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
As the officials
along the line of the London and North-Western Railway are besieged
with inquiries as to where Molfra Bay is, it may be as well to state
that the nearest approach to it for any person not in the island of
Anglesey, is from Bangor railway station. It is fourteen miles from
Bangor, over a horrible road, with most expensive posting. There is
no mode of communicating with London from it but through Bangor, and
there are no public conveyances of any kind. But, notwithstanding
this, great numbers are visiting the scene. On the whole, the people
in the neighbourhood are reported to have acted very well. Several
sums of money found by them have been given up to the coast-guard.
The fragments of the spars, and even of the mainmast, seem as if
they had been smashed into small pieces by some crushing blade
impelled by steam power. If an army of giants had fallen to to hew
up the ship it could not have presented a more fragmentary
appearance.'
A correspondent of the _Manchester Guardian_ describes the wreck from
the same stand-point. He says:--
'Immediately after the adjournment of the inquest, on Friday, orders
were given for the interment of the bodies which had been
identified; the remainder were kept throughout the whole of
Saturday, and every hour brought a fresh accession of visitors bent
on the melancholy errand of inquiry after missing friends. The
distortion and disfigurement of the bodies consequent on drowning,
and the absence of clothing, made the examination necessarily more
minute and painful; but in some instances the features and limbs
were mangled from violent dashing against the rocks, and recognition
of friends was almost impossible. Mr. Bradbury, a survivor,
describes one of the young ladies whose bodies were lying in Penrhos
church as the recognized _belle_ of the vessel, and the charm and
admiration of a large circle. Mrs. Foster, who is among the lost,
had gone to Australia to superintend the sale of some land, and it
is conjectured that she had with her the whole of the proceeds of
the sale. Her companion, Mrs. Woodroff, who has been identified, was
the wife of an innkeeper in Melbourne: her husband is expected to
follow her. Among the company at Bangor was an elderly gentleman
from Gloucestershire, named Wright, who had heard of the wreck at
Liverpool, where he had come in expectation of meeting his son, Mr.
Iles Wright, of Evesham, who was the surgeon of the ship, and who
had written from Queenstown anticipatory of his arrival.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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