Passengers on the Drummond Castle 1896

As reported in The Cape Times, the following were the passengers who sailed on the Drummond Castle from Cape Town and the coast ports on 28 May, 1896:

Misses Olive
Messrs F W and WW Whipp
Mr and Mrs Rudd (Reed?) and child
Mr Aspinall
Mr and Mrs. Harris
Mr Donaldson
Lieutenant v Geise
Miss Berrick
Mr E W Rich
Mr Drury
Mr and Mrs Ea(r)les and child
Mrs Hughes and child
Mr Bennett
Mr and Mrs Stevens
Messrs
G Almond
J Richardson
J Dalziel
English
A Ryan
Mrs. Lucas and two children
Mr and Mrs Van Mundle
Mr and Mrs Gateman and child
Messrs
Allen
Jacobez
Sago
Schlesinger
H S Cohen
Mrs McLean and four children
Messrs
Hastings
Tulfsen
Ugland
Norris
Graham
Kingstand
Mr and Mrs Kingler
Mr and Mrs Brochein and child
Mrs Hugo and four children
Mrs Mercer and four children
Mrs F Mack
Miss McGee

Messrs

N Tayleur 

Hughes 

T Knight 

A D Buxton 

Mr  Mrs and Miss Rae 

Mr Mrs and Miss Stevens

Mrs H Morris

Mrs Miss and Master Morton

Mrs and Miss Barnett

Mr W Roberts

Mr Mrs Master and Misses (two) Peachey

Mr and Mrs T. Peachey and three children and maid 

Misses (two) Mercer 

Messrs

J Platt 

Morissay

Browning

Schornacheim

Mrs and Miss Willis

Mr and Mrs Powdrell

Mrs and Misses (two) Gethin

Miss Peace and nurse

Mrs McClelland

Mrs Taylor and two children

Mr J Goldman

Mrs Brown-Constable and maid

Mr C Marquardt

As always with such reported lists there are unreliable spellings, errors and omissions. For example, a passenger named John Wallis BLINKHORN (‘late of Adderley Street’) does not appear above because his decision to sail on the Drummond Castle was taken at the last minute, too late for his name to be added to the passenger list. His wife and child had departed for England three months earlier on another steamer but business had detained Mr Blinkhorn at the Cape. 

Several would-be passengers had for various reasons changed their minds about embarking on the Drummond Castle, including a Councillor COX who had booked his passage but did not sail.

There were a number of children on board the ship. Among them were Geraldine and Beatrice OLIVE, aged 15 and 13, daughters of the City Engineer for Cape Town, W T Olive. The girls were being sent to school in England.  Mrs LUCAS, wife of W B Lucas, formerly third officer on the S.S. Warwick Castle, was travelling with her two children, one of them an infant and the other about seven years old.

Charles MARQUARDT, according to some sources, sailed from Natal. He was one of three survivors of the wreck. He spent the night and part of the following day keeping afloat by clinging to a piece of wood, not a scenario he had envisaged when booking his first class ticket. Later he sent a cable from Ushant alerting the Currie Company to the disaster. Joseph Berthele, the retired Breton fisherman who saved Mr. Marquardt, was awarded a silver medal. Various other awards were made to the inhabitants of Molene and Ouessant (Ushant) in connection with the wreck. The Committee of Lloyds of London bestowed the bronze medal of the Society of Lloyds upon the fishermen Francois and Mathieu Masson (who rescued crew members WOOD and GODBOLT) and Berthele as an honorary acknowledgment of their extraordinary exertions in saving life. 

NORRIS and GRAHAM, described in contemporary reports as ‘firework men’, were assistants to the ‘pyrotechnist’ Mr Pain, and were returning to England after a stay of almost a year in South Africa. Both had wives and families who were left without a breadwinner after the wreck.

DALZIEL, ALMOND and RICHARDSON were operators of the Cape Telegraph Department travelling together. J Dalziel was to have been married on his arrival in England. 

CAPTAIN W W PIERCE had for many years been the master of the steamer Courland, trading between Cape Town and Natal. Pierce went down with his ship, the Drummond Castle. Most of his crew were lost, among them First Officer J WAYMAN and Second Officer T W HICKS. Fourth Officer P S ELLIS was buried at Ushant.

LIEUTENANT VON GIESE (or Geise) was an officer in the German army stationed in Damaraland but had been ordered home on sick leave. Unfortunately he was booked on the Drummond Castle. 

