The Wreck of the "Royal Charter": Compiled from Authentic Sources, with Some Original MatterFowler, Frank
History
The Wreck of the "Royal Charter": Compiled from Authentic Sources, with Some Original Matter
Fowler, Frank
Royal Charter (Ship); Shipwrecks -- Wales -- Anglesey
secured to the framing of the ship, is supposed to have been
shattered, from the fact of a gold box having been picked up with
the address of a leading banking firm upon it.' [The subsequent
operations of the divers have, up to the time I am writing, tended
to confirm this hypothesis, although assurances at fifty, sixty, and
eighty per cent. are still being effected at Lloyd's.]
'About two hundred and fifty sovereigns and a quantity of notes had
been picked up among the rocks.
'At least thirty bodies which have been cast ashore are lying in the
adjacent church; most of them are frightfully mutilated. William
Hughes, the only apprentice saved, states that when the vessel
parted he was in the waist, and was precipitated among the
machinery, which was hurled to and fro by the action of the waves.
He had given himself up for lost, when a wave lifted him clear of
the ship, and landed him in an unconscious state. The survivors
during their stay at the scene of the wreck were very kindly
treated. Two ladies made themselves conspicuous by their attention
to the sufferers. It is stated that all the boats were in perfect
readiness for lowering had circumstances permitted.' [Some of the
passengers say the boats _were_ launched, and were dashed to pieces
on the rocks.]
The second correspondent's letter is equally interesting. Of course a
number of persons describing one event will, as has been often pointed
out, fall into discrepancies of statement. It is not for me to make
the reports uniform. I have thrown in a parenthetical explanation here
and there; but otherwise the several newspapers must speak for, and
explain, themselves. The second communication runs thus:--
'The "Royal Charter" did not, as was at first stated, strike the
ground in Red Wharf Bay, but a place between that point and Amlwch.
It is a small opening in the coast, the beach being chiefly sand and
stones. It is to the west of Point Lynas, and known as Molfra, a
village in the immediate locality, being of that name. The coast is
thinly inhabited, and the land flat and uncultivated. Very soon
after the fatal catastrophe, which resulted in such an awful
sacrifice of human life, the vessel broke up, and nothing remains
but pieces of the wreck, which were moved to and fro by the action
of the tide. As one of the seamen described it, she broke up like a
bandbox.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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