The Bird and The Buddha

eating oranges on deck and parents. No one was worried. On the bridge was Captain Grinstead, who had twenty years’ experience, and Mr. Long, his first mate. It had been a perfect sunny day, the river was smooth as glass, and they had spent a joyful day at Rosherville, officially known as the Kent Zoological and Botanical Gardens. It was advertised as “The Place to Spend a Happy Day.” As the sun sank, many sang and danced while the ship’s band played as the steamer cruised up river. None anticipated that the trip home would be cut short at Tripcocks Point near North Woolwich.

Between London Bridge and Gravesend, the river winds with its biggest bend at Gallion’s Reach. The ship hugged the bank to fight against the ebb. The moon was rising and she was in sight of North Woolwich Pier, half-way down the Reach near the city’s gasworks at Beckton when a Collier, the Bywell Castle, approached Tripcock Point. The Bywell was heading down river. The two ships were near the middle of the river.

We heard that the Princess Alice cut between the Collier and the South Shore. The steamer swung broadside and was hit at full speed. I heard one survivor say, “The Collier seemed to hover over the starboard bow of the Princess Alice. I heard a rippin’ crash as the sharp edge of the bow cut right into us. Shook and quivered. I heard a crew member say the Bywell... she drove right through to the engine-room.” He paused, then added, “We was sliced in two.” Water gushed in; the forward part of the Princess Alice sank like a bag of rocks.

Another survivor said she lifted almost to the perpendicular, the aft part standing for a few moments, and then she was gone. “The last thing I heard before I was pulled out,” he said, “was the screechin’ of sea gulls.”

There were a few lifeboats, but most were not accessible. Most could not swim. Many women wore voluminous dresses, pulling them down deep into the water because the fabric quickly became soaked. The Bywell let down ropes; a number of small boats attempted to rescue the drowning passengers. Only a few passengers were able to clamber aboard the Bywell.

I heard a survivor say that the Princess Alice was cut in two and, within five minutes, she was “completely heeled over and sinking in deep water,” meaning she was leaning far over to one side and going under. I only knew what ‘heeled over’ meant because Sherlock had explained in maritime terms the sinking of the Gloria Scott from which Victor’s father had escaped many years ago.

I watched as the dead were pulled from the water and taken to the Town Hall and to the boardroom of the steamboat company on the Wharf, both of which were turned into temporary mortuaries. Shells and stretchers laden with the dead continued to appear for hours. Most of the dead were women and children. I realized that there were more lost than saved. Some seven hundred passengers had journeyed on the Princess Alice that afternoon. Most perished.

When Michael and I entered the temporary mortuary in the boardroom, the floor was littered with bodies covered in sheets and sacks. We helped the police lay the corpses in order, put labels on them, numbers mostly, and continued to feel inadequate, waiting anxiously to receive those who we might actually be able to assist.

I went to the balcony outside the boardroom window to wipe away the sewage and soot from the four children who lay there; they were not much older than my nephew. I was overcome with a melancholy I could barely withstand as I washed the dirt from their pretty, innocent faces and their Sunday-best clothes, now cold and limp, wet and black from sewage and pollution that pervaded that part of the river. The site of the crash was immediately down river of the Barking sewer outfall, which was in the process of releasing raw sewage into the river when the collision occurred. Passengers were bogged down by the black, foul, poisonous sewage.

I imagined their last moments. People below in the two saloons, scrambling to exit, tumbling over one another, clutching and tearing at each other, women and children crushed in the stampede. I imagined mothers seeing their babies and toddlers wrenched from their arms, fathers trying in vain to shove through the mad crowd, trapped and unable to reach their children.

The captain of the Bywell, a man named Harrison, shouted orders to his crew to work the rescue. In a frenzy, they threw out life-lines and lowered boats and the ship’s siren sounded, a cry for assistance. Captain Harrison dropped anchor to stop drifting downstream, not realizing that many drowning passengers were clinging to it. I heard in my mind the clank of the chain as the cable lowered through the hawse-hole. I saw the poor wretches who held to it pulled deeper into the watery grave.

Another steamer belonging to the same company and named the Duke of Teck, attempted a rescue, but by the time she arrived, the river was full of drowning people, screaming in anguish and begging for help. A passenger aboard the Duke, was hailed for saving several passengers. He had pulled six or seven women from the river. Although we heard other tales of amazing escapes, we heard far more stories of the pitiful screams of the dying.

The first body to be identified was that of a steward who had been in the service of the London Steamboat Company all his adult life. Another steward, however, survived. I was within earshot when he told a company official that he, William Law, was below decks in the saloon of the Princess Alice and heard a crash at around eight p.m. He ran up on deck, heard water rushing in below, and saw that the paddleboat was sinking. He rushed to the gangway and shouted to those below to get to the deck. “I ran into