TULFSEN and UGLAND were passengers returning to Norway, after a long and perilous journey. They had been wrecked on a Norwegian ship and eventually reached Delagoa Bay in a destitute condition. Afterwards they embarked on the Drummond Castle, and were, therefore, in two wrecks within a few weeks, eventually meeting an apparently inescapable fate.

The PEACHEY family (Cornish settlers to S.A.) - the South Africa Magazine reported as follows:

In Durban … Messrs. Donald Currie and Co.’s offices were besieged by people asking for news of the disaster and the names of the missing. Well-known people belonging to Natal among the passengers are Mr. Peachey and family, of Tongaat, ten in all. They had decided to go by direct liner, but at the last moment changed their minds and booked by the Drummond (an intermediate steamer). Mrs. Peachey, senior, was paying a visit to England after an absence of forty-six years.
All the flags in town and on shipping at the Point were half-masted on receipt of the news. The Prime Minister of Natal cabled to Sir Donald Currie expressing sympathy with those bereaved by the foundering of the Drummond Castle. The Mayor of Pietermaritzburg has invited subscriptions to a relief fund.

[above extract transcribed from South Africa Magazine by Ellen Stanton]

The extent of the tragedy is difficult to comprehend even 117 years later. Some passengers drowned in their cabins. Those who managed to reach the deck perhaps fared worse. Of the bodies washed up on the beaches of Ushant and Molene, many were still wearing pyjamas. The islanders dressed them in their own ceremonial costumes kept for solemn rituals, and hundreds of people attended services and burials by the parish priest. Queen Victoria was moved by the care taken in recovering the bodies and the reverence with which the dead were treated.

Memorial Inscription at Goudhurst to Herbert Hinds, lost in the wreck of the
Drummond Castle off Ushant France 16 June 1896 and buried on the island of Molene.
His name does not appear on the passenger list given above:
Hinds may have been a crew member.

Has anyone sourced a crew list for the final voyage of the Drummond Castle? 

If so, please alert Mole via the Comments facility on this blog.

Wreck of the Drummond Castle June 1896

On 28 May 1896 Donald Currie’s Company’s intermediate steamer Drummond Castle, on her way home from Delagoa Bay to England, left Cape Town on what was to be her final journey. A fortnight later she called at Teneriffe. A concert was held in the saloon on the evening of 16 June, most of the passengers going to their cabins afterwards as the deck wasn’t inviting – the sea was calm, but there was a drizzle and poor visibility in the hazy weather.

The ship was approaching Ushant, a locality known to mariners as among the most dangerous in the world, due to strong currents. Nevertheless, the Captain (Pierce) had not reduced speed and neither had soundings been taken. As a result, nobody realised the ship was caught in the treacherous currents and was being pulled in eastward. She struck the reef known as the Pierres Vertes between Ushant and an island to the south. Within a few minutes she had gone to the bottom.

Her sinking was so speedy that accounts of the disaster give little information. A passenger (the only passenger to survive) stated that the Captain believed the ship to be wedged on the rocks and had hesitated about lowering the boats. The Chief Engineer, however, in a heroic decision, raced below to prevent the boilers bursting. Horrified passengers rushed on deck but there was no hope for them or for the stricken ship. Four minutes after the vessel struck she was a mass of floating wreckage.

The following morning, fishermen saw two men clinging to some flotsam – Quartermaster Wood and a seaman, Godbolt – and these were taken on board the fishing vessel and landed on the island of Molene. A passenger, Charles Marquardt, also picked up by fishermen in the vicinity, was landed at Ushant.

These three people were the only survivors of the 243 souls on board the Drummond Castle. Those lost included Captain Pierce and his officers and crew numbering 101 and 142 passengers.

For several days, bodies continued to be washed up on the islands near the scene of the wreck. Many of the victims were buried at once in common graves as there wasn’t enough wood available for so many coffins.

Marquardt had cabled the Currie Company and as soon as the news broke, crowds flocked to the Castle offices in Fenchurch Street, London. Relatives of some of those on board travelled out to the islands near Ushant but all hope of finding further survivors was quickly abandoned.

The South African public was stunned by the news, which impacted directly on almost every town in the country. At the Cape, Parliament adjourned as a mark of respect to those lost in the calamity. Few wrecks have been as appallingly sudden as that of the Drummond Castle.

Unsuccessful attempts were made in 1929 to salvage part of the ship’s cargo. A huge rent in the hull was found where the Pierres Verte had ripped open the vessel’s side.

To be continued …passengers on the Drummond Castle