Events in
Local History

The
Princess Alice
Disaster

1878

SS Princess Alice.                          The story of what is still the greatest peacetime disaster in Britain, although largely forgotten... 

Tuesday, the 3rd day of September, 1878, on the evening return upriver from a day trip to Gravesend and maneuvering in order to offload passengers at North Greenwich Pier, the 250-ton steam powered pleasure steamer collided with the 890-ton collier 'Bywell Castle', an iron carrying ship bound for Newcastle, that was several times the 'Princess Alice's' size, in the Thames just off Gallions Reach at Woolwich. In very warm weather the pleasure boat was packed with, between 700 and 900 day-trippers, young, old, and family groups. Overloaded, the 'Alice' was only equipped to take 500, she sank and due to the lack of life-saving equipment carried by the steamer, the highly polluted river, and the fact that many Victorian city dwellers of the time could not swim, nearly six hundred people perished.  The captain of the 'Alice' perished with his ship, and the captain of the Bywell Castle was never to set sail again, with the ship itself disappearing with 'all hands' in the Bay of Biscay five years later

A memorial card issued in remembrance of the disaster
courtesy of J M Wickes, found among his uncle's possessions. 

The Princess Alice Memorial in Woolwich cemetery was erected by a sixpenny subscription throughout the kingdom. The inscription states that the victims numbered 550. But it is said that there were 544 inquests at Woolwich, and 46 elsewhere, making the total 590. Some may have been washed out to sea and never recovered, but this is not known or likely. Woolwich itself spent £1,380 in recovering and burying the dead, the county justices, who had always previously paid such expenses, repudiated the charge. The Treasury voted £100 towards the bill, and the ratepayers paid the rest.

The memorial consisted of an ornamental marble Irish cross, and the base has an inscription saying "It was computed that seven hundred men, women, and children were on board. Of these about five hundred and fifty were drowned. One hundred and twenty were buried near this place." On another face of the pedestal it is stated that the memorial was "Erected by a national sixpenny subscription, to which more than twenty-three thousand persons contributed."

The Foundering of The Princess Alice.

There's a rippling wave and a sparkling spray
As the fair ship steams along
It is seemly to close the festive day
With the measures of dance and song.
But, ah! those lips will be silent soon,
And the music hushed in that bright saloon.

As they're wafted to shore on the evening breeze
How happy those voices sound!
There is nothing the listening ear can please
Like a pleasure-boat homeward bound
There is laughter on deck - there is love below -
Ah! little their danger the doomed ones know!

They are midway now, on the Thames' broad stream,
And above them a clear, calm sky:
Hark! heard you not then a dismal scream,
And the shouts - as of agony?
The river runs - but the music's gone -
Two ships have met - and there floats just one!

Oh! weep for the fate that befel the gay,
For the young who too earl died,
For manhood and beauty swept vaway
By that cold, unpitying tide!
Weep for fond bosoms forced to part,
For the desolate home, and the broken heart!

And weep for that frenzied last embrace,
Round the covering infant press'd -
Ah! take the slime from her pallid face,
And the lifeless babe from her breast!
And weep for the minstrel mute and chill,
For the shattered harp that's forever still.

Yet work while ye weep! on the saved attend,
Your solace the orphans crave;
To the friendless give - what he lost - a friend;
To the drowned - what they want - a grave!
Oh! Woolwich - they deeds in these late sad hours
Point stranger to Heaven than all thy towers!

It is sweet when the Royal Lady sends
Her message of Queenly love;
It is sweeter when faith with a prayer ascends
To a higher throne above.
May He who the issues of life controls
Have mercy on those eight hundred souls.

William Digby Seymour. QC,LL.D.
Temple, September 11, 1878.

Gallion's Reach became known as 'Haunted Reach' after the disaster, and The Bywell Castle was to disappear without trace just four years later while returning from the Mediterranean.

© Lal Cook.

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