4 ms·

Princess Alice disaster: The Thames' 650 forgotten dead

64 points by Jaruzel 8y ago

Jaruzel 8y ago
Reason I posted this to HN, not only because it was interesting, but having recently finished watching Ripper Street, there's a character in that show who's backstory relates to this.
walrus01 8y ago
see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_General_Slocum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_General_Slocum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Eastland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Eastland Current passenger ship safety regulations are very much written in blood.
- pjc50 8y ago
  More recently in the Thames, the Marchioness.
- dmix 8y ago
  Interestingly the saftey regulations also contributed to the sinking of SS Eastland (your 2nd link): > During 1915, the new federal Seamen's Act had been passed because of the RMS Titanic disaster three years earlier. The law required retrofitting of a complete set of lifeboats on Eastland, as on many other passenger vessels.[7] This additional weight may have made Eastland more dangerous by making it even more top-heavy. Some argued that other Great Lakes ships would suffer from the same problem.[7] Nonetheless, it was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson.
aaron695 8y ago
Some original articles - https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/220442169 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/220442169 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/107939744 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/107939744 > Is sewage deadly? No, the Thames back then would have been the same as many rivers in many poorer countries today. Many of these rivers are scavenged, not without issue, but a quick dunk isn't going to have immediately killed anyone. Author needs to travel more, oldie England is still alive and kicking around the world.
- petercooper 8y ago
  Just how vile and dangerous the Thames was in Victorian times can't be underplayed though (my mother remains pretty vocal about how terrible it was in the 60s!). The idea of moving Parliament out of London was even considered as the smell from the Thames was affecting daily life as far upstream as Westminster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink An interesting aside related to the Princess Alice disaster is that the main northern sewer was only finally fully working months before the disaster and its outflow was very close to the crash site. Work began in the next decade to purify the sewage rather than just dumping it into the Thames there. But I'd argue (and this is just a hunch) that sewage was "deadly" then in the sense that if the water then were as clean as now, the death toll would have been far lower, especially as the crash happened so close to (admittedly rather muddy) land.
  - cstross 8y ago
    Sewage was widely believed to be deadly due to its association with "night airs", which the (now disproven) miasma theory of disease held was responsible for many infections. While John Snow demonstrated the epidemiological evidence for contagion (physical contact) as the mechanism for disease transmission in 1857, actual proof that bacteria were the caustative agent in contagious infectious disease only became available in the late 1870s (via the work of, in particular, Robert Koch and Louis Pasteir), and medical opinion (as with public opinion) was slow to adapt to new scientific findings in those days. More on the miasma theory of disease here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory
    - polaritron 8y ago
      There's definitely still a sewage treatment plant near the site of the accident: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sheerness,+UK/@51.5112905,0.0848886,1853m/ https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sheerness,+UK/@51.5112905,... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beckton#Sewage_works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beckton#Sewage_works But you can't discount the difference between the dictionary definition of "sewage" versus the reality of incidental pollution as discovered in-situ. Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gowanus_Canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gowanus_Canal http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2010/03/post_25.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2010/03/post_25.html https://www.timeout.com/newyork/blog/ten-feet-of-black-mayonnaise-line-the-gowanus-canal-101315 https://www.timeout.com/newyork/blog/ten-feet-of-black-mayon... https://ny.curbed.com/2018/7/19/17590126/brooklyn-gowanus-dredgers-canoeing-superfund-site https://ny.curbed.com/2018/7/19/17590126/brooklyn-gowanus-dr... http://nautil.us/blog/in-the-black-mayonnaise-of-brooklyns-gowanus-canal-alien-life-is-being-born http://nautil.us/blog/in-the-black-mayonnaise-of-brooklyns-g... https://www.brownstoner.com/development/gowanus-canal-black-mayonnaise-superfund-epa-cleanup-brooklyn/ https://www.brownstoner.com/development/gowanus-canal-black-... https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20161123/gowanus/gowanus-canal-debris-removal-epa-environmental-protection-agency/ https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20161123/gowanus/gowanus-ca... Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown_Creek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown_Creek
keithpeter 8y ago
A more recent collision https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/pleasure-boat-disaster-on-river-thames-was-a-1614686.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/pleasure-boat-disaster... I think I remember it appearing in a fictional work as well or being alluded to

