain Canney ordered every hencoop and anything else that would float to be thrown over in order to give a chance of escape to anyone that might pick them up when the ship went down. There seems to have been a good deal of confusion, as the ship's boats, that could easily have held everyone, left the ship half-empty. The scene on the ship was heartrending, as it was at once obvious that nothing short of a miracle could save the doomed souls on board. Captain Canney acted heroically, and did all he could to pacify the terrified creatures. The ship was doomed, and very soon she heeled over, with thepage 346 ends of her yards in the water; and soon she sank, only the tops of her masts appearing above water.

The Mangerton does not seem to have made any attempt to search the locality, but she picked up a boat with several people in it. The steamer had her bows crushed by the impact, and she made for Ramsgate, where she landed about twenty-nine of the Josephine Willis' people. Another of the ship's boats reached Folkestone the night of the collision, and the following morning seven people were found clinging to a floating spar, one of whom was the late Mr. W. H. Ripley, who went back to London, and came out on the Lord Burleigh in 1856 to Auckland, where he died in 1923.