The _Forfarshire_, a steamer of moderate size, left Hull for Dundee on the evening of September 5th, 1838, having on board a considerable amount of freight and sixty‐three passengers and crew. Soon after leaving the Humber the boilers began to leak, and on Thursday morning the weather became very tempestuous, while a thick mist enveloped the vessel. The steamer managed to pass the Fern Islands, on the way north, early on Thursday evening, but had all she could do to make headway in a very heavy sea, while the alarming fact was discovered that her boilers’ leakage was increasing. As the night advanced the weather became more and more boisterous, and somewhere off Berwick it was found that the water from above was deluging the furnace fires. Off St. Abb’s Head, the engineer reported that the machinery would work no longer; the sails were accordingly set, and the vessel allowed to drive before the wind, which took her southward. Before daybreak on Friday morning the roar of breakers near at hand was heard; and the captain tried hard to avert the appalling catastrophe which seemed inevitable, and steer the vessel between the islands and the mainland, through a channel known as the Fair Way. But the _Forfarshire_ would not answer her helm, and was driven hither and thither by a furious sea. The scene at this juncture baffles description. Utter darkness enveloped the doomed vessel, over which the sea broke in tremendous waves, and the noise of which almost drowned the agonising shrieks of the passengers. The vessel, a few minutes later, struck a rock, her bows banging and crashing upon it. At this moment a rush was made by eight of the crew to a boat, which they lowered successfully, one almost naked and frenzied passenger jumping into it after them. The ship was now at her last extremity. “Then some leaped overboard with dreadful yell, As eager to anticipate their grave; And the sea yawned around her like a hell, And down she sucked with her the whirling wave, Like one who grapples with his enemy, And strives to strangle him before he die.” A moment or two after the first shock, another great sea struck her, raising her high in the air and then bringing her down with a terrific crash on the jagged reef, and with a shock so tremendous that she literally broke in two. The whole of the upper part of the vessel, including the chief cabin, filled with passengers, was swept away, and sank almost immediately. Every soul on that part of the vessel was engulfed in an ocean grave. Good George Herbert says truly, “He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.”