64 points by Jaruzel 8y ago

Reason I posted this to HN, not only because it was interesting, but having recently finished watching Ripper Street, there's a character in that show who's backstory relates to this.

walrus01 8y ago

see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_General_Slocum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_General_Slocum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Eastland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Eastland Current passenger ship safety regulations are very much written in blood.

pjc50 8y ago
More recently in the Thames, the Marchioness.
dmix 8y ago
Interestingly the saftey regulations also contributed to the sinking of SS Eastland (your 2nd link): > During 1915, the new federal Seamen's Act had been passed because of the RMS Titanic disaster three years earlier. The law required retrofitting of a complete set of lifeboats on Eastland, as on many other passenger vessels.[7] This additional weight may have made Eastland more dangerous by making it even more top-heavy. Some argued that other Great Lakes ships would suffer from the same problem.[7] Nonetheless, it was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson.

aaron695 8y ago

Some original articles - https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/220442169 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/220442169 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/107939744 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/107939744 > Is sewage deadly? No, the Thames back then would have been the same as many rivers in many poorer countries today. Many of these rivers are scavenged, not without issue, but a quick dunk isn't going to have immediately killed anyone. Author needs to travel more, oldie England is still alive and kicking around the world.

petercooper 8y ago
Just how vile and dangerous the Thames was in Victorian times can't be underplayed though (my mother remains pretty vocal about how terrible it was in the 60s!). The idea of moving Parliament out of London was even considered as the smell from the Thames was affecting daily life as far upstream as Westminster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink An interesting aside related to the Princess Alice disaster is that the main northern sewer was only finally fully working months before the disaster and its outflow was very close to the crash site. Work began in the next decade to purify the sewage rather than just dumping it into the Thames there. But I'd argue (and this is just a hunch) that sewage was "deadly" then in the sense that if the water then were as clean as now, the death toll would have been far lower, especially as the crash happened so close to (admittedly rather muddy) land.
- cstross 8y ago
  Sewage was widely believed to be deadly due to its association with "night airs", which the (now disproven) miasma theory of disease held was responsible for many infections. While John Snow demonstrated the epidemiological evidence for contagion (physical contact) as the mechanism for disease transmission in 1857, actual proof that bacteria were the caustative agent in contagious infectious disease only became available in the late 1870s (via the work of, in particular, Robert Koch and Louis Pasteir), and medical opinion (as with public opinion) was slow to adapt to new scientific findings in those days. More on the miasma theory of disease here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory
  - polaritron 8y ago
    There's definitely still a sewage treatment plant near the site of the accident: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sheerness,+UK/@51.5112905,0.0848886,1853m/ https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sheerness,+UK/@51.5112905,... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beckton#Sewage_works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beckton#Sewage_works But you can't discount the difference between the dictionary definition of "sewage" versus the reality of incidental pollution as discovered in-situ. Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gowanus_Canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gowanus_Canal http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2010/03/post_25.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2010/03/post_25.html https://www.timeout.com/newyork/blog/ten-feet-of-black-mayonnaise-line-the-gowanus-canal-101315 https://www.timeout.com/newyork/blog/ten-feet-of-black-mayon... https://ny.curbed.com/2018/7/19/17590126/brooklyn-gowanus-dredgers-canoeing-superfund-site https://ny.curbed.com/2018/7/19/17590126/brooklyn-gowanus-dr... http://nautil.us/blog/in-the-black-mayonnaise-of-brooklyns-gowanus-canal-alien-life-is-being-born http://nautil.us/blog/in-the-black-mayonnaise-of-brooklyns-g... https://www.brownstoner.com/development/gowanus-canal-black-mayonnaise-superfund-epa-cleanup-brooklyn/ https://www.brownstoner.com/development/gowanus-canal-black-... https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20161123/gowanus/gowanus-canal-debris-removal-epa-environmental-protection-agency/ https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20161123/gowanus/gowanus-ca... Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown_Creek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown_Creek

keithpeter 8y ago

A more recent collision https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/pleasure-boat-disaster-on-river-thames-was-a-1614686.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/pleasure-boat-disaster... I think I remember it appearing in a fictional work as well or being alluded to