SS Austria

1858

Boiling pitch, mid-Atlantic, ten minutes Location: North Atlantic, ~mid-ocean between Ireland and Newfoundland · Coordinates: 47.00°N 35.00°W · Casualties: 449 · Survivors: 89 · Depth: abyssal · not located · Cause: fire — Caught fire in mid-Atlantic at 13:00 on 13 September 1858 when a crewman fumigating the lower decks with boiling pitch dropped his pot. The tar ignited deck planks and tarred ropes above. The fire raced through the ship in under ten minutes; panic and a failed lifeboat launch left most aboard on the burning hulk. · Fate: destroyed · Type: passenger liner · Hamburg America Line · Tonnage: 2,384 tons · Crew: 117 · Flag: Hamburg-America Line · Launched: 1857 Hamburg America emigrant steamer, Hamburg to New York with German and Slavic passengers in steerage. On 13 September 1858 a crewman fumigating the lower decks with boiling pitch dropped his pot; the tar ignited the deck and the fire raced through the ship in under ten minutes. 449 dead of 538. Ninety men were picked up by a passing Norwegian barque; most of the rest burned or drowned. The Vessel The SS Austria was a Hamburg-America Line passenger steamship, commissioned at the Caird and Company yard at Greenock, Scotland, on 5 March 1857. She was 97 metres long, 2,384 gross tons, and was one of the first Hamburg-America Line steamers designed specifically for the Hamburg-to-New-York immigrant trade. Her engines were British-built twin-cylinder steam reciprocating engines of the mid-1850s standard design, driving a single screw propeller at a service speed of 10.5 knots. The Hamburg-America Line (Hamburg Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft, HAPAG) had been established in 1847 specifically for the emigrant trade between Hamburg and New York. By 1858 the line had expanded to operate four similar ships (Hammonia, Borussia, Saxonia, Austria), which together represented the principal German emigrant transportation channel for the mid-1850s. The Hamburg-America Line's specific commercial strength was its ability to service the German-speaking Mitteleuropa (Bavaria, Württemberg, Austria, Bohemia) that had been producing substantial emigration to the United States since 1848. Her master on her final voyage was Captain Friedrich Heydtmann, 49, a career Hamburg-America Line officer. The Disaster The fire in SS Austria's forecastle spread rapidly through the ship's wooden-lined interior compartments. The specific vulnerability of mid-nineteenth-century passenger steamships to interior fires was well-known but had not been successfully addressed at the operational level: the combination of wooden hull, wooden interior lining, cotton upholstery, oil lamps, and open coal stoves in the galleys and cabins produced a fire risk that no contemporary fire-suppression system could adequately counter. The crew response to the SS Austria fire was, by contemporary standards, adequate in intention but catastrophically inadequate in execution. Captain Heydtmann ordered the ship's fire bucket brigade to attack the forecastle fire; the attack failed. By 12:30 on 13 September 1858 the fire had reached the main cabin areas; by 13:00 the fire had reached the engine room and had destroyed the ship's steam power. The specific failure of the evacuation reflected the contemporary inadequacy of passenger-ship life-saving equipment. The SS Austria carried four small wooden lifeboats (total capacity approximately 100 people) for her 538 aboard. Three of the four lifeboats capsized during launching attempts in the heavy swell adjacent to the burning ship; only one lifeboat launched successfully, carrying approximately 25 people. The remaining 500+ aboard either burned in the fire or entered the sea without adequate flotation support. The SS Narragansett (an American sailing packet) reached the s