SS Atlantic

1873

Nova Scotia, coal running low, no women saved Location: Meagher's Island, off Prospect, Nova Scotia · Coordinates: 44.41°N 63.94°W · Casualties: ~560 · Survivors: ~390 · Depth: 15 m · Cause: grounding — Diverted toward Halifax on the final leg of a Liverpool-New York crossing after a winter storm exhausted her coal reserves. Struck Marr's Rock off Meagher's Island at 03:15 on 1 April 1873 while navigating unfamiliar waters in the dark. Broke up on the reef in heavy seas before most passengers could be brought up from the lower decks. · Fate: located · partly salvaged · Type: passenger liner · White Star Line · Tonnage: 3,707 tons · Crew: 144 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1870 White Star Line transatlantic liner, Liverpool to New York, diverted to Halifax for coal when a winter storm slowed her passage. Struck Marr's Rock off Meagher's Island, Nova Scotia, at 03:15 on 1 April 1873 and broke up in heavy seas. Between 535 and 562 died, the worst transatlantic maritime disaster until the same company's Titanic went down 39 years later. Every woman and all but one child aboard were lost. The Vessel The SS Atlantic was a British White Star Line transatlantic steamer, commissioned at the Harland and Wolff yard at Belfast on 3 September 1870. She was 128 metres long, 3,707 gross tons, and was the fourth ship of the White Star Line's original Atlantic-class steamers (with her sisters Oceanic, Baltic, and Pacific). Her commercial role was the Liverpool-New York passenger and mail trade, with emphasis on second- and third-class emigrant carriage. The Atlantic class represented White Star's entry into the transatlantic steamer trade; the line had been founded in 1845 by Liverpool shipping agent John Pilkington but had been in commercial reorganisation and expansion from 1867 under Thomas Ismay. The Atlantic-class ships were Ismay's specific investment in the Atlantic passenger trade, competing directly against Cunard, the Inman Line, and the White Diamond Line. Her master in March 1873 was Captain James Agnew Williams, 45, a career Atlantic-trade master. Her crew and passenger complement on her final voyage was 952 people: 810 passengers (primarily Irish, German, and Scandinavian emigrants bound for the American Midwest) and 142 ship's crew. The Disaster Atlantic approached the Nova Scotia coast during the night of 31 March–1 April 1873. Captain Williams's navigation of the coastal approach was complicated by the continuing heavy weather, the unfamiliar coastal waters (Williams had never approached Halifax before), and the inadequate lighthouse and marker-buoy system of the Nova Scotia coast in 1873. At 03:15 on 1 April 1873, SS Atlantic struck Marrs Rock off Meagher's Island, approximately 18 kilometres west of Halifax Harbor. The impact was severe: the ship was holed below the waterline at the forward engine room; her main compartments flooded rapidly; she listed heavily to port within 10 minutes of the strike. The specific circumstance of the wreck was that Atlantic had grounded in shallow water on a rocky shoal adjacent to a small rocky island (Meagher's Island). The grounding position placed the ship approximately 150 metres from the island's shore, within swimming distance for able-bodied passengers but beyond the range of the available lifeboats (two of Atlantic's four lifeboats had been damaged during the initial impact; only two were usable). The evacuation of the 952 aboard proceeded through the early morning of 1 April 1873 under conditions of severe disadvantage: heavy seas breaking across the ship and the adjacent shore; water temperature approximately 1°C; most passengers, predominantly emigrants, had no swimming skills or cold-water survival training. Of the 952 aboard, 535 died in the sinking or in the subsequ